Jaeger Consultants Ltd

#projectmanagement #consultancy

When you are starting out in Consultancy or as a Freelancer it is difficult to come up with realistic charges. If you charge too little you will make yourself look like you are not worth your money. You will also need to take on too many clients in order to make ends meet. If you charge too much, you will not get clients. So finding the balance is key.

How to figure it out

As with everything related to setting yourself up this requires some research and a lot of thought.

1. Who is your target group? – You can charge more for services to Senior Managers, than for services to Junior people
2. How much experience do you have in the particular service? For example if you have been mentoring for years you can charge more than when you are just starting
3. What was your last salary? Divide it by the number of hours you worked per month and you will have an indication of what your charges could be.
4. What is the local rate. This really requires research. Who are your peers? What do they charge? Do not compare yourself with PWC or KPMG, unless you have enough experience to really be comparable. You can find numbers in the internet, but again ensure they are comparable to your region and they country you are in. Charging rates applicable in the US, while you live in Kenya, will not get you good-will and clients.
5. Don’t go in too high when you are starting up. Consider giving an initial assessment or consultation for free, so they can get to know you.
6. Consider speaking at your local professional organization to establish your name. This will make you known as an authority on the topic and will help you be able to charge more.
7. Be flexible, be willing to negotiate, but know what your minimum hourly rate has to be for you to make ends meet. While calculating this, assume you will only be doing paid work for 60-70% of normal working hours, since you will need to spend time on planning, strategizing, writing proposals, blocking etc.
8. Remember that you need to charge also for time spend preparing for client engagement, and for time spend commuting to the client site or meeting site. So if you figured out that you need KSH 2,500.- per hour to comfortably pay your bills, but you are planning for a 1hr meeting with the client, that will take you 1 hr preparation and 30min commute one way, then you can consider going in at KSH 7,500.- per hour, if that is in line with comparable local rates. If not, then you can consider discussion with the client about your actual time spend on preparation & commute.
9. Be open and honest to the client. They will understand

As you learn to charge the right amount and gain confidence in the delivery of your work, your name will build itself and you will be able to charge more. But always keep the bigger picture in mind. Is this client doing an initial project with you with the potential of getting bigger and more important projects later? You can consider going in cheaper, but be honest about it, otherwise you may end up doing the big project for the same low rate.

Finding the balance is not easy

We all want to earn big money

But we need to be smart and humble about it. No one earns the big money from the first gig and then manages to maintain it. Build your name slowly and slowly increase charges. Also look out for external issues that may influence your ability to charge. For example during the pandemic, especially during serious lockdowns, all had to reduce their rates in order to remain in the market and get work.

 

Let’s be flexible and realistic in the rates you charge.

#leadership #projectmanagement #projectmanagers #professionalgrowth

 

Just like with Leadership Project Management is a journey. Not only have the standards changed and adjusted to the demands of the current market, but also each project has new demands and unique requirements as well. But I think this is where the fun comes in. Your creativity is required for each project.

If you keep an open mind and a willingness to learn on your feet, you will have no problems adjusting to each project and the changing times. You will actually have fun learning more and more.

Have fun with it!

Things to consider for each project:

• Does this project need a waterfall approach, a hybrid approach or an Agile approach?
• What are the skill levels in your team for the chosen approach?
• Do you need training or a mentor?
• What documentation needs are there?
• Who are the stakeholders?
• What is their focus / their preferred reporting format? – You will need to prepare different reports for different people if you want to really bring the message across
• Look at each document that you usually prepare critically. Do you need it for this projects? What benefit will you gain.
• Have you identified each Stakeholder and their character, their role in the project, their communication preferences and their communication needs separately?
• What are your and your team members skills in engaging each stakeholder separately

Keep it lean

Project Management is about Leadership & People Management. Keeping your meetings, your documentation and your reports lean will free you up for Stakeholder Management.

So what does lean really mean in this environment? It means:

• Short documents – keep it at 1 page wherever possible
• Minimum of documents & artefacts
• Short meetings
• Fewer big team meetings, more individual One-on-one meetings
• Less time spend on documentation, more time available for engaging people

None of us is perfect and there is no one-fits-all solution. Hence, we will all need to keep learning and keep adjusting.

Get your Team’s Input

You do not need to come up with everything yourself. Get your team’s input and ideas. Ask for their feedback. You will be amazed at what they come up with. At the same time you will keep growing together as individuals and will learn from each other.

Every time you feel you have to do a project a certain way, because this is how you have done it before, please rethink. Ask your team, how they would like to approach it and discuss as a Team. Then agree on the solution.

Learning needs to be a livelong attitude. If you stop learning, your projects will be getting stuck and you will not meet the requirements. But the more you use a individualized approach they better your outcomes will be. In my eyes this individualized approach also makes it more interesting.

#work-lifeBalance #mindfulness #mentalhealth

When is the last time you took time for yourself? Do you ever take time to just sit and be. Breathing, feeling the environment and taking a conscious break from the hustle and bustle of our daily lives?

In my home area by the end of the day the farmers would sit on the bench outside their house and just enjoy the evening breeze. They’d often just sit together even without talking just enjoying the moment, taking pride in the work they had done throughout the day, feeling their tired muscles and smelling & feeling the evening breeze. This conscious taking time out from our daily routine is what is mindfulness.

Mindful.org defines mindfulness as follows:

Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.

While mindfulness is something we all naturally possess, it’s more readily available to us when we practice on a daily basis.

Whenever you bring awareness to what you’re directly experiencing via your senses, or to your state of mind via your thoughts and emotions, you’re being mindful. And there’s growing research showing that when you train your brain to be mindful, you’re actually remodeling the physical structure of your brain.

180 miles and hour

In our modern live, our minds often go 180 miles an hour non-stop. Thoughts are buzzing around our brains until we sometimes feel like the head will burst. This makes it also so difficult to fall asleep. We wish we could switch off. Some people even resort to drinking to switch their brains off. This of course does not work and the next day it is even worse.

If you continue this way, with the ever buzzing mind you will soon find all kinds of health symptoms:

• Headaches / migraines
• Acidity
• High Blood pressure
• Problems to concentrate
• Depression / Feeling of doom

This milder symptoms will then slowly turn into serious even fatal health conditions.

What Doctors usually tell you

Usually Doctors will tell you to make time for sports, make time to switch off and schedule time for yourself. We then rush and schedule even more things, that put more stress on us:

• Gym time
• Spending time with friends
• Volunteering
• Studying
• Time to run errands yourself
• Watching movies
• Shopping
• etc.

Each of these is not wrong and not bad, but if you add all of these to our already busy day, You will end up overloading yourself. Often our mind will already be on the next point in the agenda, while also still processing the current one at the same time.

If you are not careful you can even burn out faster.

What do I do now?

If you all your spare time activities only add to your busy schedule without allowing the brain to get a break, you are only adding to your stress. Schedule consciously time to switch off your brain and refocus will help. counteract this.  This is the practice of Mindfulness.

So how do I do that?

• Just sit for a few minutes and breath, paying attention only to your breath going in and out
• Just clear your mind and simply feel your environment. Feel how the air touches your skin, feel how the seat touches your buttocks, how do your clothes feel on your skin, how does the floor feel under your feet. How does the sun feel on your skin? What sounds are you hearing?
• Just be in the moment, stop any thoughts about what you will do later.

In the beginning this may sound and feel strange, but you will start appreciating this. Start by doing this for 1min every day, then slowly increase to 5 minutes a day. You can even do it 2-3 times a day. Once you get used to it, you will realize after each session you feel better and refreshed.

What else can I do?

You can also try meditation or yoga, which are both good ways to relax your mind and take a break. You can find yoga for beginners videos that are easy to follow on YouTube, or join a local group. For meditation it is easier to start with guided meditation, where again you can find samples on YouTube. Here are a few samples:

• Guided Meditation – Blissful deep Relaxation
• Mindfulness Meditation
• 20 Minute Mindfulness Meditation for Being Present / Mindful Movement
• Yoga for complete Beginners
• Beginners Yoga Class 20 Minutes
• Yoga for your Back

These kind of meditations you need to do when you are sitting or lying down without interruption. NEVER listen to these meditations when driving, since you can easily fall asleep and you should fully concentrate on the meditation.

Taking conscious time for yourself, your thoughts and your body to relax, will refresh you and reduce the stress levels instantly. Try it out.

 

 

 

#leadership #servantleadership #teamdevelopment

During crunch time it is often tough to keep your team’s morale and spirit high. Things get hectic, people start getting stressed and tempers can flare. That of course reduces the quality and quantity of work. So how do you keep the spirits high and tempers at bay?

Planning

Yes, planning is key. In German we have a saying that says

Good planning is half the battle

Spend time for planning and don’t do it alone! Involve your entire team and spend ample time on planning. Let them decide how much time they need for each activity and how the activities need to be staggered. That way they own it.

Have team planning sessions, where everyone comes prepared with their activities and how long they think they take. Then allow them to coordinate how they stack the tasks. They have done it before and know how it can work, just trust them! Don’t forget to include their risk assessment and build in contingency for the risks anticipated.

This will already give you their buy-in they will feel engaged, trusted and respected.

Reach out to them

Leadership is all about relationship building!

Find that way in which you can connect to each individual. There is something that connects you and you can build your relationship on this. This could be anything, here are some examples:

• You went to the same school
• Love for the same football team
• Shared experiences
• Interest in the same sport
• Kids in the same age / the same school
• Similar backgrounds
• etc.

Only if you build meaningful relationships with your individual team members will you really be able to reach them. This needs you to be willing to give yourself as well.

Once you have built a relationship, it will be so much easier for you to identify when there is a drop in motivation or there is something bothering them. And because of your relationship having this conversation to find out what is bugging them, will be so much easier. They will find it easy to open up to you

Be there for them

Your team needs to know you have their back. You will be there for them when it counts and you will remove obstacles. Once they trust you on that they will be much more motivated to give their best. They will also have the peace of mind to concentrate on the work at hand.

So prove yourself trustworthy to them

Surprise them

When your team is under stress surprise them. Have an impromptu birthday celebration, show up with a cake in hand, buy a round of ice cream. It doesn’t need to be expensive, but the thought, the caring needs to be there.

If there is a holiday in one of the team members cultures, celebrate that as well.

Then let the team member share with the others what the holiday means and how they celebrate it. That 15-20 minutes you spend on this will be well worth it. They team grows closer together and they relax briefly. They will go back to work refreshed.

Celebrate Achievements

Whether it is a milestone achieved, an issue resolved or someone’s private achievement, just take a few minutes to celebrate together. No formal speeches, just a brief celebration & acknowledgement. This will relax the team, refresh their minds and give them the boost to continue. It will also show them that their efforts are appreciated.

Tackle Conflicts early

If you bring yourself into the equation and build your relationships with each team member, you will see conflicts brewing earlier. Then you can intervene earlier. Just don’t take side. Use the conflict as an opportunity. If there is a difference of opinion, then build on it and have a team discussion about the benefits and risks of each opposing opinion / suggestion and let the team decide what is best.

It is that easy

You can see with such simple means you can pull the team together, give them the boost they need and help them through tough times in the project. It starts with your attitude. Are you willing to give yourself and become part of it? Are you willing to go out of your way? Even if there is no official budget?

If you are willing to give yourself and become one of the team, while showing them that you have their back and respect them and their achievements, then you will keep their morale high.

Keep working on it!

 

#leadership #projectmanagement #learning #lessonslearned

Have you ever been in a situation where you ask “Why do I have to go through this?” You feel it is totally unfair that you have to encounter this, or encounter this again and you just want to get out of this.

These can be many different situations:

• Injustice
• Discrimination
• Total disrespect
• Unfairness

And you are left feeling this is so unfair. I had even reached a point in live, where I asked whether “please abuse me” is written on my forehead. This was not just in family situations, but also at work. I felt totally frustrated and was wondering why I seem to attract these kind of situations.

The frustration is real. But before you throw in the towel, resign and run away, Let’s take a step back and look at a few points to ponder.

Why could this be happening:

1. Is there any fault of mine? Am I triggering this? Then I need to change my behavior
2. What could I have done better?
3. Is there a problem with the other person?
4. Could there be a Lesson I need to learn
5. What options are there? What ways are there to protect me within the company?
6. Do I need to step away?

I think you are getting the gist of it. Look at yourself first, then start looking at the situation and finally at the options. This is not about raising noise to get perceived justice, but it is about finding solutions and learning lessons. It may not always be the easy way and it may not give you instant justice. But trust me, the long way may often be best.

A sample story

In this one project I suddenly hit a wall. Everything I said hit resistance from the architect. When I said something, it was rubbished, if next time my male colleague said the same thing it would be praised. Even other sub-contractors tried speaking up to protect me, but the architect really rudely diminished anything that came from me. My colleague and I sat down and tried to figure out what was happening. It took us a while; we simply could not put the finger on it. Since usually the architect was professional. Then suddenly my male colleague realized what was happening: This architect was quite short and suffered from, what we call short man syndrome, or SMS. It was hard enough for him to take anything a woman said as important as what a man said, But he could really not take what any man said.

When another female contractor came in who was also taller than him, she suffered the same as me. She got so upset that we ended up with an ugly shouting match on site, after which she went straight to the client and canceled her contract.

Now I could have thrown a fit and reacted similarly, but would it have served any purpose? This other contractor was on her own and was able to say no to a contract. I had been requested to handle this project personally by my director and could not leave.

The Solution

For quite a while we used the system, of both my colleague and I attending the meetings and him speaking. When something came up during discussions that I wanted to respond to I would write it down and show my colleague, who then would present it. In short, I never spoke unless directly addressed. During the sub-contractor coordination meetings, when the architect was not present, I would lead the discussions of our sub-contract work. Of course, in my inner German self I at times felt that I should speak up and put an end to this farce. However, this would never have helped the situation. My colleague encouraged me to play the slow and long game.

All other sub-contractors knew of course what was going on and you would see them hiding smiles. Several came and congratulated me to handling the situation well. Slowly the architect came round and one time he actually told me: You do not need to write this down for Mike to present, you can say it yourself. This was the turning point. From then on the architect would address me directly and I became the one presenting our reports and issues during site meetings.

My biggest lesson learned is: Chose your battles wisely. Sometimes you do not need to fight, but stand up, straighten your crown and move on firmly.