2007: Transition and Discovery

It's been two weeks without a post. Much too long regarding my own commitment to the task. So what happened? We've gone back to France for the season's break and visited parents and family, which means some travel (about 800 miles in all), leisurely activities and very little time on-line. This is no excuse, of course.

I've also been busy attending a one-day Consultant Marketing seminar organized by ITG, an umbrella company which offers haven to independent consultants who do not wish to be swamped by all the administrative tasks required when one starts his or her own business. Such companies will deal with all invoicing, insurance, pension, tax duties while consultants can devote their time to do what they like most to do: develop their business, nurture their network, land contracts. I have some contacts who could lead me to find my first mission as a free-lance consultant. If this happens soon, I'll seek to strike a deal with such a company.

So what about the earlier part of 2007?
The big events have run around the reorganization of the business and my struggle to find a suitable position in the Knowledge Management domain at my company. This has not worked out, but at the same time, I've found this to be a great opportunity to put my professional life in perspective and ask myself what is it I really want to do for the rest of my active life (probably about 10 years). So, I've decided that it was worth pursuing what I am passionate about, helping people and companies work better in a cooperative environment.

As a consequence, we have planned to move back to France during the first quarter of 2008 and establish this new business of mine there. It will fulfill a long time desire of ours to get back to our friends and family.

2007 has been notable also with my realising how social networking is at the heart of most human activities these days and especially for the knowledge worker that I am. So I have taken every opportunity to connect or reconnect with all the people I know or once worked with and I have started to make new on-line friends in France. This latter part worked amazingly well: I was able to find like-minded people who had just started a discussion group (La nouvelle énergie du business - the new business energy) and we've been busy planning for further development of the group in the new year.

The values promoted by that group are:

• Take responsibility for your own life
• Cooperation is at the heart of personal fulfillment and societal achievement
• Be generous - Give without thinking about retribution
• Open your mind to trusting others
• Stand by your word to earn others' trust

I have made these values mine and hope to live up to them in 2008.

Dear reader, I hope you had an enriching year and that the coming one will bring you what you most desire. And I hope that some day we will find opportunities to help each other.

"Salon de la Micro-Entreprise" Paris - Oct 9th - Day 1

The "salon" was pack full of company stands and featured a good number of conferences that were to the point and very stimulating.

The day started with a talk by Catherine Pompei on "Consulting: how to develop a successful business", based on the book she co-wrote "Consultants: how to land your first contracts". According to Catherine, there are 3 type of consulting missions:

• Expertise
• Those requiring a specific domain know how
• Outsourced resource, which independent consultant rarely take

I found this classification useful as it made me realise that I aspire to be an expert consultant. My expertise is in social network analysis and business analysis to help companies fully leverage the potential of the tacit knowlede they don't know they have.

The other re-inforcing thought that I got from her talk was that success lies in how a consultant nurtures their network and particularly their clients. A successful consultant gives first with no propect of immediate return. It is a great way to establish a genuine atmosphere of cooperation and trust. In fact, it is a way of life. You cannot fake it. You have to feel the imperative of acting in such a way for your own well being.

Finally, Catherine had a nice image to emphasize two essential qualities of a successful consultant: a consultant has to embrace the strategy of the elephant's toe allied with the agility of the kangooroo. The meaning of this is that it's best to establish commercial relationships with a client in measured steps, so that the commitment does not seems too important upfront that it would trigger a negative response. At the same time, flexibility and adaptability are paramount to ensure that the consultant's contribution will fullfill the client's expectations in the best way.

I bought Ms Pompei's book so I could get a deeper understanding of the steps that I need to take to land my first contract.

I attended a couple more conferences that day that I will describe later.