Lifestyle management is an intervention designed to promote positive lifestyle and behavior change, widely used in the field of health. It includes diabetes self-management education (DSME), diabetes self-management, and other tips for living a healthy lifestyle. The World Health Organization recommends eating lots of fruits and vegetables, getting enough sleep, eating a healthy diet, being physically active, maintaining a healthy body weight, not smoking, limiting alcohol, and sustainable weight management.
Lifestyle management is the outsourcing of personal tasks to commercial firms and individuals, with lifestyle managers acting as intermediaries between individuals and businesses. A healthy diet provides vital energy and supports immune cells, which defend against infections and other health issues. Lifestyle medicine is a branch of evidence-based healthcare emphasizing disease prevention over curative medicine, following the same basic approach to clinical encounters: data.
A lifestyle manager manages lifestyle requests, developing realistic actions to prevent illness, promote self-care, and increase healthy behaviors. This branch of science focuses on building healthy habits into a person’s regular routine. A lifestyle manager can be employed by businesses to support guests or clients, and they handle all aspects of leisure and luxury travel.
A lifestyle manager is a specialized professional who helps streamline, organize, and enhance various aspects of an individual’s personal and professional life. Lifestyle management refers to individuals’ intentional and proactive efforts to maintain a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle, making it a crucial aspect of overall health.
📹 Healthy Lifestyle
Being active, enjoying the outdoors and eating a balanced diet all affect how we feel. Watch our healthy living video for tips on …
What is the meaning of lifestyle management?
Lifestyle management is a crucial aspect of personal health and wellness, involving developing realistic actions to prevent illness, promote self-care, and increase healthy behaviors. It is essential to acknowledge that we are on traditional lands, such as Treaty 6, 7, and 8, which are home to many Indigenous Peoples. These peoples include the Blackfoot, Cree, Dene, Saulteaux, Ojibwe, Stoney Nakota Sioux, Tsuut’ina, and Métis Nation of Alberta and the Métis Settlements. We respect the Treaties made on these territories, acknowledge past harms, and commit to moving forward in partnership with Indigenous communities in a spirit of reconciliation and collaboration.
Why is lifestyle management important?
A balanced lifestyle, encompassing proper nutrition, regular exercise, adequate sleep, and positive interpersonal relationships, is of paramount importance for maintaining overall health and well-being. Those suffering from chronic illnesses must pay particular attention to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Lifestyle management is a fundamental aspect of disease treatment and prevention. This encompasses proper nutrition, health screenings, and infection prevention measures.
What does a lifestyle manager do?
A lifestyle manager is a professional who streamlines and enhances various aspects of an individual’s personal and professional life, acting as a single coordination point for all affairs. They handle daily necessities, orchestrate intricate events, and manage personal finances or shopping tasks. They work closely with clients to understand their preferences and needs, ensuring every detail is taken care of according to the highest standards of quality and personalization.
Lifestyle managers typically cater to busy professionals, high-net-worth individuals, celebrities, or anyone juggling complex, time-consuming responsibilities that require great attention to detail. They are adept at handling the unique demands and high expectations of clients who require discretion, efficiency, and exceptional service.
What are the practices of lifestyle management?
Lifestyle management is the intentional and proactive effort of individuals to maintain a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle, promoting physical, mental, and emotional well-being. It encompasses various aspects of daily living, such as nutrition, exercise, stress management, sleep hygiene, relationships, and leisure activities. By actively managing these aspects, individuals can enhance their quality of life, reduce the risk of chronic diseases, and improve resilience.
Factors influencing lifestyle management include personal preferences and values, such as prioritizing health and wellness, and external circumstances. By focusing on these aspects, individuals can enhance their overall quality of life and reduce the risk of chronic diseases.
What are lifestyle management services?
Lifestyle management services involve tax preparation, estate planning, social security planning, Medicare and health insurance planning, and protection planning for life, disability, and long-term care. They help individuals make informed decisions to support their desired lifestyle, adopt habits and strategies for financial stability, and align financial choices with personal values and priorities. Many clients report improved sleep as a benefit of lifestyle management. The process begins with an introductory phone call, followed by an in-office or virtual meeting with the team.
What are 5 aspects of a healthy lifestyle?
A healthy lifestyle includes a balanced diet, regular physical activity, maintaining a regular sleep pattern, stress management, and supplementation. Obesity is a significant health concern, with over 78 million adults in the U. S. being obese. This disease is associated with leading causes of death such as heart disease, cardiovascular disease, strokes, and some forms of cancer. To avoid obesity, individuals should adopt a balanced diet that includes lean protein sources, plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, and limited processed foods and added sugar. Regular physical activity, sleep, stress management, and supplementation are essential components of a healthy lifestyle. Obesity is a leading cause of death and can be prevented with proper choices.
What do you mean by lifestyle management?
A lifestyle management programme, also known as a health promotion or health behavior change program, is an intervention designed to encourage positive lifestyle and behavior changes. It is widely used in health promotion and may involve residential components to establish the initial foundation of behavioral change. Lifestyle management programmes are closely linked to health promotion, which aims to enable people to increase control over and improve their health.
What is another word for lifestyle management?
The term “life management” is defined as the systematic process of organizing and overseeing the various aspects of one’s life, including but not limited to home economics, domestic science, home management, household arts, housekeeping, and domestic sciences.
What are the 4 types of lifestyle?
The university sample yielded four distinct lifestyle types, each characterized by high subjective well-being. These were identified as hedonistic, adventurous, individualistic, and promethean.
What does lifestyle management primarily involve?
The management of diabetes requires a multifaceted approach that encompasses lifestyle modifications. These include the provision of self-management education, support, nutritional counseling, guidance on physical activity, smoking cessation assistance, and psychosocial care.
What are lifestyle examples?
A lifestyle can reflect an individual’s attitude or personal values. A conservative lifestyle is focused on avoiding unnecessary expenses and engaging in trivial activities, while a glamorous lifestyle involves upscale pursuits and luxury. If a person has bad habits, their doctor may recommend adopting a healthier lifestyle, including more exercise and careful eating. A hectic lifestyle, often characterized by recklessness or dissipation, is a more stressful option.
📹 Steve Jobs on Consulting
I mean you guys most of you come from companies where you’ve had work experience right how many of you from manufacturing …
I worked for 15 years as an engineer for 1 organization and Jobs is 100% right. Much of what I learned came as a result of having to live with the decisions I made on behalf of my customer. When it broke, they came to me and I had to fix it. And when I designed it next time during the next iteration, it didn’t break. My ability to design good systems increased dramatically as a result.
I work in IT. My company decided to spend close to 30 MILLION DOLLARS on consultants instead of hiring more help (which would have been a fraction of that). CIO was an idiot (got fired this last week). Consultants walked away from a fire with their wallets full and left us with the mess. I quit shortly afterwards.
I have 20 years in manufacturing and 22 since as a consultant so I’ve pretty much seen it all. Jobs is right for consultants without significant industry experience. Those of us with arrows in our backs and substantial scar tissue who become consultants are usually better at understanding where our clients are coming from and what issues they may face. So we tend to give them better advice. Beware of the big consultancies; they hire MBAs right out of school and throw them at you for $600/hr. While these kids are smart, they’re knowledge-free and are learning at your expense. Make sure you know what you’re getting when you hire a consultant.
I agree with Jobs’ assessment. Having been on both sides of the consulting equation, however, I found that companies tended to value the ideas of consultants over the ideas of their employees. If push ever cams to shove, the consultant’s advice was taken and the employee’s was ignored or certainly underrated. So, if you have enough experience in an industry, it is far less stressful being a consultant. You also have the advantage of being above the fray when it comes to office politics. And this, in spite of the inherent depth and value of loyal employees’ ownership of systems, problems and issues.
Consulting is a great career if you do it from within a company that primarily makes a product. For example a consultant in a software company works with the customers to make them successful with the software. The customers don’t go away, just transition to support. You are still accountable long term for the customer’s success.
He articulated his thoughts so well here. I will always remember this message from Steve. The fruit analogy has persuaded me to pursue my own business idea and own my recommendations instead of taking a safer route in consulting. It’s funny that he mentioned a banana before an apple. I’ll let you know what the fruit tastes like when my time is done as well Steve! 🍎 🍌
After many years in business, I finally learned (from a consultant) that consultants are often hired to cook up and justify whatever conclusions are wanted by the person who has the mandate to hire them. So even worse than pontificating on industry or domain matters where they may have less expertise than their clients, they are used to manipulate or eliminate opponents in organizations. A bit like think tanks or lobbyists ranting about “data”. This might explain why many consultants end up working in senior government positions.
Consultants often have 100 employers, not one and not subject to the will of 1 set of incompetent managers. In niche areas can gather experience at a rate you cannot get in an corporation. The question is who do you want on your team? Someone that read about, seen it, or did it. Hence the real value of a consultant. He is right about a lot of things, but what he doesn’t mention is most companies are not like Apple and don’t have the same resources internally.
He was absolutely right here. There is something inherently irresponsible in consulting, because you are detached from what happens to the company in the long run. On the other hand, I must say I have seen the same lack of responsability in many tech start-ups, where people come just to get experience and some fancy title: many poor decision are taken by people who already know that in 1-2 years will be already working somewhere else and not paying for the consequences of their poor decisions. That’s unfortunately the world we live in.
I’ve done both. Consulting and sitting around maintaining the project long term. Consulting came second. In Engineering you get tired of knowing the decisions you are forced to make are bad. The people you work with aren’t very skilled or don’t care. The company wants to save money and so they hire inexpensive Engineers lacking experience. You get sick of it. And Consulting allows you to break away from these bad decisions. If companies stuck to Jobs advice to “Hire smart people so they can tell us what to do”, I’d work for them. They don’t. They cut costs. They cut corners. And the Engineer gets blamed. No thanks. I’ll stick to consulting.
True in the ownership aspect, but I would say that a good consultant is a good listener first, and after having listened to hundreds or thousands of employees and owners, from a multitude of companies and industries, a good consultant can present ideas and perspective that would otherwise be hidden, due to that wider field of experience. It is easy to get tunnel-vision in any field, and great value can be added from a good consultant. If the payment for consultancy service is connected to results of implementation, or stock-options, the ownership, lyability and invested interest can be more connected. I am speaking both as an entrepreneur and consultant, with a father having the same mix..
The rough transcript… “How many of you are from consulting? Oh that’s bad. You should do something. No seriously, I don’t think there nothing inherently evil in consulting, I think that without owning something over an extended period of time, like a few years, where one has a change to take responsibility for one’s recommendations, where one has to see one’s recommendations through all action states and accumulate scare tissue for those mistakes and to picks oneself up off the ground and dust oneself off one learns a fraction of what one can. Coming in and making recommendations and not owning the results, not owning the implementation I think is a faction of the value and a fraction of the opportunity to learn and get better. You do get a broad cut at companies but it’s very thin, it’s like a picture of a banana, you might get a very accurate picture but its only 2 dimensions, and without the experience of actually doing it you never get 3 dimensional, so you might have a lot of pictures on your walls, you can show it off to your friends, I’ve worked in bananas, I’ve worked in peaches, I’ve worked in grapes, but you never really taste it, that is what I think.”
Worked 10 years in steady jobs and recently swiftched to consulting, but not completely standard as I am fulltime employed in a tech company, and they send me out to customers to consult in short cycles. It’s awesome. As someone else said, learning to listen is key. Often I collect questions that I have to reaerch myself, which means gathering insight from colleagues and building an internal network. I often wonder what happens to the projects that I work on, but sometimes customers do take initiative to come back and say that they were happy. My sense of continuity comes from the fact that because I work with my company’s tech all the time, I gather valuable feedback that I can feed back to the other engineers. That means that if I do my job right, some of the problems that I face this year, I won’t ever have to face again. I expect to do this for a while now, maybe years.
I do not understand here why the fact that this consultant is running and trying to grow his/her own business is ignored. He/she is also going through challenges, finding solutions, to create a succesful business and make ground in the specific industry. Consulting also requires a bit of creativity. To design an effective business model, be a great leader for employees. What is more some of them do not content themselves with only one business but launch other businessses. They also get to taste their fruit(s) at the end of the day.
I have sen this many times. The company has a problem and it brings in consultants and pay them a lot. They come up with a solution. Many of the employees with long experience who actually does the work see problems with this solution, but those opinions are ignored. The result: All the changes and extra work (usually with ridiculous deadlines) falls on the shoulders of the employees. If it’s a success both the consultants and the employees get a pat on the back. If it turns out to be a disaster it’s the emplyees fault. Almost every problem can be solved if the leaders would ask the employees and care enough to listen to what they have to say. Bring together all the people that the problem affects and share ideas and views. I can not understand why an outsiders opinion is more important than that of a experienced employees. What’s also funny is that in many cases the consultants ask the employees and then present the solution as if they came up with it themselves.
A lot of people go into consulting because they got tired of working for lousy bosses in companies with no accountability for the incompetence up the ranks. It’s easier as a consultant to bend the ear of those people than to do so as an employee “in the trenches.” The problem isn’t with consultants. The problem is with bad leadership that can’t figure out how to structure their companies to allow their employees a voice equal to their qualifications or experience.
I know someone in IT-consulting. He’s self-employed. He is the only one in the company that he owns himself. He sees mostly pros and hardly any cons. Where he lives in 2022 there’s an abundance of work. And being at the height of his career in his early forties he only really has to work hard at the beginning of new consulting gig. After that it’s mostly a breeze. His klient is in the public sector. He get’s a very good salary comparable to others in the local job market. He’s had his current gig for some 4 years. And he will probably be in that same gig for at least another 2 years. The only way he could earn more is by taking some gig where he would have to constantly work his ass off. And that is not very appealing. Especially since he’s got a kid. As I understand it, Jobs had a daughter that he really didn’t spend much time with at all… But this is a more broad criticism of the market economic system. Another good example is Elon Musk. He has of course accomplished more than any other human being – including Jobs. But Elon has hardly done much else except work and sleep… And not many humans are capable of pulling off what Elon has done… How many of us seek or even want that kind of life?…
He is of course completely correct, a consultant will never understand a business as well as its own employees. However, I feel he has missed the utility of a good consultant; a good consultant will find inspiration for change through what company employees suggest and build on those suggestions. Sometimes it just takes a fresh perspective/outside view to do what a company knows it should have been doing from the start!
I do agree with his assessment – in my role for the last 25 years in a leading edge technology company I have stressed to clients that “I am the guy, I ain’t going away, I am accountable and here is my mobile phone number “. Thousands of clients big and small have tested me and I think what they found is that I just love this schtuff and even when things go way off the track, we can figure it out, learn the lessons and get back to smooth operations pretty quickly – then go share a Vegetarian pizza – ha!
Steve isn’t wrong. There is a big risk hiring pure strategy consultants. What he didn’t address, and I see few, if any comments mentioning it, is there are consultant firms that do strategy and implementation. I’m lucky enough to be in one of these firms where I have the opportunity to practice what I preach. He’s right though, because I see it too, it’s important to have implementation experience.
It’s true to some extend. Loads of companies do the same thing. The idea is that Consulting firms have the knowledge on how to achieve the same outcomes but in a more efficient way, that’s it. They don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of the product or whatever you’re manufacturing or doing, they provide a method that you can apply to change the way you work to make things better. But I completely understand Jobs frustration about consulting firms (at least the big ones) as they lost that purpose and are just a bunch of useless scammers milking millions of dollars for no outcomes, and entangled in so many corruption cases nowadays. If big consulting firms were a religion they would be Scientology.
I definitely see his point. On the other hand, it would be very foolish to NEVER get a consultant. I think allowing a “fresh” pair of eyes on a project, or allowing an element not native to that environment, could really benefit the company as long as that consultant isn’t crappy. His opinion is very grounded and experienced, but a bit pessimistic, and close minded.
I’ve done both. Product for longer than being a consultant. But consulting is by far my favourite. For pure exposure to variety and awesome people. At least in my experience the types of companies who are self aware enough to hire consultants are usually doing good work. And I’m still very much learning about providing effective feedback. Because you see plenty of know it all consultants who give an opinion without having to see it implemented. It’s why I like longer gigs because in a former life I was involved with leading technical teams and going live was the best part of the grind.
Agreed, that’s the same exact thing i say about business consultants, i call it fake career, besides they cannot be fully trusted simply because they sell the same ideas to everyone else therefore business consulting companies do play a major role in devastating markets, big firms should have their own private consultants who have the real experience it takes for it
i am a consultant and I nv took ownership for my client’s outcomes, because they cannot afford to have me on a project once their budget run dry on the timeline anyway. like Jobs said, since I dont need to own the outcome and its consequences, therefore I just need to get paid and leave a mess for the client after the rolloff. OH, and it’s not just me, most people just come in a project, do a shit job, dump it and roll off. In my heart, I pity my clients, I never understood why clients paid so much for this shit/scam. #DELOITTE
I think about the worst form of consultant is the management consultant. What greater failure in an organisation than the fact that those managing it believe they’re not competent to do so, so call in people to help them do their job. Anyone else not competent at their job would simply be fired – the correct course of action. Of course, the other reason to bring in consultants (and I’ve seen it done) is to pay them to legitimise what you already wanted to do anyway. Ie, by having an ‘independent expert’ third party say what it is that you want to do, you can say that the course of action is not merely your whim, but based on ‘expert advice’.
Pretty broad strokes as far as Painting a Profession goes. A poor consultant is no poorer than a poor carpenter, a poor engineer or a poorly performing CEO. The challenge lies in cutting through the noise (they are many & they all sound the same) and finding a consultant worth their pitched value. How is this different than most other professions?
Consultants don’t take risks. They never own the consequences of their actions. They have skin in the game without a soul. The idea of consultants is somewhat against the Babylonian laws of King Hammurabi were an architect will be put to death if a house he built collapses and kills the owner over time.
I’ve done a few internships online, got a taste of marketing, public sector work, law, and logistics. These were short internships designed to really sell the Industry to you. Out of all of them, I left the consulting internship with one thought in mind. Holy shit, these guys get paid to do absolutely nothing, and do that nothing extremely competetively. They make expansive plans and acronyms and thought experiments that are obviously going to have 80% of it ignored by the actual company, and then in a few years a new crew of consultants come in to spin up something new and exciting and the cycle repeats. If stuff goes wrong then it’s because the plan wasn’t followed, if stuff goes right in any part of the business the consultants can say “look, your profits increased by 5% (even though it had nothing to do with us), see you next year!”
It’s weird, today I’ve spent many years consulting and we see our recommendations through all the way to the implementation and even give hyper care after the fact to ensure our recommendations and solutions are successful. Has this not always been the case in consulting? Or is this not the case for all consulting?
Im saving these for later: Oftentimes companies listen more to consultants than their own employees. I agree with Jobs’ assessment. However, I found that companies tended to value the ideas of consultants over the ideas of their employees. If push ever came to shove, the consultant’s advice was taken and the employee was ignored or certainly underrated. So, if you have enough experience in an industry, it is far less stressful being a consultant. You also have the advantage of being above the fray when it comes to office politics. And this, in spite of the inherent depth and value of loyal employees’ ownership of systems, often creates problems and issues. I’ve done both. Consulting and sitting around maintaining the project long term. Consulting came second. In Engineering you get tired of knowing the decisions you are forced to make are bad. The people you work with aren’t very skilled or don’t care. The company wants to save money and so they hire inexpensive Engineers lacking experience. You get sick of it. And Consulting allows you to break away from these bad decisions. If companies stuck to Jobs advice to “Hire smart people so they can tell us what to do”, I’d work for them. They don’t. They cut costs. They cut corners. And the Engineer gets blamed. No thanks. A good consultant is a good listener first, and after having listened to hundreds or thousands of employees and owners, from a multitude of companies and industries, a good consultant can present ideas and perspective that would otherwise be hidden, due to that wider field of experience.
The issue here might be somewhat more simple – a good consultant will tell management what it needs to hear, whether it wants to hear it or not, and good consultants do exist. With Jobs, that could largely be a non-starter proposition because he bought into his own hype that, because he was in charge of it all, he did it all (except for the things that he wanted to disown anyway). In terms of “qualifications”, I think the progression might be something like this: You’ve never run a company. Oh, you’ve run a company, but you’ve never run a computer company. Oh, you’ve run a computer company, but you’ve never run Apple. In short, no one would be “qualified” to tell Jobs anything he didn’t want to hear if he ruled them “unqualified” and he didn’t want to hear it. On the other hand, if he took the advice and it was successful, he could take credit for taking it and so, again, it’s all about him. For all of Jobs’ supposed “time in the trenches” and tasting bananas, he frequently had very little comparative regard for the people under him, yet that’s the very “credential” that he lorded over consultants.
Every human being is appointed to die once, and then to face God’s judgment. Hebrews 9:27 TPT But Christ proved God’s passionate love for us by dying in our place while we were still lost and ungodly! Romans 5:8 TPT For this is how much God loved the world—he gave his one and only, unique Son as a gift. So now everyone who believes in him will never perish but experience everlasting life. John 3:16 TPT Repent and return to God, and each one of you must be baptized in the name of Jesus, the Anointed One, to have your sins removed. Then you may take hold of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Acts 2:38 TPT I speak an eternal truth: Unless you are born of water and Spirit-wind, you will never enter God’s kingdom realm. John 3:5 TPT The mature children of God are those who are moved by the impulses of the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:14 TPT Those who trust in the Son possess eternal life; but those who don’t obey the Son will not see life, and God’s anger will rise up against them. John 3:36 TPT Make no mistake about it, God will never be mocked! For what you plant will always be the very thing you harvest. Galatians 6:7 TPT For if we continue to persist in deliberate sin after we have known and received the truth, there is not another sacrifice for sin to be made for us. Hebrews 10:26 TPT Come to God through the narrow gate, because the wide gate and broad path is the way that leads to destruction—nearly everyone chooses that crowded road! The narrow gate and the difficult way leads to eternal life—so few even find it!
Yes, a consultant is somewhat (not totally) detached from what happens to the company in the long run. But the same is true for most employees – how many people change jobs after a couple years? Company success is usually measured not in years, but in quarters, so most managers don’t even have the liberty to think in such long terms. And as a consultant, the job is to – consult. to provide an outside perspective. Because if you’re working on apples for years and years and years you might not even know what a banana looks like – and even though the consultant may not know what the banana tastes like, they can at least tell you that.
There’s no genre of business that is somehow flawed. Consulting requires less capital than manufacturing, and its easier to get your foot in the door as an entrepreneur. And believe it or not consultants are liable for their consultations so Jobs was not right about that part. Whether they are held liable is a different story.
Steve Jobs was literally just a consultant. All he did was make demands and recommendations. He seems to praise manufacturers yet he didn’t invent, or physically make anything, He wasn’t an engineer, he wasn’t well versed in business acumen and economics, nor was he a good administrator. All he did was make demands, and recommendations. He was just in the right place, at the right time and was ambitious/ruthless enough to take advantage of his situation.
One also learns how to come back to a company after being fired for years, and screwing all the Mac licensees that were made in good faith during the period in which one was gone…right Steve? And then one did nothing but market some BS mp3 player by convincing people it was better than the players on the market at a fraction of the cost. Good riddance Steve.
I agree with him but that is actually a strength that an outside consultant brings to a company. They aren’t affected by the corporate culture, they don’t have scar tissue from past failures at the company so they won’t be biased toward one thing. They also aren’t swayed as much by corporate politics. (Yes a different set of politics, but not the usual ones.) When used effectively they can work quite well in identifying new things you should do, things you should not do, and even when they agree with management, there is a benefit. Less risk.
True fact 1 : as a consultant or extern your “real” objectives are those of your own company and not those of the client which can lead to absurd situations I was sometimes ashamed for. True fact 2 : when a project is over consultants leave and have few or no feedback about things not working properly over time. I was always sad about this but it is the clients that never take this mission… Make it cheap… But with the turn over of today we can’t say employee can feel the consequences of their decisions either. True fact 3 : leadership of today lead to the necessity for outsourcing (consulting and contracting) most projects… Low headcounts… Last true fact : A consultant is a tool. And if you think further in fact Apple just build a computer that is a tool that an engineer or architect will use to build something extraordinary. Conclusion, consultant or employee is not the debate. For me it’s more about the mindset than about the status. You can have a consultant who feels more involved with the client result than an employee.
Back when I had to hire engineers, one of my rules is I wouldn’t hire people who didn’t stay at prior jobs long enough to see a project from beginning to end, and experience the consequences of their work. For a similar reason, I’d discount references from people who didn’t see the end product of the candidate’s efforts.
Definitely agree with the idea of there always being more to learn, but I disagree with his opinion of consultants. I work with them all the time and they provide invaluable expertise to companies. Just like with anything, there are always bad apples (npi), but the basic idea of having experts gather data so you can spend your time manufacturing product is very important in business.
Spoken like he hired some consultants before…. You either pay consultants to do the work for you so you can taste and eat 95% of the fruit, or you give them a % of the deal and let them own it. Obviously, consultants are here because there is a need for them and employers want 95% of the fruit for themselves….
I like consultants because they are able to frame data in a way that provides optimal clarity to the course of actions. That said, competent people in management should be able to make effective decisions based on their own due diligence, or not be in the job. Reliance on external consultants is ludicrous because those are not the people accountable for outcomes. Steve is right. Too often ‘strategy’ is a cookie-cutter mold with no experience of prior context.
Steve and other business leaders are narcissist and hate business consultants who have high value knowledge and experience to have a share of companies’ success . Business consultants who have diverse hands-on experience by working for years in different industries before shifting to consulting business, can highly contribute in safeguarding companies with underperformance, from collapsing due to stupid executives who took non-informed decisions. Business owners and their executives think themselves are brilliant till the moment they see their companies go to bankruptcy case, only then they believe in outer mindset who are experts in solving problems and dilemmas and equipped with comprehensive knowledge and diverse experience to pinpoint the problems and their possible solutions. please don’t follow the bandwagon effect.
I do agree with Steve Jobs that by giving people accountability for their success makes them think much deeper about the decision. We do have a very transient younger workforce (especially in Engineering and Tech) right now that want to “move up” as quickly as possible but often find themselves not really prepared for the new role. When it doesn’t work out, they quickly change to a new employer and try to get a promotion. As a hiring manager it’s frustrating because I’d rather not hire someone who hasn’t seen a project to completion. There are some excellent consulting engineers and process engineers that don’t need to be on a particular project for 3 years. But those usually have gotten to that role by having been on 4-5 projects like that.
I think he is right. I’m just starting off a career in software development and I’m starting my first job at a consultancy, but for me I think it’s a great option because I’m not sure what I want to do yet and I want to learn a broad set of skills before I decide what I like and want to specialise in. So I think working at a consultancy is great for that. But after a couple of years I definitely plan to move onto a product company.
The assumption that a consultant doesn’t own something over a period of time is just inaccurate. What consulting had Steve actually done? I’ve been a consultant for many years and I always own my work. Some of my work continues to be iterated 5 or 6 years later under my oversight. It might seem popular to have a pop at consultants but I think it actually shows Steves inexperience (in that area) a bit here.
Some good points here. I used to work for a large UK utility company and we spent a fortune on consultants to provide quick solutions (at high cost) but because they didn’t understand the industry context all that well we’d often end up with “solutions” that we couldn’t actually implement. One of the worst examples is when we paid a company £15 million for a software solution that didn’t even work and we had to scrap it and write the whole investment off
Jobs fails to acknowledge that it is companies that hire consultants (for their own reasons). If the demand were not there, consultants wouldn’t exist. I completely agree though, as a consultant who has worked long contracts and short ones, the longer the contract is, and more importantly, the more embedded I am with the company, and generally, the more responsibility I have, the more I learn. Totally makes sense.
Two points, there is a difference between consultants and contractors. His description is right about contractors. They don’t care about the end result. True consultants, who make it their living to serve others, and have clients for years “own” what they do. I have had two clients for over a decade each. I have created and owned and been accountable for countless projects. Second, what I think he may be referring more to though is the strategy consultants (think McKinsey). They come in and tell you what you should do but then don’t help implement the idea. Then, if it fails, they say”you must have implemented our ideas wrong”. Use the consulting companies that actually stay AND implement what they say. Those are the ones that are “in the boat with you” and you can probably trust more.
Before we blindly agree on what Steve says, we must always remember that Steve was probably also some sort of “manager” within Apple. He didn’t actually build the product, although he painted the pictures. So it’s kinda ironic because, while Steve, as business owner goes through way more than the consultants, he himself probably didn’t do or probably didn’t have enough visibility on the inner workings of his own product. The same comments would have been much more powerful if ‘Bill Gates’ or ‘Zuckerberg’ would have said it, because they built the initial versions of their software/product with their hands.
If that was true so many companies out there would not be as horrible as they are. And consultants would not be needed in the first place. It’s a bit more complex than how Jobs thought of it. Plus consultants would be more than happy to implement (and they increasingly do so), it’s companies that aren’t often willing to fork out the costs of that. Plus, if management can’t think and can’t do either, then there’s nothing really that justifies their salary.
I am originally from China and graduated from a top 10 school in the United States with a PhD in engineering. As a quick observation, almost none of my American classmates are still in tech, while most of them entered the consulting business right after gradation (with a PhD in engineering). Some of them go to the law school or business school since a lawyer or MBA with a background of hard science seems very popular nowadays. The MBA people will end up in a consulting firm anyway. Most of my Chinese classmates, or immigrant students, including me, are still in tech. I found it very interesting.
Consultants DO own something…. their own good name and reputation. I owned a business in my industry for 15 years, and then began consulting. We have over 200 testimonials from customers who we helped massively increase revenue and profit margins over the past 6 years. And we have an incredibly generous refund policy to prove “Skin in the Game.” It’s rarely been used. In the cases in which the refund policy has been used, it has been used for the reason it was intended…. not because of quality of service, but rather because the company wasn’t a good fit for our service – and we discovered this early in the working relationship.
and that is why after 22 years working everytime people tend to see my management skills and assign me more management role i slowly transfer back or find my way back to engineering role. I had a lot of pat in the back after I release a product I even barely touch. Sure releasing needs a lot of soft skills but I find no satisfaction to releasing products i barely understand what’s inside… let alone not building it myself. I can totally relate to what Jobs is saying.
Its like saying consultants are academics? All theory no real world experiences. But the fact is most of the time good consultants do come from a background of working in real functioning companies but no longer want to be in that type of environment anymore, or maybe their are tired of the companies toxic no life balance situation and just wanted to live a life they find fulfilling and not just their to achieve the masters or CEOs goals. so i think this is a little bit of over generalization… those who like apples can eat them, those who do not can eat other fruits but doesn’t mean he never tasted apples just saying 😅
I really feel Steve’s stance on this is probably applicable for many consultants however, my own experience as a consultant contradicts this somewhat. I’ve been working as a ERP consultant for 8 years now at the same organization and I have a couple clients that I’ve been allocated to there accounts personally for 12-16 hours per week for the last 7 years. My team and I very much have to learn from our mistakes and see things through. Our business really works on a long term partnership with clients. And reap the rewards of synergistic growth. I have however had to collaborate with other contractors who align with Steve’s analysis exactly.
I think this is an interesting analogy, and why consultants with at least some experience make for better consultants that can bring value to the client. The one thing I kind of laugh about him wanting consultants to be there long enough to take responsibility and see projects through is that the only reason that usually happens is because the client doesn’t want to pay for the consultants to be there long enough and see the projects through. A lot of the time the clients would say no give us your plan and we’ll use it, and 95% of the time they fail. I think Steve Jobs was a really smart guy, but I think his actual business acumen is kind of weak sometimes and it shows here.
Steve was a genius, but also a fool (and oh… did he pay for that in the end!). Here he paints a beautiful but foolish metaphor, you cannot even begin to taste a banana if you don’t know when and where to plant the seeds. That’s the consultants’ job, (s)he shows you the picture of a banana, tells you when and where to plant it, and leaves. You just wait and enjoy the flavor.
Dead on. He’s addressing this as a path to personal growth, but there’s a more significant reason: when people have the authority to make decisions but not the responsibility to deal with the consequences, there is no mechanism to deter dumb decisions. Companies then spend extra time and money to fix dumb stuff- usually of multiple units already on the production floor, where fixing dumb stuff is at its most expensive. Separate responsibility from authority at your peril.
What he is criticising is the consulting a la McK, BCG & Co. Not consulting. With that in mind, I disagree with him on his assessment as there are plenty of ways to do it differently. The value in consulting lies in the fact that some fresh, external eyes can provide a different perspective and/or expertise. But that requires a broader appraoch, other than charging millions, sending in juniors, throwing a report at the client and then leave. It also includes coaching, interim with some level of ownership. And something like that cannot be done with the usual consulting workforce.
Kind of like every front end engineer who comes in and sets up a ridiculously complicated build system nobody understands just to put some error messages on a form and then goes and gets another job somewhere else after a year to set up a completely different ridiculously complicated build system just to put some error messages on a form.
if one owns a motorcycle one knows the value of having a free mechanic (which I analogically compare to a consultant) vs getting things done by official dealers. Consultants have much more hands on experience in todays date than the eye candy solution engineers from the manufacturers, especially true in software industry. Get yourselves finally out of the jobs delusion for ef sake.
The problem is so many of these Ivy league graduates end up as consultants, then join politics. They have never built a thing, so end up it is all hot air. You look at the state of the USA’s infrastructure and manufacturing industries. Then you can understand why ‘Pure” consultants without “scars” from the actual painful implementation is dangerous!
Theres two types of consultants; those that have the owner’s best interest at heart and those that don’t. You can recognize the difference based off how much they try to sell you. I think once again Jobs over simplifies something he has never personally done, in terms of consulting. Sometimes consultants are on staff as staff augmentation for over 15 years, and know more than the recent cycle of CEO’s that just airdropped in this morning. Personally, be reluctant to trust talking heads; Steve wasn’t always trustworthy and a hard worker. Just as wozniak.
i would argue with steve here. founders always are in contrary of consultants. you can own something without running a company. nobody wants to admit but good advisors are what make good ceos. there are, unfortunately, a lot of bad karma kind of advisors. that don’t take responsibility. with great power comes great responsibility. that goes for a founder, ceo or any decent consultant/ advisor.
There are few people like Steve Jobs. He helped innovate the explosion of technology. Apple competitors all want the same thing.. a piece of the pie and they’re getting it. Who will be the next Steve Jobs and Elon Musk? If Elon is able to control the AI market could he buy out everyone? I look around my house as I’m moving out and so many things are obsolete for me. I literally have my iphone, laptop, desktop, chair, desk and this is what I need to survive. We have to thank the Pioneers for leading us to a more technological easier life.
we asians like to make the-west, eat their own words. respect money = respect paying-customers (consumers) consultant = respect skill and knowledge, and experience salary is money is respected AFTER skills, experience, knowledge, education the-west want to employ who.? consultant to the-west at-most. recognise superior-inferior continuum.?
Consulting = ADVISING, RECOMMENDING, SUGGESTING, etc… – that is consulting for you… Without business owners who have ownership, accountability and responsibility to see their requirements be implemented, and functionally working to their expectation – consulting is just that, consulting… or advice, recommendation, suggestion… just that… and some come at the cost to the company that goes beyond 6-7 perhaps even 8 (company wide) figures on annual basis…
I don’t think you can generalize that ALL consultants are stupid and make wrong recommendations How about the consultants that give GOOD advice and are staying with their clients FOR DECADES. He should sustain his body more from liquefied carrots exclusively … wait, that failed. Bitterly. With terminal cancer.
Consulting Engineer needs degree in related engineering discipline plus Gov’t License (PE/PEng/CEng) of State or Federal Gov’t.For IT Consulting Engineers,degree in CS(Computer Science)/ CpE(Computer Engineering)/IT(Information Technology)/ SE(S/W Engineering) is required plus PE/PEng/CEng registration of Gov’t. Note:- But for H/W or Network Technology Consulting,only first three degrees required & they may also work as S/W Consulting Engineer if they wish.But degree holders of S/W Engineering may work only as S/W Consulting Engineers
This opinion is one-sided. This advise is useful to a particular type of people. Remember, an advise even from great people is just that. Nothing more. There are many circumstances where consultancy is beneficial and there are those where it’s redundant. Nothing is black and white like Jobs portrayed it.
#### Summary 📝 Steve Jobs emphasises the importance of hands-on experience and taking responsibility for recommendations in consulting. #### Highlights – Consulting lacks the opportunity to learn and improve through experiencing the implementation of recommendations firsthand. – Jobs compares consulting to looking at a two-dimensional picture of a banana, instead of actually tasting it. – He believes that without ownership of results, consultants only gain a fraction of the value and learning opportunities. – In hard times, consultants become a variable expense.
I share these sentiments about consulting firms. You really need to get your hands very dirty before you start consulting. As an experience IT veteran of 30+ years, I’ve contracting consulting firms many times for very specific aspects of our roadmap. However, I’ve learnt not to use them for strategy, stakeholder interviews, or continuous improvement. To do these well, I think that you need to understand the ethos and culture of an organization. Without experiencing this firsthand, you have never “tasted” the organization.
Who’s hiring consultants that have no experience actually “doing it long term” anyway? Far too many people (Hello MNP) propose this and Steve knew. Steve’s advice here is about hiring the right consultant, it’s not about hiring any consultant. I’m sick and tired of people throwing, “but Steve Jobs hated consultants so I hate consultants” out in an argument without understanding what Steve meant. If you’ve had to live with the consequences of your decisions, long term, you might make a good consultant. Hiring a good consultant, however, is often left to the marketing and branding of the company you’re considering hiring. Job’s could spot that kind of bs a mile away. No wonder he was jaded about marketing. No wonder he was jaded about consultants. He was the mf king of marketing bs. If you don’t believe me, let me ask you this, if you could hire (and easily afford to hire) Steve Jobs as your consultant, would you? Gotcha.
Insightful but…. I’ve seen managers reject employee ideas only to accept same solution from an outside “expert” aka consultant. That’s (partly) why I became a consultant, 2/3’s of “gigs” were long term b/c I took client problems seriously as well as responsibilitiy for success. IOW I wasn’t a hit-and-run type consultant like Steve is describing.
I haven’t been in industry for long, but from what I’ve seen consultancy can be a vicious cycle for companies, as the output is often something only the consultant can maintain (not to be a cynic, but I would argue this is often by design). Enterprise solutions have extremely high switching cost, so it’s not uncommon to keep doubling down. The result? Your organization gradually atrophies as institutional knowledge and skills diminish, at which point you become dependent on external talent. The only way to recover is to reallocate your consulting budget to the core business, but our thinking is too short-term in US to make this decision feasible for any given individual. Whoever makes that judgment call would inevitably be fired due to short-term performance decline for long term growth.
Jobs is right of course but I think he is quite blinkered in his thinking. The beauty of a consultant, a good one, is he/she does actually own the implementation, faults and all. He makes a huge assumption that they do not. The benefit the customer gets is that the consultant has performed across many many organisations. So each customer is actually benefitting from the previous organisations experiences. Rather than, one single siloed skewed perspective if you are exmployed by that company. I’ve done it for 35 years. It works amazingly. But you have to be hungry for change. Even when you’re old 🙂
Jobs is 100% wrong and out of context. The issue from consulting is you do make recommendations BASED ON WHAT THE BUSINESS SAID and then their ego says “I can take it from here” and then the fuck the implementation because they lack the actual skills to implement change. I guess … why would I think Jobs has an ego issue.
Nowadays, consulting firms, like pwc, deloitte, hiring the best graduates from top 100 univerities to create the best written powerpoints with the most beautiful worings/images to let those big companies/governments to burn their budgets. And those powerpoints / studys, actually do nothing with their business.
I would stop doing consulting if permanent positions were correctly compensated. You might gain more “ownership” experience staying a long time at a company but sadly, more often than not, your compensation doesn’t follow the experience gained. If you don’t want to spend years working your ass off and leaving money on the table then you have to jump ship when: 1) You aren’t learning anymore. 2) You aren’t compensated correctly for the experience gained.
This is just utterly wrong. Consulting just means “temporary worker with relevant education”. Thats it. Consultants that can add “relevant work experience” to their cv is a bonus. Those consultants that are hired to give a client/company advice is extremely few. Most projects is temporary in nature, and therefor fit the “temporary worker” idea. Companies is extremely disloyal to employees, so you are likely not to grow your skills by working at one place in 15 years. Employee, consultant or contractor is just meaningless bs words. I have been all of them so I know. Businesses HOWEVER have a lot of fantasies and make all sort of crazy mistakes – thats on them and not on “consultants”, thats just blame game which I believe you see in the article. “A mistake happened which I don’t understand, therefor I blame ‘consultancy’ because it cannot be my fault”.
I agree with Steve, but the reality of the jobs market, is that there are 100 times more jobs for consultants than there is money for startups and small business. I think most graduates would love a startup technical role if it was available. I worked in consulting for 5 years and hated it, fortunately I was able to transition to something else, but I really didn’t have a choice after applying for hundreds of jobs, and being out of work for close to 8 months. Startups, research, software, engineering and small business is extremely expensive, and it usually takes a highpowered networkingy sales guy to make sure those tenders and projects are issued a budget. While I wish everyone could choose their passion and pursue their career goals, the reality of jobs market and economic forces means that some jobs are are more financially feasible and can support a salary, while may technical roles are rare and extremely competitive to get into.
I can see what he is saying but on the flip side I was an environmental consultant once undertaking flood risk assessments. I now realise we actually followed the rules more than the government agencies did and still do. They set the rules and we applied them. Whether they are wrong or not is not the question…
Consulting is giving advice on how to do things to people who know way more about how those things work than you do, and finance is using imaginary methods to turn money into more money. For my generation, those were the two jobs that all business graduates wanted. My resume was never good enough for those though. I had to go build stuff and then try to sell it for a living,
Consultants that have a bad rep and more failure stories go through failures and scar tissue. You can argue they get more experience by going to different companies and industries than someone who owns one thing in one company in one industry. The scar tissue they get is from failing processes they put in place. The irony is Jobs basically consulted Woz.
My opinion on this is that Mr. Jobs is only partially true. It starts as a one – or two-dimensional view through banana, but in time, it adds more and more bananas not only to learn a path of success but also a path of failure. To build a successful business, you need to own but also prevent problems from accumulating before they materialize.
mr jobs! you have a poor understanding of what “consulting” is! an independent review is what consulting is all about. consultants are not here to TELL you, but to help you as a sounding board to remove GRC threats to a business, and from a sustainable perspective. stick to YOUR knitting mr jobs, not someone else’s