25 Sep 10,000 Meetings!
From our consultant in Canada, Michael Franks
If someone offered you a job that required you to sit through 10,000 meetings before you received your first pay-cheque , would you be up for the challenge? That my dear colleague’s is what I believe, you have to have under your belt in order to be a ‘remarkable’ Production Consultant, not average, but remarkable…that’s what the market expects these days from products, services, and people…the remarkable. You can be average but you’ll spend a lot of time hanging around bus stops.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book: Outliers, he proved that in order to become an expert in your given field, it takes an average of 10,000 hours; be it mountain climber, a Beatle, or a brain surgeon. Based on this premise, I’m suggesting that a production consultant needs to experience 10,000 conversations to begin to understand excellence in advertising production consultancy.
The stories and motives that are lodged within the architecture of the corporate mind is full of dreams, egos, fears, and an over-reaching desire for profit, and can leave the uninitiated speechless. The corporate structure, and that would be any corporation, is a minefield; put a step wrong and you’re toast; our only ally is diplomacy of the highest order, which requires an understanding of the visceral intricacies of being a teacher, trainer, mentor, psychologist, ally, and friend.
Production consultants are an extension of the brand team, who want only the very best players on their team to manage their production relationships, and ever more precious production dollars. There’s a lot at stake, including the job of the brand manager.
It’s easy to underestimate what a consultant actually does, and on the surface it may look easy, and if it does, kudos to us, because that’s our goal; our job is to quietly deliver, not make up reasons why we can’t.
There isn’t a problem in the industry for which we don’t have a solution. So the next time you come face to face with the remarkable among us, just know that you are meeting number 10,001.
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