Discovering and developing a genuine beef into an artful calling card that lands you gigs is hard work. That’s why it’s a costly signal. You can’t fake it with simple bullshitting. You have to put in the work of: spotting a widespread pattern of disillusionment in the margins identifying the prevailing orthodoxy driving the disillusionment

To the extent your circumstances are different from mine, be careful what conclusions you draw from what I have to say.

The Explorer Organization tends to be future-oriented and is likely to have people or departments devoted to activities such as scenario planning, futures, and market modeling (often called strategy operations). Explorer organizations hungrily consume forecasts and trend information, as well as historical analyses and industry reports. They believe

Create choices, not recommendations.

The tell of the Integrator in Need is endemic mental health issues across activities. There is too much anxiety. There are communication problems everywhere. Relationships are fraying all over the place. Morale is plummeting.

The Achiever is a client who wants to build systematic confidence at an outer-world locus. They typically hire consultants who take on roles as teachers or coaches, helping them develop specific functional capabilities and skills, such as public speaking, survey methodology, being more productive, architecting databases, running Kickstarter

It’s weird how often it ends up working like this. You might talk for hours, but in the end, it’s one casual phrase or thought that ends up unlocking the critical idea. My very first client said as much to me—that after twenty hours of chatting, the value I delivered all down to one phrase I happened to drop casually in thinking through a problem:

The work of the knowledge worker is never done. You can always do an infinite amount of work for a finite piece of output. There are always more plans you could make, more background research you could do, more skills you could develop, more trends you could stay updated on, more refinements you could add to the slide deck, more Q&A you could

The Explorer is a client who wants to build capacity for systematic doubt at an outer-world locus. They do this by constantly considering possibilities, alternative perspectives, and refactorings of worldviews. They tend to hire a sparring partner type of consultant who can constantly stress test their thinking and actions, and undermine their