Time's Up!

7The Ongoing Upward Spiral—Perhaps a Different Kind of Legacy

If ever you've been involved in helping your customers move forward in any way (some might call that consulting or advisory), you'll be aware that there's a classical five‐step model to do it.

It looks like Figure 7.1 (there's one key difference here, which we'll come to in a moment).

It's simple and logical.

Step 1: You show your customer (or ask potential ones) where they're at right now. And you could do that by focusing on some key numbers like revenue, profit, and so on. But it's much more important (at least initially) to talk about the potential customer's feelings about their current situation. And as you do that, remember to ask a question based on Tamsin Wooley‐Barker's great observation: “Nature doesn't look for problems, it looks for potential.”

That is precisely the point of Step 2: Ask questions about where they could get to, where they want to go, etc. You reframe “problems” into “potentials” as in: “I understand that's an issue right now, Sally. If everything was running right in that area, what's the potential we could unlock here, and what do you feel would be the impact of that?”

Potential really is so powerful, isn't it?

As you note all of those details, you move gracefully to Step 3 by asking “What shifts do you think we need to make to make that possible?”

Step 4 is the transformation—creating a plan of action to make it all happen. This leads you to Step 5, measuring and monitoring performance ...