Austin Higgins

Technology, Investments, Education

Articles by Austin

Plenty of Space for the New Year Ahead

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It’s nearing the end of the year, and just like the end of 2018, I find myself jobless and clientless.

My wife and I moved to San Diego this year for a number of reasons. We’ve been visiting La Jolla, CA for years and fell in love with the calm atmosphere and ocean waves. We were married in La Jolla this year. An amazing opportunity came up at the best consulting firm in the country, so we moved to San Diego. But that opportunity didn’t work out.

My wife and I realized that for the last three holiday seasons, one of us was without a job or clients or any steady work to keep us busy. For a lot of people, this would be alarming. It would scare them or make them worried for the future. But not us. Our careers have never been linear and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Each time we had space (or free time) in our lives – whether chosen, forced or otherwise – something new and special has happened.  Why would this time be any different?

The space we had at the end of 2018 lead us to planning a beautiful wedding in La Jolla Shores and an exciting adventure moving to San Diego.

What will the space I have at the end of this decade bring me?

I have no idea. I’ve given up most of my goals and plans earlier this year to create space for something new and maybe even surprising. Now, I have all the space in the world. And I’m passionately optimistic about whatever comes next.

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Never, under any circumstance, hire a consultant

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There is no reason you should ever hire a consultant. Trust me, I’ve been a consultant for most of my career and I’ve worked alongside some of the best consultants in the business and for the best consulting firm in the industry. If you find yourself wanting to hire a consultant, stop right now. Or just burn the money you would have spent hiring a consulting firm.

Consultants exist for one reason – to improve the condition of clients. Consultants help people. They serve people. They are, after all, in the professional services industry. Most importantly, consultants partner with clients to solve a problem.

When you hire someone, that person reports to you. They take orders from you and they do what you tell them to do (or at least should do what you tell them to do).

Consultants don’t take orders and they don’t report to clients. Consultants are partners to solve a problem.

If you have a task you need completed or a role you need filled, you may be tempted to hire a consultant. Most major consulting firms will happily bill you to perform a task or to fill a role. But they are tricking you. They aren’t consultants.

Consultants solve problems, they don’t take orders.

Most of the time, what companies really need are employees, contractors and service providers. Do you need a technology system implemented? Hire a contractor or a service firm. Do you need someone to execute on your marketing plans? Hire a service firm.

Don’t hire a consultant.

There is nothing wrong with having work you need done and contracting it out to service firms, staffing agencies or employees. But there is a something fundamentally wrong with hiring a consultant instead of partnering with one. You will lose out on transforming your business. And you will waste valuable resources.

You should work with consultants to solve business problems. You should partner with someone who cares about your business, your people and your outcomes. You should create a deep, real relationships with someone who can help you. Not someone you are going to order around and handoff your to-do list to.

There is no Oath of the Consultant or a body of ethics consultants must adhere to. So, there is no way to enforce partnership or to focus on outcomes instead of inputs. This is why it’s so hard for leaders at companies to work with consultants. And why outcomes vary from person to person, project to project and firm to firm. The only way to protect your business is by knowing who you are working with and why.

Leaders understand how important it is to have the right employees. Employees make business great. And service firms (like attorneys, accountants, HR, marketers or any other mission-critical tasks) must deliver real results.

Consultants aren’t easily graded. So, they are lumped together with other service firms or employees. And they are treated the same. They shouldn’t – but they are. They are given a desk with the team, a company laptop and go to staff meetings. They are treated like employees or contractors. And it hurts the client/consultant relationship and ultimately provides a major disservice to the client.

Consultants must be partners not subordinates. They must focus on outcomes, results and improving the condition of the client. Any other focus is purely unacceptable. If a consultant is focused on anything other than solving problems, kindly stop working with them. If a consultant acts like an employee or a service firm, offer to hire them as an employee. It will be cheaper, too.

If you have a long list of tasks and projects, work with a staffing firm or hire some more team members. They can knock it out of the park and make a difference in your team’s day to day. But if you want to transform your business and solve your problems, partner with a consultant.

Never, under any circumstance, hire a consultant, though.

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The motivation behind my work

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I try to be honest and transparent most of the time. It’s not easy, but I think it can be useful to surround myself with the people who want me there and that I want there. Honesty is a great way to filter people in and out of your life.

Employee surveys can be difficult, even with the best intention. Surveys are usually used to see how satisfied employees are, so they won’t leave. Most managers want people to stay. Which is useful for most people, most of the time.

Sometimes surveys can help managers understand how employees think and feel about their relationship with their work. But only if people are honest. Which they rarely are.

I’m not certain why people aren’t honest with surveys. My guess is they are afraid. They know a lot of their work is meaningless. If they tell their managers, will they catch on and lay them off? Or worse, double their meaningless workload?

It could also be from a lack of trust. 40% of people don’t think their boss is competent. 20% of people don’t even like their boss. That’s a big deal. 25% of employees get more excited about their boss going on vacation than they do! (Want a source for this? Tough luck. I couldn’t find the link. So, believe me, I’m a stranger on the internet. I’m just a different stranger than the person who originally wrote this.)

Fear and lack of trust are enough to make people never want to be honest. Especially on surveys. And let’s all cut the lie. There is no such thing as an anonymous survey in the workplace.

This question usually comes up in every survey. “What is your biggest motivation for your work?” Or, “why are you here?”  An easy answer to this is money. Most people just work for the money. Nothing wrong with that. A lot of people feel they have an impact on their colleagues, customers or partners. That is pretty noble I suppose. And they want more of that. They want to make a difference.

What is my greatest motivation for my work?

I believe people are intended (whether by design or accident) to produce and to serve.

By produce, I mean design/create/build things of value. Most things of value solve a problem or provide a benefit. And by serve, I mean design/create/build for the use and/or benefit of others. 

This is deeply ingrained in the human condition.

People are the best versions of themselves when they embrace their intention – to create things that improve the lives of others. When people ignore their intention, they fall in to chaos.

This is my sole motivator for my work – whether its consulting, writing, teaching, cooking, composing or any other task I undertake.

Don’t get me wrong. Money is nice, too. I have some of it and I would like more of it. But my sole motivation is intrinsic. I want to produce and to serve.

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I try to live my life like a Chinese farmer

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I’ve lost jobs before. Had business deals go south. I’ve had clients back out of engagements. I thought I had over $100k in consulting work to close in one month. It turned out it was $0 of work. That was a hard one to deal with.

Like everybody else would be, I was distraught each time this happened.

I worked hard for a deal. I put in the time, energy and effort. And nothing came of it. Or it fell apart at the very end. People would tell me “oh that’s tough, but you will get it next time.” Inside, I was miserable.

Each and every one of these caused me to question what I was doing. Am I on the right path? Should I give up and do something else? Maybe this is the sign I am looking for to open a restaurant called Mike’s Cereal Shack. Then something great would happen.

I land a new gig. I meet an advisor, mentor or colleague to work on a deal together. Or some business opportunity comes up. Or speaking, writing, consulting or something that would make most people excited.

And I would be elated. Over the moon. Ecstatic. The misery of the lost deal or opportunity went away.

Then I read a parable of a Chinese farmer. I’m not sure where I read this or who wrote it. But it has stuck with me for a long time.

There was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.”

The farmer said, “Maybe.”

The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!”

The farmer again said, “Maybe.” 

The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad.”

The farmer responded, “Maybe.” 

The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!”

Again, he said, “Maybe.”

Each time I lost an opportunity, something else came instead. And each time I took an opportunity, I lost out on something else. It becomes an infinite loop.

If I were to lose my job tomorrow, would it be bad? Maybe.

If I were to land a huge client, would it be good? Maybe.

It is impossible to tell until after it happens.

Instead of seeing things as good or bad, I try to think of things as being useful or not. Is it useful to lose my job? It is if it opens up new opportunities in the future. Is it useful to land a huge client? Not if the engagement takes up all of your time and energy and you want to allocate your resources elsewhere.

You can’t tell if something is useful until after it happens. Opportunities, deals, jobs, engagements aren’t good or bad. They just are.

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