I’m in the midst of a consulting engagement advising the seven ECs on Panay and Guimaras regarding the evaluation of bids they received ten days ago to supply base and intermediate load power supply to the cooperatives on a long-term basis beginning in 2011.
Now I am not at all wanting to pass the buck and I believe fully in the soundness of my advice – I’ve been involved in negotiating more power supply deals than these guys will every see in their lifetime. But my advice has stark limitations. They have more experience with their ECs’ situation than I’ll ever achieve in my lifetime.
I think I’ll open my next presentation to the Board – this coming Wednesday – with a quotation from the story below.
Mike McDerment is co-founder of the successful start-up FreshBooks, a product I use, and he just made a blog post today entitled “7 ways I’ve almost killed FreshBooks.”
Here’s #4
4. Placing my faith in consultants
Nobody cares about your business as much as you do, and frankly people who are smart – consultant/MBA smart – don’t know your business as well as you do despite the fancy words and references to past success. You are in business because of the way you see your opportunity.
Try as you may to change this fact, no one will ever possess your unique perspective so don’t kid yourself into thinking a consultant knows your business better than you. At the same time, stay open to their advice and take it into consideration as you make decisions, just don’t bet the farm on what they think you should do.