{"id":2719,"date":"2016-01-01T15:26:31","date_gmt":"2016-01-01T20:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antipaucity.com\/?p=2719"},"modified":"2016-01-01T15:26:31","modified_gmt":"2016-01-01T20:26:31","slug":"im-not-technical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=2719","title":{"rendered":"i&#8217;m not technical"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am. But not really.<\/p>\n<p>To paraphrase my prelicensing class instructor, &#8220;95% of consulting is not technical work &#8211; it&#8217;s psychological&#8221;. 5% of consulting is delivery. The remainder is listening, empathizing, training, selling, encouraging, improving, and a whole bunch more gerunds.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m an unlicensed psychiatrist dabbling in technology\u00a0-just call me <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/character\/ch0014243\">Frasier<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/character\/ch0014246\">Malone<\/a> &#8211; the single person every consultant has to be (even though on {{Cheers}} they were two people).<\/p>\n<p>Part of the <em>Art of Consulting<\/em>\u2122 is conveying <a href=\"http:\/\/antipaucity.com\/2015\/05\/05\/what-level-of-abstraction-is-appropriate\">ROI<\/a> in the right terms to your current audience.\u00a0My job as an automation consultant, project manager, and team lead is to convince customers (at all levels) that the tools I&#8217;m there to deliver, configure, and utilize are <em><strong>not<\/strong><\/em> &#8220;taking their jobs away&#8221; (in the wrong sense of the term). Ideally, my customers not only see me as their {{Trusted Advisor}}, but as someone who has &#8220;been there, done that&#8221; just like they have, and that I truly am there to help them: to help them save time (for engineers), to save headcount (for managers), and to save money (for executives).<\/p>\n<p><em>Good<\/em> consultants are, in many ways, like bartenders &#8211; they listen to the problems their customers have, and hand them things they hope will help. Like a good bartender, you need to deliver what has been agreed to. And like a good bartender, you need to know when to tell your customer &#8220;that&#8217;s not the best option &#8211; try this instead&#8221;. And like a good bartender, you need to know when to tell your customer &#8220;no&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am. But not really. To paraphrase my prelicensing class instructor, &#8220;95% of consulting is not technical work &#8211; it&#8217;s psychological&#8221;. 5% of consulting is delivery. The remainder is listening, empathizing, training, selling, encouraging, improving, and a whole bunch more gerunds. I&#8217;m an unlicensed psychiatrist dabbling in technology\u00a0-just call me Frasier Malone &#8211; the single &hellip;<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=2719\" class=\"more-link pen_button pen_element_default pen_icon_arrow_double\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">i&#8217;m not technical<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23,48],"tags":[198,217],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-2719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insights","category-work","tag-consulting","tag-customer"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2719"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkeyring_services&post=2719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}