Consultant and Consulting Jokes (1)

If you know any consultants, mention these postings to them.

Back when I was a self-employed consultant I started to collect consultant jokes, with the half-baked idea of self-publishing and selling a paperback book of jokes and cartoons. Below, the first part of what I had collected.

For people who are seriously considering a career in consulting, I strongly recommend buying a copy of Alan Weiss' book, Getting Started in Consulting. When I was getting started, I would read the entire book every few weeks. It help tremendously in understanding how to establish visibility, 'gravitas', reputation, etc. as means of rising above the competition. 

I also remember being asked and answering two key questions about becoming a self-employed consultant: Separate from your credentials, experience and knowledge, "Are you comfortable talking to strangers? Are you comfortable talking to no one?" Because if you cannot do the first, you won't find clients, and if you cannot do the second, sitting home alone in your office with the phone not ringing an no one to have coffee with will be depressing.

YOU MIGHT BE A CONSULTANT IF...

PRIVATE LIFE

• Ha! Like you have a private life
• You refer to dating as test marketing
• Your love letters have executive summaries
• You refer to your significant other as "my co-CEO”
• You decide to reorganize your family into a "team-based organization"
• Your "deliverable" for Sunday evening is clean laundry and paid bills
• You start doing your kid's math equations in reverse Polish notation
• You insist that you do some more market research before you and your spouse produce another child
• You believe you never have any problems in your life, just "issues" and "improvement opportunities"
• At your last family reunion, you wanted to have an emergency meeting about their brand equity
•  You believe that e-mail between you and your spouse is enough to keep your marriage strong
• You refer to divorce as "divestiture"
• You refer to your previous life as "my sunk cost"
• You insist that your friends submit time sheets at the end of the month so you can see what you missed

TRAVELING

• You are upset when you come home late at night and the lights aren't on, the bed isn't turned down, and there are no chocolates on your pillow
• You can tell the hotel staff what their room-rate policy is
• You also understand airline fare structure
• In fact, writers for the OAG call you to verify flight numbers and times
• You have seen more movies at 35,000 feet than you have at a movie theater
• You ask the car rental agent if the car comes with an Internet connection
• You like both types of sandwiches: ham and turkey
• A good lunch consists of vending machine snacks
• A good dinner consists of vending machine snacks
• You feel naked without a laptop hanging from your left shoulder
• You've been staying in the same hotel so long you instinctively call it "home"
• Your spouse flies “home” (to your hotel) for the weekend
• You can call room service and order multiple entrees without looking at the menu
• The hotel staff recognizes you and gives you the same room every week
• You know the valet parking guys by first name
• You get more calls from the hotel staff to see if you're OK than you do from your friends
• Then you realize the hotel staff are your only friends

 ON SITE

• You use the term "value-added" without falling down laughing
• You believe it's efficient to write a ten page work-plan with six people you’ve never met before
• You can explain the difference between "down-sizing," "right-sizing," and "firing people's asses," and you actually believe your explanation
• You believe every company is "a traditional functional organization, with promotion based on tenure, but one that needs to change as it is facing ever increasing competition..."
• You know every single piece of clip art in PowerPoint
• Your favorite stories begin "Bob Jones, VP of marketing, sat at his desk and stared out his window..."
• You believe the best tables and graphs take an hour to comprehend
• The new client staff come to you for information on how to start the coffee machine
• You can tell the copier repair person at the client site exactly what's wrong with the machine and what parts need to be replaced
• You cry when your PC won't start (you have a name for your PC. It’s a secret)
• Someone mentions a 7:00 meeting and you say, "AM or PM?"
• New staff point at you and say, "... that's him, that's the old guy ... "

JARGON RULES YOUR LIFE

• You use the word "paradigm" in a sentence
• You use the word "granularity" in a sentence
• You use the word "robust" in a sentence
• You can spell “paradigm”
• You believe CAPM is just as important as the Theory of Relativity
• You believe CAPM
• You carry on a 5 minute conversation about data warehousing (encryption, search engine optimization, web usability guidelines, etc.), then you ask what it means