#hillgate

[incandescent-creativity]

Since you're thinking about LORE, how about an OC-in-character question for Zach: What's your favorite thing about your home town?

Zach’s face lights up.

“Oh! That’s easy. There’s a wide open meadow just beyond the horse field with some beautiful flowers in it. It was our favorite spot to play as kids. My sisters taught me how to make flower crowns in that field, and it’s populated by fireflies in the summer. 

“I miss being there.”

[incandescent-creativity]

Hillgate Homecoming

from @flashfictionfridayofficial

It takes me a few trots of my horse to realize Zach has asked his to stop.

I pull mine around into a wide circle, off-roading for a quick second. Sugar does quite well, navigating stones put to the side and clumps of stubborn weeds so I can pull up alongside Zach.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Nothing,” he says faintly.

“Mmhm,” I say with my mouth closed, unconvinced. “Try again.”

Zach points with his chin, a sharp nod so his hands can stay fisted in the reins. Honey shifts uncomfortably, and I start forming a plan for what to do if she bolts with him on it.

“We’re here.”

I look off into the distance, trying to see what he sees. As far as I can tell, nothing has changed. We’re still on a path that’s trailing us through the trees.

“I’ll, uh, take your word for it.”

“When you’re a kid,” he tells me, “your class volunteers every spring to trim the branches of the trees on the outer edge of the town.”

Zach leans over on his horse, confident despite looking two seconds away from falling off. He points, and I pretend like I can see whatever we’re looking at.

“Those trees there, the ones marked with the brown band around them? That’s the outer border of h—of Hillgate. We’re here.”

“Oh.”

He digs his heels into Honey’s side, and moves on along the path to his special trees.

I follow suit, of course. The closer we get, the better I can actually see the worn leather bands wrapped loosely around the trunks of the trees. Zach reaches out as if to run his hands through the low-hanging branches, but there aren’t any.

“They did a good job this year,” is all he says.

We ride in silence for a moment, and then I have to ask.

“Are you going to be okay here?”

“Honestly, Ash?” I can barely hear him, since he’s not bothering to turn his head back over his hunched shoulders.

“I don’t know if I will be.”

Well, that’s not the answer I’d been hoping for, but it is the one I expected.

“Let me know if I can do anything.” That sounds a little wooden and... impersonal, so I follow it up with, “Just say the word, and I’ll punch anybody you point me at.”

“What word do you want me to say?” he says, still resigned and hopeless.

“Excellent question,” I praise him, matter of fact. “We need a code word.”

“How about, ‘Ash, get em,’ does that work?”

“That’s no fun,” I decide.

“Hm.”

When he isn’t forthcoming, I guess it’s my turn to contribute an idea. “What about ‘enemy’?”

“You expect me to call someone from my childhood an enemy to their face?”

“Okay, maybe not.”

“I’ve got it,” he says suddenly. His voice sounds lighter. “Our code word will be ace.”

“Ace?”

“Like asexual,” he explains, glancing back at me. “Or cards.”

“Huh.” That’s actually pretty damn clever. “I like it.”

As we ride into Hillgate, Zach smiles at me.

[projecthillgate]

CSR - Not Just a Business Trend

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the belief that business can and should work to better social issues in addition to making money. They should not pursue profits by ignoring the costs to, and impact on, society. 

Culture Trends

While businesses have talked about CSR for many years, it is becoming more of a necessity and strategic priority. Today’s consumers and employees want businesses to be socially responsible. Millennial culture, while flawed and diverse, exhibits (as a whole) more vocalized socially conscious habits than any previous generations. 

Consider the Super Bowl advertisements this year. Fewer ads made us laugh and more made us feel positive. Coke combated bullying, Dove empowered us, and McDonald’s offered to let customers pay with love. It’s no coincidence that these commercials are being run while demand for CSR grows - it’s what people want and businesses need. 

Millennials are bringing these trends into the workplace with them. A study from Deloitte revealed several findings from Millennials: 

55% think businesses can do more to help prevent climate change

75% think businesses can help with wealth inequality

The same survey revealed that Millennials in general see businesses as having a negative impact on the environment and wealth inequality. According to Millennials, business could be doing more socially, setting the stage for a continued increase in CSR initiatives. 

CSR Today

Effective CSR can take many forms, but at the end of the day, CSR should be a commitment relevant to your business - demonstrating your company’s role in helping solve an industry problem. 

For example, Microsoft, a leader in CSR among large corporations, runs a program called YouthSpark, which helps provide opportunities and project grants for students across the globe. Specifically, Microsoft does this to target the opportunity gap among students and provide more opportunities to students who potentially wouldn’t have had it otherwise. 

Another model for good CSR is Phillips Electronics, which is renown for its sustainability. Philips has been pursuing his Ecovision Strategy, which aims to simultaneously reducing the company’s CO2 emissions while also utilizing green energy to produce more environmentally friendly products. The program is similar to many other sustainability plans - help the earth through green technology, help the business by building a reputable, sustainable company. 

Even more directly related to business operations, many entrepreneurs retail ventures, inspired by Toms, have started a trend to “buy one, give one.” This creates consumers who are proud to support and wear the brand, while the company is able to help those in need. 

Contrary to popular belief, CSR doesn’t need to be accompanies by a costly marketing campaign. Establishing your companies brand as committed to social responsibility can be enough to better your reputation and bottom line. 

CSR going forward

CSR faces two main issues: The first being a belief that the only responsibility of businesses are to stakeholders. The second is that CSR can be construed as a shallow PR stunt. Fortunately, consumers are becoming more concerned with overall stakeholder responsibility and how business influences all aspects of society. 

As Millennials continue to enter the workplace and become active consumers, all businesses will need to be conscientious. Change will be gradual, but all companies should become socially responsible - not only because it is the right thing to do, but also to ensure sustainability and save their own bottom line.    

[projecthillgate]

What is the Difference Between an Expert and a Consultant?

As COO at Hillgate, and having spent time as an executive at an expert network firm and as a strategy consultant, one of the questions I am frequently asked is how to decide whether a project is more suitable for an expert or for a consultant. Here are some guidelines to help you decide:

 1.    How much of the answer is already known?

Expert networks such as Gerson Lehrman Group and Clarity.fm typically provide consultants by the hour. When you have a good understanding of the answer, they are a good option to test your logical assumptions with someone who has ‘been there, done that and made the mistakes’. An expert is the efficient way to learn the accepted answer.

 If you are still at the hypothesis stage, it may be better to engage a consultant via Hillgate. A 2+ week engagement can provide you with a comprehensive analysis of the market landscape, best practices and options, which you can use to determine how best to innovate and accelerate growth.

 2.    How broad are the topics you are trying to answer?

Experts are best used to answer specific questions. Since you typically engage someone deeply experienced in a very specific area, focus on the expert’s narrow area of expertise.

 If you are looking at a broader set of topics, engage a single consultant with solid generalist training. He or she can combine primary and secondary research and manage the overall analysis so that you can focus on the big picture. Particularly when preparing to make a significant investment (e.g. launch a new product, enter a new market), engaging a consultant to complete diligence can provide a great second opinion and additional insights.

 3.    Do you need advice or hands on help?

This should be the easiest option to decide. Experts provide advice – they answer questions and provide opinions based on their practical experience.

 When you need someone to ‘get their hands dirty‘ and help you do the actual research and analysis, a consultant can be more helpful. They are trained in building the Excel models and creating Powerpoint presentations – enabling you to focus on preparing for the leadership team meeting and the strategic decision-making.

  At the end of the day, all you really need is to the best person to help you deliver on your goals. To achieve that, it is important for you and your advisor to build a strong relationship - and for him/her to relate to your current need. [1]

 [1] Ting Zhang recently conducted an interesting study into how to get an expert to empathise and meet you at the right level of insight. More details here.

[projecthillgate]

Manage Your Career Like a Series of Projects

I met a friend recently who has spent the last few years in the same team at the same firm and had just been promoted…. The dilemma was that, while wanting to be really excited about it, he was finding it hard to motivate himself when that promotion came with the same responsibilities, the same network and the same (but larger) goals within the same team.

Some might say that this reaction is a function of the millennial generation and the trend for job hopping.  Others will say that a growing economy and buoyant job market will always result in discontent amongst employees.

I think there’s a more fundamental reminder here – regardless of generation and economic health.  

Every role has approximately a two year shelf life [1]. After that period, unless you’ve significantly changed your responsibilities, you will likely have learned all you are going to. As soon as you do, it’s time to move on: be that laterally internally, externally or going back to education/retraining.

This trend is a good thing for everyone – it keeps top performers excited and motivated and provides their leaders with go-getters who can help the team sustain growth and innovation.  It follows that managers should embrace this cycle and help those performers to find the next challenge.

The answer is to consider your career as an ongoing set of projects – designed to be short, fulfilling and high energy. As soon as you’re feeling too comfortable, it’s time to leave the ‘client’ (current team) and move onto the next challenge and growth opportunity. [2]

 Organisations have a duty to every employee to keep them excited to perform at the top of their game. Every employer should remember that the better the performer, the faster they will become restless; the biggest managerial challenge will be keeping those employees you need most excited and engaged. As an employee, if you find that everything you wanted happened (you got the promotion, you got the bonus, you have respect from your peers, leaders and team) and you still aren’t excited to go in, think about the challenge of your work. 

If you’re no longer learning and growing, it’s time to shake things up.

 Notes:

[1] Based on our research, it typically takes six months to completely settle into a new role, as you build networks, adjust to the new responsibilities and learn how to perform the basic position. Over the following year, high performers will take the time to make a difference – accelerating growth, innovating and demonstrating their ambition. The last six months are typically used to finalise the case for promotion and/or through the hunt for the next challenge. Of course, should the firm, department or function stay the same, then this timeframe may be reduced dramatically.

[2] One of the biggest things we hear at Hillgate is that our consultants love learning new things. They value the opportunity to be back in the frame of ramping up fast, adapting and learning rapidly to help our clients find the right solution.

[projecthillgate]

How do you set up a micro-consulting project?

Here at Hillgate, we love to speak with start-ups, small businesses and medium sized companies who tell us how excited they are to finally gain access to the brightest strategic minds across the globe.

Since Andrew’s post on what consulting means, we’ve had many conversations with people who are new to micro-consulting and aren’t sure how to set up the project. Benchmarking other projects is always helpful – and you can see some example projects on our Projects page.

Here are the 10 steps to a great micro-consulting project:

1. List out all the questions you need to answer

What are the pertinent topics that the project must address? This can be anything, from how to double sales to how to prepare a compelling business plan and financial model.

 2. Bucket your questions into functional themes

Examples of themes include due diligence, market research and strategy. Depending on how diverse your questions are, separate them into different projects in order to work with the most relevant consultant for each.

3. Determine the project’s timeline

This is a function of (realistically) when you need the answer and how long it should take to do a good job. To understand how long the project will take, prioritize the must-haves from the nice-to-haves and benchmark against similar projects. You can later work with the consultant to refine the timeline and ensure that your project goals are met. If you do have some flexibility in the timing, that can help broaden your consultant options.

4. Write the project brief

The more specific your brief, the more consultants can accurately self-select. Focus the brief on: (i) your key questions, (ii) the deliverables you’d like to receive and (iii) any other must-have skills or experiences. It’s really important to be as detailed as possible here; this also helps you to objectively identify the great fit applicants.

 5. Define the budget

This is the often the hardest part. If in doubt, benchmark against similar projects. At Hillgate, we also provide recommended daily rates, based on other projects, to help you calculate an appropriate daily rate or fixed fee within your available budget.

6. Post the project

Now you’ve shared all the details, it’s the consultants’ turn to wow you with their applications!

7. Review applications

An excellent application will answer the questions you have posed thoughtfully and with sufficient detail to give you a sense of how they might interact with you on the project. Through reviewing alongside resumes, determine who has the right mix of skills, experience and passion to work alongside you. At this point, separate consultants into interviewees, back up consultants (in case you need a second round of interviews) and decline those who aren’t quite the perfect fit with feedback.

 8. Complete interviews

Choose 2-3 preferred applicants to interview and use the interview as an opportunity to fill in any blanks in the application and to compare approaches and styles.  You should end this step with enough insight to be able to choose someone who you’d like to work with and who is genuinely excited by your project.

 9. Finalise project details and sign contract

Once you’ve chosen your preferred consultant, agree the final price and scope.  Then sign the contracts and get working with your preferred consultant!

 10. Provide feedback

During and at the end of the project, be sure to share feedback.  The consultant will often have ideas for what else might be helpful to consider and, in our experience, they are always open to feedback too.

Finally, if in any doubt, ask us: we can help you structure the project and find the perfect consultant. Feel free to contact me at [email protected] or sign up at Hillgate for more.

[projecthillgate]

Machine learning is eating the world

With the advent of the Internet and businesses moving online, there has been an explosion in the scale and complexity of data that organizations are able to capture. Attempts to understand and extract value from this data have created the relatively new field of Data Science. Already changing the way decisions are made in fields such as marketing, public policy and business best practices, data science is an increasingly important tool for businesses as they become more data-driven.

This is a guest post from Angie Ma, organizer of the London Data Science Meetup and co-founder at ASI. She kindly agreed to give us an overview of one of the key components of data science; machine learning. I found it really informative and wanted to share it.

Data science is making big concrete waves in the business world. There have been reports after reports looking at the competitive advantage analytics bring to business; 2x likely to be in the top quartile of financial performance within their industry (Bain&Company 2013), strong link between financial performance and effective use of big data (the Economist Intelligence Unit 2012), expect data equity to reach £40.7 billion by 2017 (Centre for Economics and Business Research Ltd 2014) to name just a few. What is more, any of the technologies under data science such as in-memory analytics, big data, natural language processing have all surpassed the peak of inflated expectations in the Gartner hype cycle and are moving towards productivity. 

When we talk about data science, people often think it's synonymous with machine learning. This isn't true - data science spans the spectrum from hacking to visualisation - but there's no denying that some of the most exciting advances are coming from developments in machine learning. 

At its core, machine learning is a subfield of computer science that deals with systems that can learn from data, rather than follow explicitly programmed instructions. This can be subdivided into a multitude of categories, but you'll often here people talk about three: supervised learning, unsupervised learning and reinforcement learning. Understanding the differences between these three is relatively easy, but important to get a feel for the machine learning landscape. 

In supervised learning, the goal of the program is to learn a general rule to map inputs to outputs, from a series of examples given by the 'supervisor'. Spam filters, like those on Gmail (probably) use supervised learning. 

In contrast, unsupervised learning tries to extract hidden patterns in the data. Essentially the model must learn the structure of the data on its own, by finding clusters in the variables. This is often used in genetics data. 

Finally, reinforcement learning is used to reach a goal in a dynamic environment. The obvious application for this is self-driving cars. 

Of course, in real world projects - like IBM Watson - many different types of algorithms are used. This range of abilities lets the Mayo Clinic put Watson to work matching patients with clinical trial and the New York Genome Centre use the same tool for cancer research. Other machine learning projects include everything from babysitting robots to identifying birds.

[projecthillgate]

Friends and family: the only place to start networking

Networking in any role is imperative

The ability to have conversations can help you learn of opportunities, meet contacts for fund raising and even find your next best buddy. Despite learning how to network as children in the playground, for some inexplicable reason we grow into adults who are afraid to network. 

During the Mad Men era, networking was a form of sales. Power lunches leveraged deals and the next introduction was just another warm lead. In its purest form, this is the ultimate goal: who wouldn’t want to have the confidence to walk up to a stranger, tell them that you want their business and go back to the office with a cheque or promise of commitment!

Most of us don’t have that skill. There are hundreds of advice pages from where you can learn how to network effectively (see here and here for some ideas). The majority of advice includes preparing carefully, attending conferences, using LinkedIn and shares best practices for follow up. 

In my experience, those are all great and with lots of practice, you can learn to be a natural. These steps don’t really help you when you’re dropped into a networking situation unexpectedly. So what to do?

Friends and family are the real goldmine

How many times have you actually talked to your friends and family? Not gossip, sports or discussion on Downton Abbey, but real thought-provoking conversation. Try it. 

On Saturday, I learnt about how many poor income households in Africa still use charcoal for fuel (insane!) and met someone who is trying to launch a cool start up but is struggling to find project opportunities (and cashflow) outside of her full time job; she learnt about Hillgate and how many of our top strategy consultants are facing exactly that challenge.

I have lost track of the number of gold nuggets I have gotten from engaging in a broad conversation about work and interests – you learn something, make new friends and never know where the conversation might lead.

Ultimately, networking comes down to being able to engage people. In this ultra-connected world, it can be hard to navigate through to the connections that will provide value. So next time you chat in the locker room, meet that friend of a friend who always joins your gig dates or go to a dinner party, have a real conversation – at the least, it’ll give you another interesting stat to share when discussing your next project.