We are launching three versions of our professiional mastermind FlightPaths. Here's what they are all about for management consultants, senior advisors, corporate counsel and executive board members.
Why - FlightPath Consultants:
Consulting and advosory roles as an industry, and as a career, are at a crossroads.. The same forces that disrupted the industries they advised are now turning on them. Whether you are running your own practice, part of a boutique, a gun for hire, or tucked inside one of the larger firms, there be dragons ahead.
From an external world perspective, some of the top post-COVID influences are readily seen. Unpredictability in the marketplace - norms that you have considered for the last ten or twenty years no longer apply and there is much less repeatability to client outcomes.. Depending on who you ask, AI and automation is either radically changing the work you do, or commodifying it all together. There are new competitive options, procurement hurcles and business model pressures making your life seem uneasy.
From an inside-your-consultant-world view, client expectations and needs to deliver are at all-time highs. The need to stay informed and acquire new skills is constant. The tightrope of being good at what you do, while still maintaining a client roster and billables is perilous, and frequently leading to burnout. All of this is compounded by hybrid work, which may have initially seemed like a big liberating win, but now may be challenging to maintain relationships, and build a book of meaningful work and billables.,
Consultants of all stripes are experiencing these macroforces and microtrends at the same time. With millions of potential competitors and such a fragile safety net, wouldn't it be great to have a high-functioing group of consultants from different backgrounds willing to collaborate and rise everyboidy's ships (or in this case planes)? I guess we are hive-minded.
Who - FlightPath Consultants:
The ideal candidates for FlightPath Consultants have a few things in common:
Uncertainty and Ambiguity: consultants work in environments where the scope of work can be unclear, and the situation on the ground can change rapidly; navigating this uncertainty requires constant adaptability, which can be stressful.
Client Practice and Revenue Registers: the need to not only be a credible provider but to always be billing, acquiring and scaling clients is a constant battle many consultants might not either have realized or signed up for; financial instability and the pressure to secure enough work to maintain a steady income can be a significant stressor.
Maintaining Up-to-the-Minute Expertise: consultants are expected to be experts in their field, which requires continuous learning and staying up-to-date with industry trends; this ongoing need for professional development can be obsessive.
On the Edge of Burnout City: consultants frequently work long hours, including evenings and weekends;. the pressure to meet tight deadlines can lead to burnout, disruption to personal routines, and feelings of hopelessness and fatigue.
A One-Person Band: whether you are inside a massive consultancy, providing external counsel or have a one person shop, consultants harbor feelings of isolation higher than most other professionals, having to also battle between exerting assertiveness versus diplomacy in dealing with fincky or uncoroperative clients,
What - FlightPath Consultants :
Consultants may be able to engage in consultant-speak but they have fairly strong radar on what's beneficial and what's useless, overcoming the promotional babble. Here's the straight goods on what our FlightPath Masterminds can do for you:
Senior advisory mentorship/advice: imagine a group of wise consultants and wickedly smart advisors sharing their insider tips, special sauce and releiable methods as an all-star collective - you likely don't have this outlet now, you need one,
100 Day Plans: consulting has such low barriers to entry that building, anything in 100 days can be seen as an eternity - catalyze and radically transform your practice, your role and/or your offerings in as little as a quarter of the year.
Ideas that Work: stay abreast of what's rising and what's falling with some of the world's most mutli-disciplined and wide-ranging minds, covering off verticals, geographies or situations you may have had little previous exposure to.
Time-boxed Accountability: FlightPaths comprise advisors who understand the meaning of roadmaps and deliverables, helping turn your one-time smart practices into atomic habits.
Confidential Guild Kinship: some people may say - how is it possible to share our iwsom with other consultants, potential competitors? - in a world of infinite challenges, talent networks and client need to build ecosystems and networks - the bigger question likely is how can you not? FlightPaths are in the latter camp.
How - FlightPath Consultants:
Each consultant mastermind will go from long and wide, to short and specific, in its coverage:
1,000 Day Visions: - increasing the hit rate of your consulting across the three horizons of long term, mid-term and immediate-term, learning to make a mix of smart exploratory bets, distinctive strategic advantages and steady dependable offerings.
100 Day Plans - providing an action system & urgency that delivers success across a caliber of offerings, understandings of a shifting world, strength of client streams and financial realization, without the reusltant burnout.
Monthly expert talks - consultants and advisors act like cobblers spending all their time understanding their client world and ignoring their own; FlightPaths will provide common sense conversations to look internally and improve your own career, craft, reputation and practice.
Weekly Chaeck-Ins - weekly standup, Challenger accountability sessions focus you on reimagining operating models, time focus, client propositions, workflow, and life balance,
Daily Habits - FlightPaths help distill the signal form the noise, getting to the heart of what's holding your professional offering back and establishing and entrenching important new habits
Where - FlightPath Consultants:
Video Group Weekly FlightPaths: standup Challenger sessions that maintain commitment, accountability and feedback, without the office speak of B.S..
Fathom Database and FlightPath tools: road-tested tools and consultant-savvy templates you can take with you to future 100 day efforts.
WhatsApp messaging network - ability to tap into your new peer advisory network as needs arise.
When - FlightPath Consultants:
Maiden Consultant FlightPath cohort launches Sept 18th, 2024 for 16 weeks (100 days).
Option to join future 100 day FlightPaths after your initial flight; or field in-house FlightPaths within your consulting practice.
What Next - FlightPath Consultants :
Read up on the Flight Manual: https://www.greyswanguild.org/gsgflightpaths
Take a Test Flight with our lead instructor, click here
Attend a group Open Skies open house session for an overview: click here.
Go directly to "Go",, sign up to be a founding member of our FlightPath Masterminds: click here.,
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