Professional Development

There’s a fine art to running a productive meeting, keeping the discussion focused and scoping things tight to meet your scheduled finish time. Today’s consulting lines post is about keeping people happy while still finishing meetings on time. Let’s join a troubleshooting session where I’ve been brought in to help a client whose AlwaysOn Availability Groups are failing…

This has grown to become one of my favorite consulting lines. I don’t use it often, but used judiciously, it’s a lifesaver. I use it a few different ways: Using This Line at the Start of the Meeting If you know in advance that the organizer (or some of the attendees) tend to ramble on…

Before I became a consultant, I was on the other side of the conference room table – we would bring in consultants, and I’d be amazed at all the cool lines they whipped out. Now that I’m the one giving advice, I like sharing some of my favorite consulting lines that you can use in…

I have to deliver a lot of bad news. It’s pretty much my full time job. Nobody calls us when things are going well. (Well, they tweet us, because that’s free.) Sometimes, that bad news is very dangerous – especially for the company as a whole, or its customers. In today’s consulting line, I’m working…