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The Consulting Life: Managing Travel and Becoming a Better Communicator with David Klee (1/2)

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What does it mean to be a consultant? We’ve explored the consultant role as part of the career path of previous guests, but this episode kicks off a focused two-part discussion on the nuances of consulting. In this first part of the discussion, episode 309, returning guest David Klee shares practical insights for managing business travel, enhancing communication skills, and excelling in the consulting profession. He explains how great consultants adjust the information they communicate (and the level of detail) to resonate with people in different roles within an organization. Whether you’re considering consulting, already in the field, or collaborating with consultants, this conversation has actionable advice that can help.

Original Recording Date: 12-18-2024

Topics – David Klee Returns, Focusing on the Consultant Role, Consulting as a Career Path, Job Descriptions and Interview Advice, Travel Expectations and Being Productive, Working for a Company with a Consulting Arm, Presentations and Communication Skills

2:23 – David Klee Returns

3:22 – Focusing on the Consultant Role

  • We’ve heard the term consultant used in many different interviews and contexts. How would David define what a consultant is?
    • “I have a whimsical definition of it. A contractor is somebody you tell what to do. A consultant is somebody that tells you what to do.” – David Klee, on the definition of a consultant
    • Hire a consultant to solve a problem you do not know how to fix, engineer something you’re uncertain of, or to handle tasks you may not have the skills in-house to do. Some of these tasks might be routine health checks, platform assessments, etc.
    • We may have worked in an environment daily for many years, but a consultant brings the unique background experience of working across many environments over time.
  • With the right background knowledge and experience, why do consultants get a bad reputation?
    • “There are a lot of really, really good consultants out there, and there’s a lot of really bad consultants out there. And there are a lot of really good consultants out there that charge a ridiculous amount of money for what they do, and there’s a lot of bad ones that do as well.” – David Klee
    • People remember the bad consultants they have worked with more vividly than the good, and this shapes their perception of what a consultant is.
      • People might develop their own persona of a consultant as someone who charges too much, doesn’t do a good job, and then leaves. David tells us this spans across industries and is not unique to technology consultants.
  • When people seek to hire a consultant, they might not know what to ask to vet that consultant’s experience before hiring them. Are references a nice way to do this?
    • David says he gets asked for references pretty often, but speaking to references can be a challenge as well. You might talk to a reference and find out they are related in some way to the consultant, for example.
    • “You just have to be careful when you talk to these folks on the other side of the table…. It’s not that all consultants are bad. It’s just there’s a lot of average consultants. There’s a few bad ones. There’s a few really good ones…same thing with normal hires.” – David Klee
  • A consultant could be brought in to help for a short time, for a medium term, or for a long-term project.
    • David mentions a friend of his who has worked on a block of hours that has renewed for 12 years.
    • In this specific case, the person is basically part of the company and treated like family. This long-term nature of the engagement makes it easy to take time off when needed.
  • How can listeners work better with consultants during the hiring phase and in collaboration with them after hiring?
    • David says it is important to understand and convey what you want a consultant to do or the direction you want them to steer you. We should convey what we want from a consultant in as much detail as possible.
    • Suppose you told someone to build a car for you. The skillset to build a semi-truck is totally different from that needed to build a Formula One car.
    • “If you tell somebody something and their background is building racecars and what you really need is somebody to tow a trailer…if you just say go build me a car, guess what? Out comes some really cool high performance sports car that’s not what you needed. And you’re disappointed. They’re unhappy. Nobody wins.” – David Klee
    • David says plan to give the consultant as much of the detail up front as we have. If you don’t have all the detail, communicate there is some ambiguity, that you need help choosing a direction and filling in gaps. This helps a consultant scope the product and understand what you really want instead of what you say you need (which could be 2 different things).
    • A scope of work defines what a consultant does and whether they perform hands on keyboard work or not. Can people just purchase a number of consulting hours without a clear deliverable?
      • “There should always be some kind of deliverable…. If somebody walks in the door and you say do task X and then they go do task X and then they disappear…if you don’t have a record, do you know what they actually did? And if they get hit by the beer truck, can somebody repeat what they did tomorrow? …The scoping is one of the hardest pieces.” – David Klee
      • Scoping can be challenging and varies by project. David gives an example of a SQL Server migration project. In this case he would provide reference material to help build a new machine. David could build the new machine and show someone how or let them build it while he walks them through it.
      • There are a number of elements of scope in addition to performing the tasks. Scripts might need to be run or problems fixed before a migration can happen to continue the example above. Once the work is complete, David will provide a document describing the new machine, how it was set up, why it was set up that way, and any fine tuning needed to run a specific application.

9:55 – Consulting as a Career Path

  • Why do people pursue a career as a consultant? What makes it attractive?
    • For some people it is not the right choice, but for others it is the clear choice.
    • Consulting might be a good choice for you if…
      • You are bored with the tasks of your normal job
      • You want to do something different
      • There isn’t any training
      • You like dynamic work environments
    • David tells us if you’re pursuing a role as a consultant, be prepared to learn!
    • David likes consulting because every day is totally different. This can also be a downfall sometimes.
    • Full-time employees of a company can end up working in an environment with a boss they don’t like or a co-worker with which they clash. David mentions working a short consulting engagement in a less-than-ideal environment is more tolerable knowing he will move on to something else once it’s complete.
    • Consulting can keep things fresh, allow you to see new types of problems or environments, or give you the chance to do something new.
    • Being a consultant can remove you from some of the politics within companies. David, for example, doesn’t deal with corporate politics very well.
      • If politics get in the way of getting something accomplished it can be frustrating because the roadblock is not technical. The consultant would prefer to just be able to do their job.
    • David, as the owner of a consulting firm, can say no to taking on a project.
      • What can a full-time employee do if they are told to do something that is the wrong approach? David feels the employee cannot realistically say no.
      • David shares an example from one of his first jobs out of college. He worked on a specific application’s programming language and was asked to fix all the bugs. After presenting the people in charge a choice between rebuilding on the latest software version (3 months) or patching the existing version (9 months), they chose the 9 months. It was not the right approach because of all the new bugs that were found which took longer to fix based on that decision.
      • A consultant may have to present options and make a recommendation, but it is the customer who makes the decision on what is to be done. If a consultant feels like it is the wrong approach or not in their best interest and they are empowered to do so, they can decline the project.
  • Does a consultant need to bring a deep expertise in one or more areas into the role, or are there other qualities one might possess that can make up for this?
    • It’s ok to not be as deep, but you must be willing to ramp up to meet or exceed the expectations of the employer.
    • “A lot of people can do the technical work. Can you talk to the people in the business in a way that represents their role in the organization? Talking to a CFO is totally different than talking to an application owner and totally different than talking to an infrastructure engineer or software engineer. That’s one of the biggest things…understanding how to take what you know and interpret it to what you need out of that individual role and convey it in a way that matters to them and a way that they can digest and actually comprehend. It’s a hard art…and I’ve been working on that for a very, very, very long time. It took being placed in a number of quite frankly uncomfortable situations to really understand how to talk to those people easily, naturally.” – David Klee
    • Consultants can learn communication skills over time. David says a good consultant is ok at this, but for a great consultant, it’s natural.

14:46 – Job Descriptions and Interview Advice

  • What types of roles do consultants have before they become consultants?
    • There are many possibilities here – generalist systems administrator, network engineer, storage engineer, etc.
    • David knows people who consult in areas such as:
      • Project management
      • Social media marketing
      • Offering a fractional or virtual CISO (Chief Information Security Officer)
      • Virtualization / infrastructure
    • You don’t have to be the master of all things to get a project, but you do have to be able to deliver.
  • Do job descriptions for consultant roles read similarly to those for full-time employees inside a big company?
    • David says sometimes they do. But sometimes you see job descriptions asking for experience that isn’t possible.
    • David shares the example of a company wanting 5 years’ experience with SQL Server 2016 in the year 2016. David told the company SQL Server 2016 had only been out for a month and that he had worked with SQL Server since 1995. That wasn’t good enough. The person doing the interviewing also was not the most technical.
      • This kind of thing is a red flag in the interview process and a sign that you probably don’t want to work there.
  • How can the consultant better understand what they are about to sign up for before taking the job?
    • Pre-sales discussions around consulting are as much you interviewing them as it is them interviewing you.
    • David likes to ask questions that give him information about how a company or team operates. He might ask about emergency protocols, documentation for their virtual machines, change control processes and records, and scheduled maintenance windows.
    • Can a consultant stay out of pre-sales conversations and stay post-sales exclusively?
      • David feels you should be part of the pre-sales process to validate the project is a good fit. Even when working through a headhunter, it is likely you will get to speak to the end client customer to determine project fit.
      • “You shouldn’t be expected to just walk into a project blind.” – David Klee, on being a consultant
      • If you’re working as a consultant for some kind of consulting firm and have projects passed to you, there should be some kind of a project acceptance process to brief you about what you’re about to walk into.
      • If a consultant comes in and asks a lot of questions that have already been answered by the end customer, it sets the entire project off in a bad direction.
    • Are consultants afraid of being involved in pre-sales conversations?
      • “Think of it like a job interview you do 12 times a week. That’s hard…. You’ve gotta get real comfortable thinking about everything that you know and understanding how to answer what they’re asking you in a way that is not arrogant but confident. And if you don’t know something, it takes a certain level of experience to say, ‘I don’t know, but I’m going to find out… I’m going to get you the right answer.’” – David Klee
      • David said it takes practice to figure out how to answer the questions in these types of discussions.
      • David shares the story of interviewing for a 6-month contract at one of the largest hedge funds in the world. When they asked a specific technical question, David admitted he did not know. David knew where to find the answer and said he would get back to them once he found it. After doing that, David got the job.
      • We should not claim to know more than we do. People with experience can easily detect it when you are trying to fool them.
    • Why is it hard for people to admit it when they don’t know something?
      • David mentions the Dunning-Kruger Effect as one reason.
      • Ego may be another reason. People do not want to be perceived as not understanding.
      • “When you hit a certain point in any mastery of a certain topic, I call it enlightenment because at that point you know what you don’t know. And you’re not afraid to admit it. But because you know what you don’t know and you know enough about the platform, you know how to go learn what they need pretty fast. And that’s the fun part.” – David Klee
      • David has won a number of projects that were similar to other things he has done but not exactly the same. In these cases, he has asked for one week to create the scenario in his lab. After that time, David shares with the potential customer what he did and confirms it is what they are looking for / that this will meet their needs.
      • Listen to David’s story about solving a problem related to SQL Server Integration Studios for a customer by tinkering in his lab. It was a situation where he explored a product he did not know well and ended up solving a problem.

22:12 – Travel Expectations and Being Productive

  • In our previous discussions with David, he mentioned travelling 150 to 250 days per year for 11 years straight. How much travel should someone new to consulting be expected to take on?
    • David has cut back to no travel ever since the pandemic. Sometimes he misses the travel, but he really likes sleeping in his own bed each night.
    • The amount of travel is going to depend on the nature of the work.
      • If you are consulting for someone else and the expectation is that you will travel, someone else is likely paying for that travel. The amount of travel depends on the contract and type of project.
      • If you are working for yourself (like David), it also depends. You might need to be physically on site to meet or get to know people, especially if a customer expects it. You might need to do it to build trust first and transition to more remote work later on once the customer knows your reputation.
      • David says before 2020, everyone wanted him to come on site, and over time it got old. He tells the story of being flown across the country only to sit in a conference room on a Zoom call and logging into a server located across the country to perform a migration. The company wanted him there as an insurance policy.
      • “The means of doing this stuff remotely have been demonstrated and confirmed. It goes back to the company culture at that point. If the culture wants you on site because they want to physically see you, it is what it is, but some companies are a lot more open to letting people work remotely than they ever used to be…. My days are quite busy. Every bit of it’s remote.” – David Klee
  • Should you expect to get paid more if your role requires travel?
    • It will depend on the company, the type of project, and it will depend on whether you work for someone else or are independent. Being independent might get you more money or higher per diem / travel reimbursement.
    • If working for a consulting firm, hopefully your salary takes the travel into consideration. If you were expected to be on site working 40 hours per week, you might be traveling on Sunday night or very early Monday morning. The travel to and from the customer site is not part of the 40 hours.
      • David doesn’t live in a hub city, for example. Because of this it might take him between 5 and 16 hours to get to a specific destination traveling by plane. That would not count transit time to and from airports (time to rent a car or catch a ride share, etc.) or any extra time due to flight delays.
      • After 1400 nights on the road over the course of 11.5 years, David tells us there have been plenty of travel delays.
    • Hopefully the amount of travel required is clearly stated in the job description, but it can always change at any company based on the needs of the role.
      • David mentions a previous role that started as 25% travel but became closer to 75% travel by the time he left. David says the job dictated the amount of travel.
      • “You have to make sure that if you sign up for travel…for just that rate of travel, is your family ready for it? That means potentially missing family events and late nights and early mornings. It’s not just you that has to be prepared for it. It’s them. If you take any kind of a consulting role that requires even a small amount of travel, be prepared for that, and have that discussion with your family just to make sure. Even if they say they’re ok with it, really press hard. This is real. I’m not going to be here for a while.” – David Klee, on preparing your family for travel
      • Your family might not understand that you are going to come home exhausted every week, need recovery time, and then have to do it all over again.
      • David remembers many times when he would get home late Friday night and then be back on a plane Sunday afternoon.
      • “I enjoyed being at the destination. I hated the journey of getting to the destination.” – David Klee
  • How can people use their travel time to be more productive?
    • David says we should understand how we work and if there are things we can do offline (with no internet connection).
    • It’s important to learn how to work on a plane or in an airport and focus on what you’re doing. Can you block out the world / all distractions?
    • David bought an 8" Ultrabook in his travel days to be able to work on PowerPoint presentations on a plane with room for a mouse. It was small enough to fit in his pocket. A Microsoft Surface was too big and would slip off the back of the tray table.
    • “I figured out I could get a lot of quality time working on presentations or catching up on tech material all on this little tiny thing, so I splurged…. And it actually worked well…. If you don’t work well with distractions…if you can’t sleep on a plane…you have to understand those limits before you even try. Just don’t lie to yourself.” – David Klee, on getting the right device to be productive on an airplane.
  • Is the travel involved in being a consultant something that attracts people to the role?
    • David says yes and that this was one of the reasons he started doing it. He had not traveled to a lot of places before getting into consulting. After over 11 years on the road, he has visited 47 states and 13 countries.
    • Through this experience David developed confidence in his ability to get up, pack quickly, travel to a foreign country, get transportation, and go to a restaurant and order food.
      • David learned to do the planning in advance for his travels after a lot of trial and error. There was no executive assistant to do it for him.

30:51 – Working for a Company with a Consulting Arm

  • We’re going to pivot to discussing the different environments someone could work in as a consultant because they are not all the same. Let’s start with being a full-time employee of a company that does more than just consulting. Maybe it’s working for a technology company or a value-added reseller.
    • This was the entry point into consulting for David, joining a company that was doing Oracle consulting. David provided SQL Server consulting services to the same group of customers.
    • David had a lot of fun with this and got to see a number of different environments. He even got to help the company expand into new markets and bring in a lot of new customers.
    • Is this type of environment the optimal entry point for most people?
      • David says it depends on what you really want to do.
      • “If you’re the kind of person where you need to do 1 thing and 1 thing well…where this is your system or your database or your application, I would say that kind of role might not be the best fit…. You may not be tasked with doing one thing well. You may be tasked with doing a bunch of things at more of a higher level or not as deep.” – David Klee, on working as a consultant full-time for a company whose business model is not just consulting
      • For those who like to do just 1 thing very well, you have the option to look at contract work through a headhunter (i.e. almost being a full-time employee through them).
    • If someone is part of the consulting group or branch of a company that does more than just consulting, how much control would someone get over the work they are given?
      • David says most of the time you don’t have a lot of control. It is often based on customer need, the available people, and the skill sets of those people. Someone would be assigning the projects to you as a consultant.
    • If a consultant brings a specialty to the role, should they expect to change it over time based on customer needs?
      • David says yes, and this concept should apply to everyone in IT. He gives the example of people who began as COBOL programmers (which we don’t see much of today).
      • “In IT you should be expected to evolve with the technologies and your own interests. Let’s say AI is just now magically everywhere. What if that’s one of your interests? Take your foundational skills that you enjoy, and bolt on this new technology and explore it. But don’t get rid of your passions…. It’s a logical progression and extension, but you have to go out of your comfort zone to learn something new…. You’re not discarding anything from the past. You’re just building on top of it. But if you don’t do this, you’ll be considered a dinosaur. And you may have a decent job for today, but if that technology evolves to the point where you’re no longer useful and the company is moving past that technology, you’re in trouble.” – David Klee
      • David was an infrastructure administrator who dabbled with databases. He became the database administrator and introduced virtualization when his company did not have enough physical servers to run the systems they needed to run.
        • David expanded his knowledge base from virtualization to cloud technologies (virtualization in someone else’s datacenter with really good automation).
        • David named his company Heraflux technologies because Heraclitus coined the phrase about the only constant being change.
      • “As a consultant of any kind, if you’re working for somebody else, they may pay to give you some training. You still have to keep up. If you’re doing it for yourself, the keeping up is only on you and you have to keep doing it.” – David Klee
  • What can someone ask in interviews to sort out whether this is a good environment for them? David provides some suggestions:
    • Are you expected to be in an on-call rotation?
    • How many people are in the on-call rotation?
    • What’s the amount of travel required?
    • Am I compensated for part of the travel time?
    • What are the policies for the travel itself?
      • For example, do I have to fly standby to keep costs low?
      • Do I have to stay in cheap motels, or can it be at least a Hilton of some kind?
      • David shares the story about some consultants who were given a $20 allowance for dinner in New York City. The rest came out of their own pocket.
    • Am I expected to be on call for products I am not skilled at or don’t want to work on?
      • When David worked for the Oracle consulting shop, he and others were expected to help with Oracle support calls after hours. David did not know Oracle well and needed to know who he could call for help.
    • What are the hours?
      • Is it expected that you be in an office every day?
      • Do you have the ability to take off early if things are slower? Is there some flexibility in the schedule?
    • What are the benefits?
    • How much PTO (paid time off) and sick leave are personnel given?
      • What are the holidays the company takes off?
    • What kind of training opportunities are there?

38:29 – Presentations and Communication Skills

  • Before David became a consultant, David only got to go to a conference because a vendor wanted him to present a session based on a problem he had solved that made their CRM solution easier to use. His first technical presentation was in front of 2200 people!
  • Does being a consultant lend itself well to presenting at a technical conference or user group?
    • David says yes.
    • “As a consultant, the easy part most of the time is the tech. The hard part – showing people around you what you did and talking upwards and laterally to say ‘here’s the value of what I just did.’ So, you have to understand how to present something in a nontechnical manner…at which that person would best receive it. And if you can learn the art of talking to people at the level they are at, be it nontechnical or ultra technical / absolute guru…if you can figure that out, you can do a technical presentation in front of 10,000 people and you’ll be perfectly fine…. And be it a 5-person user group or 2000 people at a conference, the only thing that’s different is can you see the back of the room and are you blinded by spotlights.” – David Klee
    • David has given presentations to audiences of various sizes over time. He says if we know our content and how to speak to an audience in a way that “clicks” with most people, it can be a lot of fun.
    • David says the presentation to a very small group compared to a large group is not that different. You likely will get more nervous speaking to the large group but are talking about the same topic.
    • The visual aids / slides might be more polished for a larger audience.
    • “But the core flow of the presentation doesn’t have to change just based on the size of the audience. You still want to do a good job even presenting to 2 or 3 people.” – David Klee
    • In part, a presentation will sell the value of what the consultant has done on a project or sell the solution that best fits a problem.
      • “If you’re confident in that, they won’t question the fact that you know what you’re doing. They won’t question the what and why. They’ll just question the how.” – David Klee
    • Nick thinks the biggest difference in being on a conference call compared to being at a technical conference is that the conference talk can make it more difficult to be interactive.
      • Nick likes to get feedback from the audience during a presentation when possible because it helps calm his nerves.
      • David says you can still make it personal for the audience and make eye contact with them.
      • David shares the story of arriving an hour early for a presentation and answering questions. It might not make more people ask questions during a presentation, but it could encourage people to continue the conversation with you after your presentation.
    • For the consultant listening to this, consider doing a presentation at a user group or conference.
      • David suggests doing a 5-15 minute “lightning talk” on a topic of interest. It does not have to be unique and can be something you put your own spin on when you give the presentation.
      • “You can enjoy it. You can have fun. People will benefit from it. And if you can learn presentations like that, it makes you a better communicator…because the tech side of consulting is arguably the easy part. It’s the people skills, it’s the communication that’s arguably one of the biggest things you need to be comfortable with. You don’t have to be good at it. You don’t have to be perfect at it. But if you can be comfortable with it, it makes you a better consultant.” – David Klee
  • How do we tell how comfortable someone is with communication skills during an interview?
    • Pay attention to a person’s body language and whether they look you in the eyes.
    • David would encourage us to watch their face as they think through the answer to a question.
    • If the person is sure-footed in their answers and overall communication, it can help the interviewer understand the job candidate’s level of experience.

Mentioned in the Outro

  • Learning new things to add onto our body of knowledge is a great thought David proposed. Looking at what we are interested in keeps us engaged motivated to continue learning.
  • Great consultants are also great communicators. A lot of this comes through interviewing – customers interviewing a consultant before hiring them, consultants interviewing customers to get more detail about a problem and the customer’s environment, etc. When you are interviewing someone or they are interviewing you, someone is doing discovery like Ramzi Marjaba spoke about in Episode 308 – Probe and Discover: Coaching for Impact with Ramzi Marjaba (2/2).
    • Maybe great consultants are really just great interviewers!
  • If you want to hear more episodes about consulting, try searching for episodes based on the consultant tag on our website
  • If you’ve been a consultant, what do you love about being a consultant? Send us an e-mail or share this post and tag us on LinkedIn.

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