Business is life

I've been in management consultant for about a year and a half now, and one of the surprising observations I've had is how much value can be generated from the simple willingness to do real work. Head down, grind it out, patience enduring, plain-old work. What's surprising is that this work is rarely difficult, in the sense that almost anyone could understand it at its conceptual level. It's only challenging in the sense that it's not fun, and it takes a lot of time. And while almost anyone could do it, I find that most will avoid it at all costs. Yet it's a quality that's invaluable to building a successful business.

What I'm talking about here are the relatively simple deliverables that any big idea breaks down into. Usually people are excited to sit down for an hour and brainstorm solutions. This is often the most fun part of any task - tackling a problem from a very high level, without any limitations on the feasibility of suggestions or the difficulty of implementation. I like to call this the "talking heads" phase, as people seem to appear out of nowhere to voice an opinion and show off their creative prowess. Once the big ideas are whittled down to the few that actually make sense though, and the project actually needs to get done, it can be pretty hard to find volunteers. This is unfortunate, as at the end of the day, the "getting done" part is what actually adds value.

This has been true at all companies I've been at, whether big or small. In one great example, a firm was initiating a major technological overhaul of its operations in an attempt to decrease the costs of serving its customers. At the onset, there were a million ideas, from a customized user portal with online account management to novel new forms of online services, like live chat and social media. The whole company was abuzz with thoughts on how to change the future. It was fun, it was inspiring, butit was unfortunately very very difficult to implement.

What needed to happen next was the development of a business case for every one of those ideas. This meant interviews with key stakeholders and experts, market research, informational sessions with suppliers, and a million other steps that goes into requirement building and total cost estimations. On the revenue side, there needed to be a full market sizing and customer profiling. The grit and grind of project management.

But no one wanted to do this. Everyone just wanted to get started with their own big next idea. It wasn't that they weren't capable, or that there weren't enough resources. It was that the work was a boring, slogging grind. Plus, when you look closely enough at something, it usually never looks as good as it did in your mind. So rather than hammer out the requirements, everyone just, well, started buying new stuff.

10 months later, and the project was 300% over budget, and a large number of the initial ideas were determined to be non-crucial to the project.

What's fascinating is that this was nothing more than a question of will. Not wits, not creativity, not natural talent. Pure unadulterated will. Whether it's your own pet project or a $300m overhaul, the ability to fight through the hard stuff can be the difference between success and failure.

If you have the determination to execute on an idea, no matter what your natural ability, you can be invaluable to your company.