Is Anything Even True in Data?

When you spend your entire career working as a data consultant, you start to realize how little the “truth” means.

Think about it: the most common work any of us are ever asked to do (whether we’re working for someone else or for ourselves) is to build sources of truth.

Real, evidence-based points that allow our stakeholders to make grounded decisions.

But have you ever stopped to think what the “truth” even means to anyone?

That may sound a little woo-woo to you, but the message is basically this:

You see this everywhere:

So if we’re being real, you have to admit that our job as data consultants isn’t to understand the single source of truth, but to make sense of the many different versions of it.

Which means, if you want to be an effective advisor to your clients, you have to spend wayyyyy more time than you think understanding all the factors at play when you’re presented with a data issue in order to understand what the truth looks like in that context, particularly when faced with situations like defining metrics, for example.

The good news is that getting there is actually fairly simple. You just need to constantly ask 3 questions:

And if you realize you don’t know the answers to any of these when it comes to your clients, that's where you need to start to be successful.

The rest is noise.

(Do you agree or disagree? Reply to this email or let me know in the comments for my recent post on this topic in my LinkedIn page!)

I wish I could pretend that in my many years at Accenture, I never burned out. But I did, and if you also come from a similar background, you likely also did.

It’s a very poorly hidden secret that burning their people out is a tried-and-true tactic for the growth and day-to-day success of most big consulting shops, which obviously makes you think:

The answer is actually pretty simple: it’s because they can handle the churn. (but it’s a little complicated)

In a large consultancy, burnout is just a part of life. The projects are more demanding (read: more $$$), and the clients (not to mention the lifestyle and pressures) are more insane.

Despite all the known downsides, one of the biggest ways big 4 shops succeed is by intentionally delaying burnout.

It goes like this: attract the most borderline annoying try-hards you can find → hire them to spend their limitless energy on these insane projects → promote them up the ladder and give them as much responsibility as they can physically and mentally handle.

Then rinse and repeat.

As an employee, this means you have 2 options:

For big 4 shops, this is all par for the course, but the important thing to know is that if you’re reading this, you likely run your own shop, and it doesn’t have to be that way!

They can infinitely churn a small army every year and recover just fine, but we can’t.

What we can do instead is:

and most importantly, to remember consulting is a PEOPLE business above all else.

This is post 7 of 8 in a series where I talk about the factors that make Big 4 consultancies successful! Stay tuned for the final post next week, and check out why I put it together here!

Did you know that in addition to advising many of you on how to solve your consultancy’s existential problems, I also build and facilitate workshops for you to white-label for your own client projects?

If you’ve ever run into a situation where your clients come to you with a super ambiguous ask (like “we want to build with AI”), or they’re not being forthcoming about what they actually need (because they probably don’t know), or they’re operating at a leadership level (but can’t agree on what they need to do next), that’s what these are for!

I not only use the same frameworks you see above to build entirely customized workshops for whatever client we’re tackling together, but also help you by facilitating these sessions so you can focus on what matters: delivering your data/AI expertise and, most importantly, selling more work!

Check out what one of these looks like in action below, and if you’d like to see what one of these might look like for your clients, I offer free 90-minute demos here!

On the topic of workshops, one of the main areas where you might find my workshops useful is to actually understand what your clients need.

All consultancies need to do discovery to properly scope projects, but one of the unique factors of running a Data & AI shop specifically is that we have to understand both the technical constraints that our clients are working with as well as to do the usual human work to bring all the different factors (and people) at play forward.

The problem is that in most discovery workshops, it all ends up just a feel-good exercise.

As I began working with Uttam and his team at Brainforge a while back, we both agreed that the point of a discovery workshop shouldn’t just be to make clients happy.

It should be a vehicle to move your project forward, to turn a process that usually takes weeks into one that takes days, and most importantly, to help you identify areas to expand your work with that client.

But instead of me telling you about it, I asked Uttam to join me to tell you what the experience of working together to achieve that actually looked like for them!

So check out the video below where he and I build a LEGO toucan, Brick by Brick, to talk about:

As always, I’d love to get your thoughts on what to create more content for in this newsletter! Please vote on the poll below to give me a better idea of what to publish:

I love my job because what do you mean I get to build a whole business where founders of Data & AI consultancies pay me to watch them reenact this all day:

One of the funniest ongoing themes of my work is how much advising many of you on how to run your consulting shops is really just holding up a mirror to each of you.

We all like to think there are all these crazy factors that play into why our companies do or do not succeed, but as someone who sees what makes so many other consultancies tick and what makes them work, let me reassure you:

It’s not that complicated.

If things aren’t working (either with your clients, with your team, with your company or yourself), you need to look inwards.

Everything starts with the leader, literally always.

It sucks to hear it, but when things are not working, it’s likely because you’re either unprepared, leaving something to change that should be planned for, or you’re ignoring something in front of your face.

Something that you may have even caused yourself.

As I mentioned earlier, a consultancy is all about its people. So if you want to figure out what’s not working, you know know what to do.

And if you still need help to do so, you know where to call 😉

If you’ve enjoyed the topics I talked about today and want to learn more about my work - let’s chat!

I specialize in helping founders of boutique Data & AI consultancies of all shapes and sizes overcome existential problems in their growth.

So if you’re finding yourself stuck as your shop scales, I’m here to help!

Want to talk about a problem internal to your company? Sign up for a free therapy session with me!

Want help to expand, ideate, and scope Data & AI projects with your clients? Sign up for a demo workshop!

And if you want more details, check out my:

Otherwise, thank you so much for reading, please make sure you vote in the poll above, and see you next week!