
Rule of Consulting: You can’t stop people from sticking beans up their nose - joshuacc
http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/07/08/beans-and-noses/
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gruseom
Gerald Weinberg's _Secrets of Consulting_ is a masterful (yet whimsical)
meditation on this subject. It's one of the few business books everybody
should read, except it isn't really a business book, it's a people book. Much
of the material is counterintuitive. It's kind of like Dale Carnegie for human
irrationality.

The book begins with the premise that just because someone is paying you for
advice doesn't mean they actually want your advice. It goes on to argue that
successful consulting is not about fixing problems so much as navigating
contradictions.

The other profession that deals intimately with contradictions between what
people say, feel, and do is psychotherapy. I've often thought that consulting
is therapy for businesses - a curious kind of therapy that by consensus is
never explicitly discussed. Weinberg learned a lot from his excursions in the
psychotherapy world, and this book is his best distillation of it.

~~~
blantonl
I really like the link you've made between consulting and psychotherapy.
You've touched on something that fascinates me, and that is the how an
individual acts differently at home and at work.

An example is the difference between how different types of salesmen operate.
Those that sell to individuals (or families) must navigate through a very
personal and emotional process, whereas salesmen that sell to corporations
(aka: "sales professionals") must balance corporate bureaucracy and personal
one-on-one relationships.

In all the cases, it is a fascinating dynamic to observe and learn from.

~~~
guylhem
Seemed interesting so I started reading a bit of it to check whether it was
worth committing real time to read the whole book :-)

Not sure yet, but you can check it for yourself. The beginning is available
online on [http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/31631/9/the-
secrets...](http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/31631/9/the-secrets-of-
consulting)

~~~
gruseom
Good find. I reread what's available there and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's
been years since I read the book, and I've lost (probably lent) both copies I
owned. The thing that struck me just now is how shrewd it is. The silly
anecdotes and folsky banter are all there for carefully constructed reasons. I
remember thinking before that he jumped around a lot and the logic of the text
seemed arbitrary. It's anything but.

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dkarl
_Of course, if they answer they enjoyed it and it was wonderful, then they are
not someone I can relate to or help in any way._

Or, of course, you might be about to learn something, since sticking beans up
your nose is a metaphor _you_ chose for something _you_ think is so stupid you
would never actually try it.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Congratulations, you've just displayed a level of perception which is almost
completely absent from I.T.: that there are often reasons other than the
purely technical ones involved in decision-making.

There are a couple of traps in consulting. One is the trap where the
consultant believes that they have a bird's-eye view of the problem to be
solved, when they're actually looking through a keyhole. (Security-related
consulting falls into this trap often.) The other trap is where the
consultant's own experience leads them to conclude that their approach is the
only right way to do a particular thing. Infrastructure-related consulting has
fallen so far into that particular trap that I question whether it'll ever
make it back out again. For example: Windows servers! Linux servers! Windows
servers! Linux servers! or, smart switches! Dumb switches! etc.

~~~
Confusion
As I read this article, it's mostly non-technical reasons that come to mind as
reasons to discourage someone from sticking a bean up their nose. Technically,
it's an interesting challenge to get that bean up there, but it just doesn't
add any business value.

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j_baker
You know, this is really important to learn. If someone wants to put a bean up
their nose, you tell them that you don't think it's a good idea and explain
why, but step out of their way. When they realize that their plan was an
objectively bad idea, they're more willing to listen to you the next time
around.

Sometimes people just don't appreciate that you're trying to help them, and
need to learn from experience (myself included).

~~~
F_J_H
I remember reading a J.K. Rowling quote from one of the Potter books that goes
something like "...people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong
than being right." I've learned that "they" probably won't come to you the
"next time around".

I've also learned to appreciate some further advice I received and desperately
needed to hear: convincing someone of something takes a lot more than
emphatically stating a logical argument.

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bauchidgw
sometimes big companies hire me to tell them what to do with their beans, then
they are disappointed that i did not tell them to stick them up their noses.

in the next step they claim i missunderstood the question, the question was
not really about "what to do with the beans", it was more about "how should we
stick them up our noses in the best way"

~~~
JoshTriplett
There's a reason that Open Source communities often react to strange questions
with "can you explain what you want to do?" or a similar request for the
bigger picture. Too many people start down a chain of reasoning based on how
they want to solve a problem, get to step 7 of 10 of a bad plan, and ask for
help proceeding to step 8. Explaining how to get to step 8 solves the problem
they think they have, but asking for the big picture can lead to a much better
solution to the problem they actually care about.

~~~
JangoSteve
The problem with this sort of response is that, somewhere down the road,
someone else using that open-source project will be working on an entirely
different problem and actually have a legitimate need to make that same jump
from _point a_ to _point b_.

Naturally they'll hit up the googles and get excited when they see that
someone else had that exact problem before. But then, instead of a solution,
they are presented with 15 answers that all say "you're doing it wrong".

This is why my favorite answers are those that say something along the lines
of, "technically, the answer to your question is... but the fact that you're
having this problem may be an indicator that there's a better way."

~~~
JoshTriplett
On the other hand, I love when I search for the answer to some specific
question I think I have, and find an answer that points to the thing I ought
to use instead. People often follow the same wrong paths to a solution.

~~~
JangoSteve
Which is why my favorite answer includes both (e.g. "if you really want to do
it this way, it's like this... but you should consider this way..."), rather
than simply assuming that I don't know what I'm doing.

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geuis
This really is excellent advice. I've never quite phrased it this way, but the
mental image is very funny and smart. I wonder what the approach would be to
using this analogy with an actual client, manager, or team.

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dholowiski
If somebody puts that on a t shirt ill buy it. Bonus points for a funny
cartoon.

~~~
aeden
I can see a whole line of bean and nose t-shirts:

"It's simply a beans-and-noses situation" "Are you enjoying your nasal-based
legume implantation experience?" "And so the bean starts its wayward journey"

PS.

Brilliant article - what a great way of putting things.

------
pnathan
Dear Author:

Have you considered writing a humor column? I am sure it would be well
received. That was a truly funny article.

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HeyLaughingBoy
This person is assuming that people want his advice, or to tell them why
they're wrong.

Very often people are intent on doing something that seems stupid to you, but
smart to them. In that situation they really don't want to be told that they
are wrong and the best thing you can do is stand nearby, ready to dial 911.

Sometimes the only "right" response is "I would not have thought of doing it
that way. What can I do to help you make it go well?"

~~~
Dylan16807
He's talking about consulting. I would sure hope the person paying him for
advice wants his advice. And the idea here is that it's preferable to get a
job with someone who will listen to that advice they paid for to reach a
reasonable conclusion, which seems like a perfectly good plan to me.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Often consulting clients only want the consultant to validate what they've
already decided to do. Sure, it's best if they listen to you; you are the
"expert" after all. But sometimes the best you can do is sit back and do
damage control after the fact.

~~~
Dylan16807
Oh yes, some will want a certain type of advice but they still want the
consultant to tell them that. But it seems to me that the idea here is that if
the best you can do _is_ wait for a chance to do damage control then you
should try somewhere else.

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mcantelon
A buddy of mine refers to this phenomena as "fish pizza". "You want fish on
your pizza? Alright... here you go."

~~~
johngalt
Yumm... Anchovy pizza.

I recommend a veggie special + anchovies. If you don't want all the veggies
anchovy and black olives works too. Don't combine anchovy with pepperoni or
sausage as its salt overload.

------
scottw
Good memories of my buddy David, who, at some young age, inserted a dry pinto
bean into one of his nostrils and left it dangling there. All of us began to
laugh, of course, along with David. But after all good, long, strong laughs,
you have to refill the lungs at some point. "Ha-ha-ha! _sniff_ "

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liquidcool
Very funny, but he also brings up a great way to approach alternative bean
placement by focusing on results and defining success.

All too often, the client's motivation is FUD, and to continue the analogy,
they spend all their money on what they hope are magic beans. When no
beanstalks grow from their nostrils, they discover too late that they’ve no
money left for bean removal surgery - or anything else. So moving on, for the
consultant, is not so much a choice as a necessity.

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MaysonL
This appears to be the case with the current Congress. Canada, Singapore,
Costa Rica and Switzerland are looking better and better.

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uast23
The read is indeed true but hasn't it taken the nose and beans analogy a
little too far, beyond reader's interest? It could have been a better read if
there was a little diversion from nose and beans to some actual scenarios.

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dennisgorelik
First commenter under that article gave a link to <http://www.kingdom.com> as
an example.

I wonder what they did -- that web site is not responsive at the moment.

~~~
berberich
Looks like it's an ecommerce site specializing in church-related technologies.

~~~
dennisgorelik
So what did go wrong?

Just web site uptime or something else?

------
lamnk
It's easy if you are consulting, just step aside. What if it's your boss who
want to stick beans up his nose (constantly)?

~~~
spatten
You're making the assumption that a consultant can step aside with only a
minor financial hiccup.

Unfortunately, the 80/20 rule applies to consulting too, so you often find
yourself in the situation where 80% of your revenue comes from the guy with
the beans.

