Shawn Lankton Online

One way consultants add value by being “insightful,” but what does that really mean? What’s more, if you aren’t “insightful” already, how do you improve?

I’ve been thinking about this lately and distilled 4 ways to push your thinking and get more insightful.

   Click to continue →

Who knew I spent so much time staring at walls… I now use that time to read articles, papers, reports, and more! Instapaper helped me find HOURS per week in my already jam-packed that I can spend reading.

Instapaper is a “read later” service that has changed my life. It allows you to easily capture content from multiple sources and store it in the cloud so you can consume it at your leisure.

Simply click, “read later” across Instapaper’s many incarnations and the service comes through the internet to capture text and images from an article. That content is now available to read whenever and wherever you have some free-time.

It’s a ubiquitous and beautiful reading experience that I never knew I needed.

• You’ll find new time in your day
• It goes where you go

Read on to find out more, and check it out at instapaper.com.
   Click to continue →

As I’ve transformed into a consultant over the last year I’ve started structuring everything… The trick always finding the right structure. Here’s a great one!

I recently worked with a colleague who uses a work-planning structure that breaks big, wide-open questions into actionable next-steps. The Question-Data-Action framework is thorough, thought provoking, and easy to communicate with 4 simple steps:

1. Define key questions
2. Refine to sub-questions
3. Determine what data is needed
4. Identify actions to get the data

Each step gets you closer to an actionable workplan that will make your life easier and help you communicate timing and deliverables with clients and colleagues.

   Click to continue →

In this three-part series I’ll give you a how-to for getting an interview, preparing for it, and dazzling the interviewers once you’re across the table. These are the main topics we’ll cover:

• Part 1: Branding Yourself and Making Making a “Wow” Resume
• Part 2: Preparing for Your Case Interview to Get Bulletproof
• Part 3: Talking about Your Experience and Sounding like a Bad-ass

Leaving academia and joining consulting firms is a something many PhD students (myself included) are getting interested in. Firms like McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Bain & Associates once hired mostly MBAs but are now branching out to hire MDs, lawyers, and PhDs.

I wanted to make a big impact with the skill I learned during my PhD. I got excited when I heard about consulting because it promises just that. In the next three parts, I’ll take you through the big lessons I learned while preparing and interviewing: How to get an interview, how to nail the case, and how to dazzle them with your experience.

Part 1: Branding Yourself and Making Making a “Wow” Resume gives you pointers to polish that scruffy science look off your C.V. and generally control your “personal brand” so that interviewers are impressed with you long before you walk in the door.

Part 2: Preparing for Your Case Interview to Get Bulletproof talks about how to approach the case and how to practice so that you can shine while others look dull. I’ll give you some simple exercises that will improve the structure and creativity of the “case” portion of your interview.

Part 3: Talking about Your Experience and Sounding like a Bad-ass covers an important and often overlooked portion of a consulting interview… talking about yourself! I know you have some amazing stories to tell. This sections shows how to make your stories say the right things about you.

Please enjoy!

Disclaimer: I recently went through the application and interview process with a top firm, came out with an offer, and signed it! In this series, I share my experience and give some ideas for people on a similar path. However, at the time of writing (July 2009), I do not have any inside information on how any company conducts their hiring. These are just my thoughts!

Koch Industries is the second largest privately held company in the world. In “The Science of Success,” the C.E.O. talks about the management philosophies that his company uses to be so successful.

In short, the techniques called “Market-based Management” (MBM) described in the book are string of very sensible ideas. The true power of the book is that it shows how to join these sensible ideas together into a cohesive and effective management strategy. In this review, I’ll briefly describe the points that really hit home with me.    Click to continue →

My father, a well known psychotherapist, uses a personality model known as the Interpersonal Check List (ICL). This model is notoriously hard to administer, score, and graph. I developed a program to do all of these things automatically.

This is a 128 question test where people mark whether or not adjectives describe them. Thus a person might check yes to “Good Leader” and no to “Hard to Impress.” Once all the appropriate answers are marked, each one is weighed and put into an appropriate bin. The size of each bin marks the prominence of that personality trait in the person.

I’ve used this program as my first e-commerce venture. Visit http://www.shawnlankton.com/icl to get information about the program, download the fully-featured demo, or purchase the full program!

Last weekend I traveled to Denver, Colorado for a “business consulting summer camp.” All in all, it was a nice way to spend a weekend. I learned a lot, met very quality people, wined and dined, and slept at the Ritz. I could get used to being a consultant!    Click to continue →

I attended a talk last night as part of the Georgia Tech Business Plan Competition Workshop Series (pdf). This was such a fantastic talk that I will have trouble putting it succinctly into this post.

Stephen Flemming
“Transforming Innovative Tech into Business”

As with any other person who has been a VC or angel investor, Steve was incredibly sharp, and seemed like he would be impervious to BS either on the giving or receiving end. Steve began his talk discussing the pros and cons of starting a business in the Southeast. He went on a diatribe about how ludicrous the spending in California is. Then he pointed out that although there isn’t much VC investment in Georgia and the surrounding states, there is a better tax situation, and much better access to real estate, talent, and customers.

Steve continued by discussing the cyclical relationship between institutional investors, VC’s, and entrepreneurs giving some insight into how that relationship drove VC’s behaviors. Some interesting take-aways were that VC’s want the entrepreneur to get rich, and that they’ll only have to be brutal and cruel if they have to in order to make the returns they promised their investors.

After giving some insight in these areas, he began enumerating the things that you must convince investors of when trying to raise capital for a business.

1. You have a large, fast-growing market segment
2. You have a technological advantage that will block competition
3. You have reasonable financial terms
4. You have measurable milestones for success

He went on fleshing these out for most of the remainder of the talk, but kept peppering in useful tips. I’d like to point out some here:

1. Get a good referral (from another investor, an attorney, etc.) If you’re plan comes pre-qualified it. You’re in.
2. Make a 20 page business plan with a 2 page executive summary. No More!
3. Power-Point deck using the 10-20-30 rule (10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point type)
4. In all of these documents, sell the company, not the product.
5. Do your homework on the investors you’re presenting to and tailor the presentation. It will help you and impress them.
6. Choose your investor wisely. Don’t just follow money; find someone that can help you with experience, expertise, contacts, etc.

Check out Steve Fleming’s website as well. Here you can find his blog as well as some useful information about starting companies.

Furthermore, here is a list of other resources and websites that Steve
suggested:

• Tesla Motors
• The Elements of Style
• Edward Tufte
• The Art of Start (Guy Kawasaki)
• Presentationzen.com

I just completed this book, The Myths of Innovation, by Scott Berkun after receiving a recommendation (and borrowed copy) from my friend/colleague Jimi Malcolm.

This short, fast read talks about the myths that people have about the process of innovation, and some steps on overcoming these myths and innovating well anyway! Although I found the book inspiring and informative, I think I can sum up all of Berkun’s talking points briefly below and save you the trouble of reading the book : )

• Work hard.
• Work on meaningful problems.
• Work on hard problems.
• Work diligently and tirelessly, but take well-earned breaks to reflect. He belabors the point that innovation comes from persistent effort, not “ah ha” moments.
• Frame and re-frame the problem you’re working on. By following the same rules and same metrics for success that everyone else follows, you’re doomed to mediocrity. Re-examine the problem and re-frame it.
• Work really, really, really hard.

Finally, here is a video from the “Google Tech Talk” series. I haven’t watched it yet, but I’ll bet you can get the gist of the whole book over the 1 hour video.

Recently I wrote about some startup companies in computer vision. However, this is only part of a good industry analysis. I also want to explore some of the interesting research going on in the field. Below is a list of some of the vision research that I’ve come across that seems most interesting (and applicable/marketable).

Seam Carving

This is brilliant (and brilliantly simple work). It solves a problem, and in doing so gives us tools to solve problems we didn’t even know we had! Its hard to explain, check the video out.

Dr. Ariel Shamir has a host of other interesting research as well: link.

Read on for more great research:    Click to continue →