Books can be your superpower if you know how to use them — After reading hundreds, maybe even thousands of books, I have thought a lot about the practice of reading and how to improve that practice. Herein lies a few lessons I learned in enhancing understanding, having greater recall, and implementing what I have learned from reading. Choose the right book to read With hundreds of books being…

Three steps to follow if you want to disagree in a thoughtful and considerate way — Disagreements are a part of life. Whether it’s with your partner, a friend, a co-worker, a boss, a neighbour, a customer service rep or a customer, how you disagree can improve or destroy your relationship. Herein is a simple methodology I learned from Edward de Bono’s How to have a…

Lessons and notes from L. David Marquet’s Turn the Ship Around — Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet is a book with a clever title. It not only refers to a captain’s order of turning the ship but also to how David turned one of the worst performing ships (the Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered attack submarine) into one of the…

You can learn from my time as a management consultant without all the overtime and weekend work and stress of dealing with partners and clients — You have an advantage if you are young, single and don’t have too much of a life outside of work If you’re young, you have more energy. If you’re single and you don’t have too many other commitments outside of work, you have more time. If you have both energy and time, you can work away on weekends and evenings much easier than those that had commitments or were older.

Sharing the people, place and practices I learned from Ken Coleman’s book The Proximity Principle — The Proximity Principle by Ken Coleman is a book with a simple but powerful idea for how you might get a career you love. The principle focuses on three big topics. People Ken says there are five people that you need in your life to get closer to your dream job…

And how to get the same benefits even if you don’t work as a management consultant — Reflecting on my life as a management consultant, I wanted to highlight some of the benefits of being a ‘snake in a suit’ — it’s a way for others to understand what it’s like working for a professional services firm, but also for me to carve the lessons learned into…

A way to assess where you are in your career and what to do — When I joined management consulting, one of the partners sat us down in a board room to walk us through the hourglass. An hourglass is wide at the bottom, narrow in the middle, and then wide at the top again. It’s a way of thinking about what to do at…

Leverage existing work, be a questioning sponge, learn from mistakes, actively make mistakes, and get feedback — I lucked into a job in a Big 4 company. I was mentoring a Toastmaster club and the club just happened to be full of Deloitte employees — as I helped the club, one of the members, a Senior Manager, asked if I had any interest in working for Deloitte…

What else can you do, creating playlist questions and using a ladder — In Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath, the authors talk about the four ‘villains’ of decision making. One of these villains is narrowing your options. You have probably done this with one of your decisions. Should I move to a big city or stay in a small city? Should I…