The human nature and it is the inherent unending passion and extreme love and dependence on to be secure with what we have and try to fix everything we know in the available's (Info, knowledge, wisdom, structure, whatever defining word u choose) hinders its own growth for reaching higher echelons of wisdom, exploring better methods of business management and innovating so obvious methods of management through observation in daily life. As security is what every one of us seek for the reasons varied to each individual, true growth is by exploring the unknown, breaking the next level of wisdom, trying to think beyond what u think u know, in other terms what world means to you and how you appreciate it. By relooking at the details of it, objectives of it, redefining the system, or a relook at the existing one with a strangely different but more value deriving perspective, methods are innumerable, so are the solutions. Its so fluid out there. With this, I take the privilege to put my contention, which for me is one of the greatest challenges facing the consulting world now a days.
The ultra assertive ((Read arrogant), for me "confidence and wisdom need not breed arrogance", but for some "particular" roles, arrogance is required) and who really want to grow over what their self created zone of satisfaction describing nothing better than a cocoon, "think" is essential knowledge to the ingenuity and efficiency of the Fortune 500 and organization. Most of the consultants I meet, the junior ones are typically the most insecure ones within any organization and choose to brand themselves as arrogant for outsiders and lesser skilled or paid ones, are the one who rightly can be termed as " info shooters". Without them, the mindless army of corporate cube warriors would lead these organizations into the depths of bankruptcy.
There are many levels, topics and perspectives with which I can validate my contention of this diction, in the likes of quality, subject, service, relationship, business value for the client and many more. But here I take the most simplest and easiest of the differentiables which has its utmost value to the client - The Mighty Deliverables. The ones for which the client pays, the true revenue driver. For some its value, for some its document, for some its a paper work, for others its a power point presentation, for some its sense, for some its jargons.
Now at this moment, lets look at what a deliverable is ( Acc. to an online dictionary) :
"something that can be provided as the product of development/project/engagement/assignment/ in short and for consummation and inclusion of all related jargons - product of an effort, which is of value to the receiver.
in production environment it is : an artifact/solution/result that has been created by someone or some process. Which to me doesn't seem to inculcate the business perspective.
Deliverable is a tangible or intangible object produced as a result of a planned execution, as part of an obligation signed between the seller and buyer. The term can be either a noun: an item, product or artifact which must be created and then delivered as part of an obligation, or an adjective: describing something which must be delivered as part of an obligation. Like many terms common in corporate usage, the word is considered corporate jargon or corporatese, referring specifically to goals.
A deliverable is normally an accepted thing or purpose that can be the result of a task execution - a "thing" in terms of tangible (item, article, entity) and a "purpose" in terms of intangible (point, idea, goal, intention). A deliverable can be created from multiple smaller deliverables. In short, it is an outcome. A deliverable may be:
Or something that can be done, esp. something that is a realistic expectation: The corporation says that making a profit this year is a deliverable. Something, as merchandise, that is or can be delivered, esp. to fulfill a contract. For ex: All deliverables are to be shipped within 30 days.
A deliverable is different from a milestone in the sense that a milestone is a way of checking to what extent you are making progress to an outcome. A milestone can be completing the planning phase of the project while a deliverable includes things like design documents, testing scripts, requirement documents etc.
In technical projects, deliverable can further be classified into hardware, software or design deliverable. Documentation can also be a deliverable of projects (technical or non-technical).
Within the world of consulting, consulting deliverables are generally defined as any item that the consultancy or client have determined necessary to the success of the project. Deliverables would/may include presentation slideshows, requirement documentation, design documentation and more, but not necessarily be.
You observe in the above definitions, to define a deliverable is a painstaking job and imagine defining a system, structure and processes and more over that we have QUALITY. On other hand, to appreciate deliverable is just a second of a job. No policy can consummate the spirit.
Now lets lok at a new kid's point of view: Deliverable- what is to be delivered, or if looked from the client's perspective- What he hires you for?. Why does client hire us? To use our specialized skills for gaining business value (adding of sustained, long term benefits, competitive advantage etc are differentiation factors of service quality) which might be seen resulting in operational excellence, operational improvement, strategic thinking, Six Sigma, strategy development, and all other consulting services. To note is very critical and ultra important, that value or result is what the client hires us for, and deliverable are just the representation of those for the reason of maintaining standards of project management or communicating the solution. Two things now concerns all involved in this industry- value delivery and deliverables. Interestingly both has "deliver" in it.
As a new employee at a big consulting firm, it takes approximately 1 or max of 2 minutes before you're introduced to the word "deliverable". A neophyte may initially discover that a deliverable is just simply a documentation of some sort (e.g. Analysis, power point, POV, research document or others). However, it is common that the unknown enthusiastic soul soon realizes that the term "deliverable" is included in conversations not pertaining to documentation only(e.g. Powerpoint presentations, value, % increase in sales etc etc ). It also sometimes include talks, arranging strategic meetings/training and else. The problem only gets worse as the little scapegoat to the traditions of the "coveted" business continue through the first year. What everybody talks is MY TALK hence forth is what he goes thru. He/she discover that deliverables are both tangible and intangible; both essential and unnecessary. Pls note- unnecessary and essential. We would revert to this again in later part of this. The word escapes a standard definition. This is often true of verbs that become nouns. For the purposes of this article, I'll define a deliverable as "something you deliver to a client which is of value to the client". Avoiding specifics is something big consulting firms also enjoy thoroughly. Its all in the game.
Now lets look at why part of the question. Why do we want unecessary deliverables? :
Simple, The IT industry's downtrodden business approach. Creating unnecessary work generates more revenue. Why staff less people when you can staff more? Why budget at 3 months when you can call it 12?. all in all its about revenue. It sounds a genius plan. In order to keep the 15 unnecessary consultants busy and fill up 9 months of unnecessary work, you fill it with meaningless deliverables. A systematic approach followed by a previously "value adding and nothing else" giant in consulting has perfected this through the use of "project tollgates" (an unfortunate creation of Six-Sigma for reasons not so important for the client). A tollgate is a virtual stop sign for approval of deliverables. Projects don't continue until they pass their tollgates. Its like a control point, a gate keeper, without its approval, nothing goes ahead. Imagine the time and effort loss for systematizing the project. Reason more often than not is "professionalism". More often than not, these tollgates are made up of 3-6 deliverables. The over-engineered project "methodology" is an excellent way to blind the client of actual valuable and necessary work. Every good pickpocket knows that distraction is the key to success.
My assumption is that long ago, someone created these deliverables to capture the necessary details of a project and ensure its success. It certainly had its glory and value when it was defined or designed. It might have served as documentation and proper communication for the actual project taking place and the results thereof. Over time the documentation and proper communication has taken focus during the projects costing a considerable time, paper, efforts, and opportunity costs for both the client's and the consulting firm. But the trick is, client pays for it and vendor earns for it. Over time, these deliverables slowly became the focus of the project. Paper work is what consulting has become, so many of the top B-school MBA's fail to understand the sanctity of consulting and its value. Because the above mentioned approach conveys that the actual goal of the project is window dressing of deliverable than value delivery. Revisiting the above mentioned differentiation I made between the two words- value delivery and deliverable. Value delivery is a sanctified service definition according to the contract, for which the deliverable is a major and important support or resultant. Whereas what happens is typically what you'll find at any large company today -- deliverables that are high in content and low on substance, pertinence and quality rules and defines deliverables.
Even worse, most of these documents, presentations, excels and others are horribly repetitive. By the time you complete a project, you will have identified who the "key stakeholders" are a dozen times. Presented it to more than 35 people in 7-8 meetings. The same group of people hears it again and again, just because they have paid for you, and there's somebody from higher echelons from the organization sitting there who bought into your service. Once a while, try adding Bernard Madoff or Kenneth Lay in your stakeholder's list to see if anyone notices. And tell me. It becomes so repetitive and boring for a "driven" business manager, that he might be worried abt even recommending you to any of his acquaintances or friends in the industry. At this instant, the first loss of relationship value occurs. Nobody wants to hear the same thing again and again, particularly the informational ones talking abt "what is the problem about", " how big is it" or "Description of possible negatives and scale of each" or "oh my god, this big shit is what you are in" and other such slides in the presentation or typical business gas or jargons to make it look bulkier and suaver. The client team knows the problem well enough. Not in the structure and beauty u r jutting it out to them, but for sure they know it. Otherwise, why would we be there?. They seek value, i.e. solution for what they have problem with, solving their concerns. That needs the focus on value delivery more than documentation.
I once worked with a firm, whose main business focus was operational improvement, which translated to work focus of making adjustments in the already existing excel files, throwing some jargons abt planning structures and methodologies at the top management. And more interestingly, our junior consultants in the team mostly worked on beautifying presentations, formatting excel files, clearing typing errors, coloring and designing the presentations and collecting photocopies, delivering letters, and for the innocuous one, the reason given was "its a team work". :)..Or sometime it also involved teaching the learners about the tricks of using the excel software and explaining MS document's benefits and sometime an occasional fun/ joke is cracked so far away from a so called "We- are - different-than-you-sorry-ass- employees-of-this-sad-company, we - are- god - sent- saviours-for-your-life" kind of life there. What always wondered me was, the amount of the time a consultant on an average spends in beautification and administration jobs. It was shockingly closer to 3/4th of his/her productive time in a week. Rest was spent on communications, attending meetings, recording meeting updates and else. The font size, the size of the box in the excel, the length breadth, dimensions, thickness of the borders, the size of the first heading, second heading, sub heading, subheading one,two, three and so on, had its own formatting and more pathetically, it changed according to the manager you worked with. Although I completely agree to the stance of "professional presentation". And more opportunistically, there was no standard template made or definition set for such regular repetitive documentation work undertaken by that organization and its employees. To me whats more important is "what's being done than what's presented" cos at the end the client verifies it, and that leaves a lasting impression. Results speaks more glory. Not delving in details of it, my contention is to point out how the focus was completely on deliverables than the value delivery, which if rightly focussed was not even 3 hr job, and took two weeks to finish a traditional simple 5s implementation in one corner of the client site.
Interestingly the rest of costs what the client paid on that project was for documentation and beautification, which a high school'er with MS office skills would have done. And as a result, I had to choose the best solution for my intellectual growth. Thinking these lines, I chose and implemented an innovative business solution for the clients with a clear promise on higher value delivery than the competitors alongside benefiting the organization in terms of faster delivery, lesser top management lock in time, lesser wastage of critical costs and other consulting tangible and intangible costs.
I'm now thinking, how fortunate am I, for not working for the biggies or another big consulting firm. Otherwise I would be a "deliverable preparer" and "delivery" boy. Whether it is a powerpoint presentation, word document, excel spreadsheet or perhaps even an actual product (very rare), the typical success of a deliverable in such organizations can be summed up with these little nuggets of advice. I am sure most of the consultants might be having a tinge of smile, relating to the hard truths of industry, but things which are hard and inflexible, leads to destruction and death, history is proof for it. Lets shoot on and care for a laugh ( pls don't follow this, otherwise u wudn't do justice to consulting profession in its true sense and completely):
1. When you are short on quality, add quantity. Never leave blank space. Blank spaces are demons. They kill your requirement, presence and need. Most people just flip through this stuff. As long as there is content there, they'll skip right over it. Experiment this sometime on gullible candidates. Beware of a driven "business manager". he might just shove it in, calling it a crap and BS.
2. Always use a thesaurus. When someone actually does decide to read it, remember that there are certain words that are more impressive than others. Critical is better than important, and proficiency is better than expertness, "value" is one regular prostitute, and "next level" is a pimp. BS'ing rocks for once, Sensibility and sanity rules always.
3. Stay on top of the latest consulting buzzwords. Buzzzzzzzz, just keep buzzing. if people like it they listen to it as music, and for other who dont make a head or tail of it. Fear not, they wont ask u much for the fear of social ostracization or belittling in the management circle for their lack of awareness of jargon. Any ways you are safe and might have successfully confused some. but be very well aware of the "driven" manager, who is focused on business and "means business", you might hear "Buzz off" from the walk the talk guy. Industry is getting some of those at high net worth CEO's at critical points, who means business. Deliverables full of consulting buzzwords are more impressive than inventive usable ideas and concepts. Use these terms as often as possible: best practice, core competencies, gainsharing, paradigm shift, segments, value chain, analysis, customer centricity, and feel the pleasure for some time. Wikipedia's buzzword page is also a good place to add even more to your deliverable (now Wikipedia is a major dependable resource for consultants, buzzwords for they provide).
4. Copy previous documents. OMG, the big (s)hit. Tweak them, change them, dress them, adjust them, align them, customize them , do whatever u like, make them seem "just for you" for client's business. You may also choose to change the color, fonts (Sadly its Arial all the while), realigning or fingering the matter to look sexier and more better. Last but most important, never forget the strongest, unflinching and indomitable rule : " there's always a room for more SUBSTANCE, just fill in". "Jai google, Jai Internal Resources". Rule no 2 : Never start a deliverable from scratch. "Isn't it about Smart Work" that top B school Management Grads lived their life by in their grad schools, somebody said, rightly so. Search endlessly on internal Sharepoint sites, internal search engines or knowledge sharing sites for a similar project (I recollect IT industry's work life, not all but many). Live life as if the "First order of business is to do a Replace All". Make sure to update the project name in the document ( Remember- the first thing in the morning u start working on the DELIVERABLE). This usually gives you about 5-10 days of doing nothing. If someone asks you to see the progress you've made, send them what you've got. You may end up impressing someone and you haven't done a sh!t.
5. Visio Diagrams. It doesn't even matter what it is. Some know it, some doesn't. For some of the client's employees it is a plan of execution, for some it is a diagrammatic representation, for some its a bar graph starting erratically at different points, for some it is just a nonsensical "just do it" assignment without proper appreciation of its requirement. Many of the client's team members (call them partners, associates, dream team, task force whatever) who would make those visio diagrams dont know what is the difference between a job, activity, process, task, function, hierarchy, level. So enjoy at their inherent ingenuity and innocuousness. So choose to consciously let them do this job themselves. Have fun. And meanwhile if you are using softwares like SNAP or Microsoft project, gain another week for a training. You are going to have a ball of the time training them. And sometimes it happens that the revered Project Manager is busy building relationships, sharing ppts, or attending meetings, that he doesnt even know that the quality and pertinence of the visio's is gone for a toss and fail to recollet how they connect to the individual threads of the consulting assignment in the strategic meet. An interesting case of wrong focus during a consulting assignment. Plot atleast 5 different shaped boxes on the document/ ppt( histogram, bar graph, pie chart, Area, bubble, Mckinsey, stock,spider are popular ones), give them nonsensical labels, provide a topical title, choose red and green as colors for bad and good and you're a genius. You achieved what is to be called, AN EGO OF A CONSULTANT. And do remember, choose the color, font, font size, placement, and the shades well to suit the taste of the readers. Some might be American, some might be females, some gay, some old, some flashy. This would certainly make a consultant work hard, to choose which color scheme makes the max impact. and Make sure to include arrows. Partners love arrows. Always remember to dangle one. I once saw a execution plan (visio) made by a self proclaimed " BPR" expert from the client's team where the attestation of the policy after being fully approved i.e. just a signature frm an officer was scheduled for three long weeks. A firm really needs some training and consulting for sure.
