Stories of Our 22 Basics

When I look back over my career—across industries, continents, leaders, and teams—I can trace my growth not to titles or promotions, but to the behaviours I absorbed from the people who shaped me. The operators who solved problems before anyone noticed. The leaders who stayed calm in chaos. The consultants who didn’t just deliver work—they elevated everyone around them. Over time, I began to see a pattern: the individuals who consistently created impact weren’t the loudest, the flashiest, or the most decorated. They were the ones who mastered a set of foundational behaviours that never changed, no matter the client, the industry, or the complexity of the engagement.

Those behaviours became the 22 Basics.

They are not theories. They are not inspirational slogans. They are the lived disciplines that separate consultants who create noise from consultants who create value. They are the habits that build trust, strengthen relationships, and sustain performance long after the project ends. They are the standards I hold myself to—and the standards I expect from anyone who chooses to do this work with excellence.

The 22 Basics are the backbone of how I think, how I lead, and how I help organizations transform. They are simple, but not easy. They require humility, discipline, and a willingness to grow. But when practiced consistently, they turn good consultants into great ones—and great consultants into trusted partners who leave a legacy of clarity, capability, and confidence wherever they go.

1. Courageous Communication

Courageous communication is never about volume or bravado. It’s about clarity, honesty, and the willingness to say the thing that needs to be said, even when it’s uncomfortable. I learned this early in my career, during an engagement with a sales organization where we were implementing a comprehensive System of Work. The design was elegant: Sales Effort on one side—proactive meetings, purposeful customer contact—and Sales Effectiveness on the other—understanding client needs and crafting solutions that actually mattered.

We rebuilt their contact strategy, introduced cascading KPIs, and established a cadence that allowed managers to coach with intention rather than hope. Eight months later, I returned to assess sustainability. The effort metrics were strong. Contact strategy? Improved. Customer scores? Up. But revenue was lagging, and no one seemed to understand why.

I sat down with the top client, who was genuinely proud of the increased customer engagement. He spoke enthusiastically about the improved relationships and the positive feedback. But when I asked about his strategy for increasing deal size, he paused. He hadn’t been focusing on it at all.

In that moment, I had a choice: nod politely and move on, or tell him the truth he needed to hear. I chose the latter. I explained that the revenue shortfall wasn’t a mystery—it was the direct result of not applying the same rigor to sales effectiveness that he had applied to effort. The system wasn’t failing. The leadership focus was.

Years later, when he moved into operations, he called me back—not because I had told him what he wanted to hear, but because I had told him what he needed to hear. Leaders are surrounded by people who soften the edges of reality. A consultant earns trust by doing the opposite: by balancing respect with candor, by stepping into discomfort with purpose, and by speaking truth in service of improvement.

Real change lives in that space—where courage meets communication, and honesty becomes the catalyst for transformation.

2. Tenacious Pursuit of Results

Tenacity is not loud. It is not frantic. It is the quiet, disciplined refusal to accept the first answer, the easy answer, or the convenient answer. It is the willingness to stare down a problem until it finally blinks. I learned this in Shanghai, during one of the most unusual and transformative chapters of my consulting career.

It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when I was asked to lead a segment of a global implementation for a chemical company. The mandate was simple on paper: deliver $2.5 million USD in cost savings. The reality was anything but simple. I arrived in Shanghai after a two‑week government quarantine, stepping into a city of 28 million people where I was often the only foreigner in sight. It was isolating, humbling, and strangely energizing.

Before I even set foot on the plant floor, the assessment numbers bothered me. Labour in China is inexpensive, and the projected savings equaled the entire payroll. Something didn’t add up. When we dug into the details, the truth surfaced quickly: the project had been oversold. Labour wasn’t the lever. It couldn’t be. But the client didn’t want excuses—they wanted results.

That’s when the real work began.

We reframed the entire approach. Yes, we would review the organization and reduce labour where it made sense. Yes, we would push OEE to unlock revenue. But the real opportunity was hiding in plain sight: energy. Water and electricity costs were higher than labour. If we could reduce energy consumption, we could deliver the savings the client expected—and more.

The revised plan was bold, but it was grounded in reality. We attacked energy losses, optimized processes, and drove OEE improvements that exceeded the original projections. By the end, we didn’t just hit the cost savings target—we surpassed it. And we did it without compromising integrity, quality, or the trust of the client.

Results don’t come from perfect plans. They come from resilience, curiosity, and the willingness to pivot without losing momentum. In Shanghai, tenacity turned an oversold project into a success story—and transformed me in the process.

3. Display Blameless & Pragmatic Problem Solving

One of the most powerful shifts in any transformation is the moment a leader stops blaming people and starts improving the system. I saw this unfold at a pet food manufacturer—a company with heart, history, and hustle, but also with habits that no longer served the scale they had reached.

They had grown from a small regional producer into a national supplier. The passion was still there, but the discipline wasn’t. When something went wrong, leaders instinctively dove into the weeds. They jumped onto the line, tinkered with equipment, rewrote schedules, and tried to personally fix whatever was broken. It came from a good place, but it created chaos. People stopped thinking because the leader always stepped in. Accountability evaporated. And the culture drifted toward a familiar, corrosive question: “Why do we suck?”

The turning point came after a particularly rough production day—missed batches, downtime, and a late shipment that put a major customer at risk. Historically, the senior leader would have stormed onto the floor and tried to fix everything himself. But this time, he paused. He looked at the results, looked at his team, and said something he had never said before:

“Performance today was unacceptable. But problems are gold. So let’s talk about how we get better.”

That single moment changed the trajectory of the entire plant.

Instead of crawling into the machinery, he set a boundary. Instead of rescuing, he set expectations. Instead of asking, “Why do we suck?” he asked, “How do we get better?” And the team—finally given space—stepped into the responsibility he had always taken from them.

Operators surfaced the root cause. Maintenance proposed a preventive plan. Supervisors outlined new checks and controls. The leader didn’t solve the problem. He created the conditions for the team to solve it themselves.

That was the cultural shift.

They stopped being hard on the people and became hard on the process. They stopped hiding problems and started surfacing them. They stopped fearing mistakes and started learning from them. The organization moved from blame to pragmatism, from firefighting to continuous improvement.

In that pet food plant, we didn’t just fix a production issue.
We rewired how the organization thought about problems, accountability, and leadership.
And once they embraced the idea that “problems are gold,” they unlocked a level of performance—and pride—they didn’t know they were capable of.

4. Display Curiosity

Curiosity is the quiet force that turns frustration into understanding and resistance into partnership. Early in my consulting career, I didn’t appreciate that truth. I believed that if clients weren’t moving at the pace I expected, something was wrong with them. I pushed harder, explained louder, and wondered why they “didn’t get it.” It took time—and humility—to realize the flaw wasn’t in the client. It was in me.

During one engagement, I kept hearing a trainer repeat the “Platinum Rule”: Do unto others as they would do unto themselves. At first, it sounded like a clever twist on a familiar idea. But the more I watched clients struggle with my one‑size‑fits‑all approach, the more that rule echoed in my mind. People don’t learn the same way. They don’t process change the same way. They don’t respond to pressure the same way. And yet I was treating every organization as if they were identical.

The breakthrough came when I stopped asking, “Why don’t they get it?” and started asking, “What am I missing?” That shift changed everything. Instead of pushing against resistance, I became curious about it. Instead of assuming reluctance, I looked for the underlying concern. Instead of forcing my approach, I adapted to theirs.

When I began listening—truly listening—I discovered that clients weren’t resisting the change. They were protecting something they valued: their people, their identity, their way of working. Once I understood that, the path forward became clearer. I showed more empathy. I asked better questions. I aligned my pace with theirs. And in doing so, I became a better consultant, a better partner, and a better learner.

Curiosity didn’t just improve my work. It reshaped my entire philosophy. It taught me that resistance is rarely defiance—it’s often a signal. A clue. An invitation to understand the world through someone else’s eyes. And when you accept that invitation, you unlock the real engine of transformation: trust.

5. Deliberate Planning & Execution

Deliberate planning is not about rigidity. It is about intention—about knowing why you are doing something, how you expect it to work, and what you will do when reality inevitably pushes back. One engagement at a food processing plant taught me this lesson in a way no classroom ever could.

During a walk on the production floor, I noticed something that didn’t sit right. The process flow was fighting itself. Choke points were slowing everything down, and the cycle time was far longer than it needed to be. With the right redesign, I believed we could reduce the flow time by 80%. It was an audacious number, but the math supported it.

I assembled a team and we tore into the problem. We mapped the flow, challenged assumptions, and explored every possible configuration. After days of analysis, we landed on a bold plan: completely reconfigure the production line over a single weekend. If we executed it well, we could reduce the flow time from 450 seconds to 105.

We trained the staff, communicated expectations, and prepared for the controlled chaos of implementation. When Monday arrived, the new layout was in place—and the results were not what we expected. Flow time increased. Productivity dropped. The team was frustrated. The operators were confused. And the temptation to panic was real.

But deliberate planning doesn’t end when the plan is executed. It continues through the adjustment phase.

We turned to PDCA—Plan, Do, Check, Act—and dug into the root causes. What we discovered was simple but important: the system needed a burn‑in period. The layout was right, but the people needed time to adapt. So we intensified training, increased communication, and stayed close to the floor.

By the second week, flow time dropped to 300 seconds. Better, but not enough. We kept observing. We kept adjusting. Eventually, we realized the issue wasn’t the layout at all—it was line speed. Once we set control parameters around speed, everything clicked. By the third week, we hit our target.

That engagement reminded me of a truth I’ve carried ever since: a plan is not a prophecy. It is a hypothesis. You execute it, observe the gaps, and make deliberate, specific adjustments until the outcome matches the intent. Discipline is not about sticking to the plan—it’s about sticking to the purpose.

6. Shoulder‑to‑Shoulder Collaboration

For the first eight years of my consulting career, I lived almost exclusively in the world of telecommunications. I knew the rhythms, the metrics, the personalities. I was comfortable there—maybe too comfortable. Then, in 2013, I was assigned my first manufacturing engagement as an engagement manager. It felt like stepping onto a different planet. The noise, the pace, the physicality of the work—it all demanded a different kind of presence.

Very quickly, I learned that manufacturing doesn’t reveal itself from a boardroom. It reveals itself on the floor, in the hum of machines, in the hands of operators who know their craft better than any consultant ever will. If I wanted to make an impact, I had to earn their trust. And trust in manufacturing is earned shoulder‑to‑shoulder, not from a distance.

So I walked the floor. I listened. I asked questions. I learned names. I learned stories. I learned that the people closest to the work held the insights that would ultimately transform the operation. Together, we built escalation processes, strengthened corrective teams, and created a structure that allowed problems to surface instead of hide. We didn’t impose solutions—we discovered them alongside the people who lived the processes every day.

By the end of the engagement, 95% of the employees were involved in some form of corrective team. Everyone had a voice. Everyone had ownership. And the culture shifted from passive compliance to active contribution. The culmination of that journey came during the wrap‑up presentation. One by one, team members stood before the CEO and presented their work. Their pride was unmistakable. The CEO’s pride was even greater.

That moment stays with me because it captured the essence of true collaboration. Not the performative kind. Not the “consultant as hero” narrative. But the real thing—working side by side, solving problems together, and building systems that endure because the people who use them helped create them.

Shoulder‑to‑shoulder collaboration isn’t a technique. It’s a posture. It’s the belief that sustainable change is built with people, not delivered to them. And when you embrace that, the work becomes not just effective, but deeply human.

Here is Story 7: Prompt Responsiveness, rewritten in your unified, polished, executive–mythic voice.
Faithful to the events. Elevated in tone. No bullets. No slide formatting.

7. Prompt Responsiveness

Responsiveness is one of the simplest forms of respect, yet it is astonishing how often it is neglected. We’ve all felt the sting of being ignored—the unanswered message, the delayed reply, the promise of follow‑up that never arrives. It’s a small thing on the surface, but it communicates something profound: you don’t matter enough for me to respond.

I’ve never claimed perfection in this area, but I’ve always believed that getting back to someone when you said you would is one of the clearest signals of professionalism and care. When you respond promptly, you’re not just acknowledging a message—you’re acknowledging the person behind it.

One moment stands out from a few years ago. A client had reached out late in the evening with a concern about an upcoming executive session. It wasn’t urgent in the operational sense, but it was clearly weighing on him. I replied within minutes—not with a full solution, but with clarity: I heard him, I understood the concern, and I would address it first thing in the morning.

The next day, before I could even begin the follow‑up conversation, he pulled me aside and said, “Aaron, I knew you cared the moment you responded last night. I wasn’t expecting an answer—I just needed to know I wasn’t alone in it.”

That comment stayed with me. He wasn’t thanking me for solving a problem. He was thanking me for showing up.

Since then, I’ve heard variations of that same feedback from clients, colleagues, and partners: “You listen.” “You’re attentive.” “You make me feel like my issue matters.” None of that comes from grand gestures. It comes from the discipline of responsiveness—being present, being reliable, and honoring the commitments you make, even in the smallest interactions.

Prompt responsiveness is not about speed for its own sake. It is about signaling respect, building trust, and creating a sense of psychological safety. When people know you will respond, they bring you the truth. They surface issues earlier. They collaborate more openly. They feel valued.

And in a world where silence is often interpreted as indifference, responsiveness becomes a quiet but powerful form of leadership.

8. Implement Holistic Solutions

There is a particular kind of organizational chaos that looks productive on the surface—people busy, teams mobilized, projects everywhere—but underneath, it is nothing more than duct tape holding a system together. I’ve seen it many times, but one engagement stands out because it showed just how dangerous “activity” can be when it isn’t aligned to purpose.

The client was overwhelmed. A casual comment from the CEO had spiraled into more than two hundred projects across the organization. Teams were working hard, but not on the things that mattered. There was no control over time, budget, or impact. Every office had its own fixes, its own priorities, its own interpretation of what the company needed. The organization wasn’t transforming—it was drowning.

When we arrived, it was clear that no amount of incremental improvement would save them. They didn’t need duct tape. They needed a reset.

We began with a full assessment, stripping away noise until only the essentials remained. Ten key items emerged—ten levers that would materially improve cash position and move the organization toward its objectives. Not one of them was being worked on. Not one.

So we built a transformation office with a simple mandate: nothing moves without approval. Every project—over two hundred of them—was reviewed and classified. Red. Yellow. Green. Most were terminated. A few were re-scoped. Only the ones that truly mattered survived.

Then we created a rapid response team to attack two critical processes that were bleeding cash. The impact was immediate. Bad debt dropped. Cash flow stabilized. And for the first time in a long time, the organization could breathe.

From there, we worked with the C‑Suite and senior leaders to shape the Targeted Operating Model—structure, governance, priorities, and the discipline to stay the course. The transformation wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t fast. But it was real. And it saved the company.

Holistic solutions require patience. They require the courage to stop doing things that feel productive but aren’t. They require leaders to step back, see the whole system, and choose the long-term path over the quick fix.

Chasing squirrels almost killed that organization. Taking the time to think holistically brought it back to life.

9. Playful Appreciation

Operations consulting is not a job—it’s an odyssey. It takes you across industries, across continents, and into the inner workings of organizations most people will never see. It demands long hours, long flights, and long stretches away from the people you love. And yet, if you choose to see it, the work is filled with wonder.

Since 2005, I’ve been fortunate to experience moments that still feel surreal. I’ve stood beneath the Eiffel Tower with no crowds in sight, walked through the Louvre and approached the Mona Lisa without a single person between us. I’ve climbed the Great Wall of China, stared into the silent ranks of the Terracotta Warriors, and watched the sun rise over Mount Tai on my birthday. I’ve helped a team improve OEE by sixty percent despite a language barrier that forced us to communicate through gestures, diagrams, and shared determination. I’ve watched an airplane being wrapped in Disney designs, descended into a potash mine in Spain, and taken in the breathtaking landscapes of Brazil.

But the real magic has always been the people. The leaders who rediscovered their confidence. The teams who learned to trust each other. The clients who became friends. The laughter shared at 2 a.m. on a night shift. The quiet pride on someone’s face when they realize they’ve solved a problem that once felt impossible.

Consulting can be grueling. It can test your patience, your stamina, and your resilience. But if you look for it—truly look—there is joy woven into every engagement. A moment of connection. A spark of insight. A shared victory. A story you’ll tell for years.

Playful appreciation isn’t about ignoring the hard parts. It’s about choosing to notice the extraordinary moments that appear in the middle of them. It’s about remembering that even on the toughest days, you are witnessing things few people ever will. And it’s about carrying gratitude with you—not as a platitude, but as a practice.

Laugh each day. Find the wonder in the work. And never forget how lucky we are to do what we do.

10. Ethical Integrity

Ethical integrity is not a slogan. It is a discipline—a commitment to truth even when the truth is inconvenient, uncomfortable, or costly. In consulting, numbers can seduce you. Targets can pressure you. Expectations can corner you. But integrity is the line you never cross, because once you do, the work stops being real.

I learned this lesson deeply when I stepped into a new role as a director of operations overseeing multiple projects. It was a shift from delivering results myself to mentoring engagement managers and working directly with top executives. One project in particular tested the boundaries of honesty and performance.

The team had built a solid System of Work. Processes were improving. Engagement was rising. The organization was shifting in the right direction. But the numbers—the cold, unblinking numbers—refused to match the ambition. We were chasing a target that danced just out of reach, like a caffeinated squirrel darting through a forest. Instead of the expected twenty‑five percent improvement, we were sitting at fifteen. Respectable, but not what had been promised.

The CFO and I spent hours together, talking through the data like old friends catching up over coffee. He was sharp, thoughtful, and genuinely invested in understanding the gap. We both knew the work had impact. We both knew the people had grown. But the spreadsheet didn’t care about effort or intention. It only cared about results.

When it came time for project sign‑off, I made a choice. I told him the truth without varnish: “We covered costs, but that bullseye? We grazed it—we didn’t pierce it.” I expected disappointment. Instead, he thanked me. He appreciated the candor, the absence of spin, the refusal to pretend the numbers said something they didn’t.

That honesty became the foundation of a long‑term relationship. Years later, whenever I’m in his city, we still meet for coffee. The work we did together after that moment was some of the strongest of my career—not because the numbers were perfect, but because the trust was.

Integrity is the backstage pass to real partnership. It’s what turns clients into collaborators and collaborators into lifelong allies. And sometimes, that backstage pass comes with a side of caffeine and a reminder that truth, delivered with respect, is the most powerful tool we have.

11. Prioritize Long‑Term Success

Quick wins are intoxicating. They create momentum, build confidence, and reassure leaders that change is possible. But quick wins alone don’t transform an organization. They are sparks—useful, energizing, but fleeting unless they ignite something deeper. I learned this truth in a call centre many years ago, during an engagement that began with remarkable success and then unraveled in a way that revealed the real work of transformation.

In the first few weeks, everything clicked. The teams embraced the System of Work. KPIs improved. Supervisors were energized. Leaders were convinced they had finally cracked the code. The early results were so strong that people began to believe the transformation was complete. They mistook momentum for mastery.

But as the months passed, the cracks appeared. The cadence softened. Leaders drifted back into old habits. The frontline stopped preparing for meetings. The energy that had once fueled the quick wins evaporated. And when performance dipped, the organization fell into a familiar trap: recency bias. They judged the entire transformation by the last two weeks instead of the last six months.

That was the moment I realized the real work wasn’t about generating wins—it was about building sustainment.

So I shifted my approach. I spent more time with supervisors, reinforcing the fundamentals. I met individually with leaders, not to lecture but to understand what was pulling them off course. I rebuilt relationships that had grown quiet after the initial excitement faded. And I began presenting the same ideas in different ways to different people, knowing that repetition is not redundancy—it is reinforcement.

One executive told me, “Aaron, every time we talk, you bring me back to the long view. You remind me what we’re building, not just what we’re fixing.”  That comment captured the essence of sustainment.

Transformation is not a single message delivered once. It is a series of conversations—consistent, patient, and tailored to the person in front of you. It is challenging leaders when they slip into short‑term thinking. It is reminding them that a bad week does not erase months of progress. It is helping them see beyond the noise of the moment.

By the end of the engagement, the call centre had not only regained its momentum—it had built a culture capable of sustaining it. Leaders understood the system. Supervisors owned their routines. The frontline trusted the process. And the organization learned to evaluate performance through the lens of long‑term success, not short‑term volatility.

Quick wins start the journey. Sustainment completes it. And long‑term success belongs to the organizations that resist the pull of recency and stay committed to the path they chose.

12. Ego‑Free Authenticity

Consulting is an industry built on ambition. Every consultant I’ve ever met carries a quiet fire—the desire to grow, to advance, to prove their worth. I was no different. Early in my career, I chased promotions with the same intensity I brought to client work. And as I moved from consultant to senior consultant to engagement manager, I began to see how easily ego can slip into the driver’s seat.

Consulting firms often present their people in the best possible light. It’s part of the business. But when you hear your own accomplishments repeated often enough, it becomes tempting to believe the mythology. You start to think your title defines your value. You start to forget that consulting is, at its core, a role‑playing profession—and the role changes constantly.

The truth is simple: titles don’t matter on the job. What matters is whether you are selling or billing. If you’re not selling, you’re delivering. If you’re not delivering, you’re selling. Everything else is noise.

One moment crystallized this for me. A new consultant—six months into the industry—called with a few contacts he thought I should speak to. Instead of taking over, I asked him to have the conversation himself. I prepped him, coached him, and let him lead. It was a low‑risk environment, and it gave him the chance to hunt for new work with someone experienced in his corner. He didn’t cling to hierarchy. He didn’t worry about status. He simply wanted to help the organization. His lack of ego made him effective.

But I’ve also seen the opposite.

I’ve worked with people who let their title become a crutch. They would say things like, “I’m in the wrong role on this project,” or “Why do I have to do this?” or “That’s beneath me.” Some even whispered, “I could do a better job than X,” as if comparison were a substitute for contribution. Their attitude seeped into the team. Their work suffered. Their leadership evaporated. And the client felt it immediately.

When you put your ego first, you put the client last. And nothing destroys trust faster.

I’ve carried that lesson with me ever since. I’ve been part of the C‑suite and still spent days doing frontline observations with employees who didn’t speak English. I’ve been a Senior Engagement Manager reporting into a brand‑new Project Manager. I never felt diminished. I saw each situation as an opportunity—to learn, to support, to strengthen the team. That Project Manager still calls me a decade later to pick my brain. That’s the real currency of this work.

Consulting is full of egos. I have one too. But the greatest consultants—the ones clients trust, the ones teams follow, the ones who build legacies—are the ones who check their ego at the door and play the role the moment requires. Not the role their title suggests. Not the role their pride prefers. The role the client needs.

Authenticity isn’t about being humble for show. It’s about knowing who you are without needing to prove it.

13. Client‑Centric Adaptability

When I began consulting, I believed the job was about having the answers. I thought credibility came from expertise, from demonstrating that I knew more, saw more, understood more. Over time, I learned that real impact doesn’t come from answers—it comes from questions. And more importantly, from asking the right ones.

Clients often ask about benchmarking. They want to know how they compare to competitors, where they stand in the industry, how far they are from “best practice.” Early in my career, I entertained those conversations. But the more I worked across industries and countries, the more I realized how limiting benchmarking can be. It anchors ambition to someone else’s ceiling. It narrows the imagination. It convinces organizations that the best they can do is match what already exists.

One engagement made this painfully clear. We were working with a bottling company, and the plan we developed projected efficiency levels that exceeded anything they had seen before. According to the client, the numbers would make them better than Coke. Management was skeptical, but they approved the plan. And then something remarkable happened—we didn’t just hit the projection. We surpassed it.

That experience reinforced a truth I now hold as foundational: no two companies are the same. Their histories differ. Their cultures differ. Their constraints differ. Their opportunities differ. Benchmarking can provide context, but it should never define the limits of what is possible.

Build custom solutions because every organization deserves a path shaped around its own strengths, its own people, its own aspirations. Adaptability isn’t about bending to every request—it’s about understanding the desired outcome so deeply that you can design a solution that fits like it was always meant to be there.

Client‑centric adaptability means stepping into each engagement with humility, curiosity, and the belief that nothing is impossible. It means helping organizations become the benchmark others aspire to reach. And it means remembering that the best solutions are not copied—they are created.

14. Make the Complex, Simple

There was a time in consulting when we believed that the way to prove our value was through volume—thick binders, dense reports, endless slides filled with data. We thought clients needed to see the grind, the analysis, the hours behind the scenes. But all we were doing was dragging executives into operational weeds they had no business living in. We were confusing effort with clarity.

The truth is, mastering complexity is essential—but communicating it simply is a different skill entirely.

I learned this lesson in a mine in South America. My Portuguese was shaky then, and it hasn’t improved much since. But the language barrier forced me into a different mode of thinking. I couldn’t rely on technical jargon or elaborate explanations. I had to understand the details deeply, then translate them into something the executive team could absorb quickly and act on.

So I approached the analysis like a story.

I began with the Situation—the facts as they stood, without embellishment. Then I moved to the Complication—what made this site unique, what pressures and constraints shaped its reality. Finally, I laid out the Resolution—the steps required to move forward, framed not as a list of tasks but as a narrative arc the organization could follow.

I asked my consultants to do the same. Each slide became a miniature article: a headline that told the truth, a few key takeaways, and the implications that mattered. The details were still there—buried in our notes, ready when needed—but the conversation stayed at the right altitude. The executives remained strategic, not operational. They saw the forest, not the bark on the trees.

And something remarkable happened. The narrative unlocked understanding. The team saw their organization differently. They saw patterns, connections, and opportunities that had been invisible when buried under data. The story made the complexity accessible.

Since that engagement, I’ve carried the same discipline into every client interaction. I dive into the details, but I never drag the client there unless they ask. I think in stories. I communicate in arcs. I simplify without diluting.

Because when you make the complex simple, you don’t just inform—you empower.

15. Assume Positive Intent

Resistance is one of the most misunderstood forces in consulting. Early in my career, I saw it as defiance—an obstacle to overcome, a barrier to progress. But over time, I learned that resistance is rarely rooted in opposition. More often, it is rooted in care. People resist because something they value feels threatened. When you understand that, the entire dynamic changes.

One engagement made this lesson impossible to ignore. We were working with a telecommunications company that served both urban and rural customers. The System of Work we developed was sound—structured, clear, and effective. The urban team embraced it quickly. The rural team did not.

Their Frontline Manager, a seasoned leader with more than thirty years of service, pushed back at every turn. “This doesn’t work for my team,” he insisted. “It’s fine for the city, but not for us.” His frustration spread to his team, and soon the resistance felt immovable.

We tried different approaches—coaching, explanation, demonstration—but nothing shifted. Finally, I sat down with him one‑on‑one. Not to persuade. Not to correct. But to understand. I asked him what outcomes he wanted for his team. I asked him how he would design the system if he were in my position.

He paused, then offered a single, simple change: the Short Interval Follow‑Up. Weekly face‑to‑face meetings didn’t work for his team because they spent hours each day driving across rural highways. Bi‑weekly meetings made far more sense. He wasn’t resisting the system—he was protecting his people from a requirement that didn’t fit their reality.

He had been right all along. He just couldn’t articulate it in the language of process design.

When we adjusted the cadence, everything shifted. The team engaged. The manager relaxed. The system worked. And the resistance dissolved—not because we pushed harder, but because we listened.

Assuming positive intent doesn’t mean ignoring challenges. It means recognizing that behind every objection is a story, a concern, or a commitment worth understanding. When you approach people with curiosity instead of judgment, you discover that most resistance is simply someone trying to do the right thing in the only way they know how.

And when you honor that, great things happen.

16. Learning Mindset

Consulting is a profession built on movement—across industries, across borders, across cultures. Every engagement introduces new people, new systems, new constraints, and new opportunities. Early in my career, I treated each project as a standalone challenge. Over time, I realized that every engagement is also a classroom, and the most successful consultants are the ones who never stop being students.

One of the clearest examples of this came from the evolution of corrective teams. In my early days, we often assigned these teams to clients with minimal consultant involvement. We assumed that giving them structure and direction was enough. But without deeper engagement, progress stalled. Meetings dragged. Decisions lingered. Improvements took far too long to materialize.

As I grew into the engagement manager role, I changed my approach. Either I or a senior consultant became actively involved in the corrective teams—not to dominate, but to guide, to accelerate, to model the discipline required for real change. The difference was immediate. Processes improved faster. Teams gained confidence. Leaders began to see the power of structured problem solving.

Later, when I began training consultants and senior consultants, I taught them the same principle: don’t stand on the sidelines. Get involved. Support the engagement manager. Help the client build momentum. The goal wasn’t dependency—it was capability. By working shoulder‑to‑shoulder with the teams, consultants learned how to drive outcomes, and clients learned how to sustain them.

Every project, every conversation, every challenge is an opportunity to refine the craft. You learn what works, what doesn’t, and why. You learn how to adapt your approach to different cultures, personalities, and organizational realities. You learn that improvement is not a destination—it is a discipline.

A learning mindset is not about humility for its own sake. It is about recognizing that mastery is built one engagement at a time, one lesson at a time, one insight at a time. And when both consultant and client embrace that mindset together, the results are not just better—they are transformational.

17. Display Client–Community–Consultancy Mindset

Some engagements remind you that consulting is not just about systems, processes, or performance—it’s about people, communities, and the small moments that reveal who we truly are. One such moment unfolded during a Leadership Development engagement where I encountered a manager whose self‑perception didn’t quite match the reality around him. He believed he was a respected leader. His team felt otherwise. The gap between those two truths was wide, and part of our work was helping him see it.

During the engagement, the client organized a charity fundraiser—a pie‑throwing contest where participants could bid for the chance to throw a pie at someone. It was lighthearted, communal, and for a good cause. The manager desperately wanted to win. He wanted the spotlight, the laughter, the moment of being chosen. But his bids kept falling short, and with each failed attempt, his shoulders sank a little lower. For all his bravado, he was human—wanting to belong, wanting to be seen.

With a minute left in the bidding, something unexpected happened. The consultants and the consultancy quietly pooled money together—not for recognition, not for credit, but simply to lift someone up. An anonymous bid was placed, large enough to secure his victory. When his name shot to the top of the list, his face lit up with a joy that was unmistakably genuine. For a moment, he wasn’t the manager struggling with self‑awareness. He was just a person who felt supported.

That moment captured the essence of the Client–Community–Consultancy mindset. We weren’t just there to deliver a project. We were part of their world—supporting their cause, honoring their community, and strengthening the human fabric that makes transformation possible. The client benefited. The community benefited. And the consultancy lived its values in a way no slide deck could ever express.

Consulting is at its best when it transcends transactions and becomes partnership. When you invest in the client’s world, the client invests in the work. And when you honor the community around them, the consultancy flourishes—not because it seeks reward, but because it acts with heart.

18. We Customize the Solution for the Client

There is a moment in every transformation when the client realizes the solution was never meant to be a template. It was meant to be theirs—shaped by their people, their rhythms, their constraints, their aspirations. One engagement in particular made this truth unmistakable.

We were working with a client who had embraced the System of Work with genuine enthusiasm. They understood the principles. They followed the cadence. They executed with discipline. But something wasn’t landing. The structure felt heavy. The meetings felt forced. The system was technically correct, but it wasn’t alive.

So I sat down with the team and asked a simple question: “What would make this yours?”

At first, they hesitated. They didn’t want to break the rules or deviate from what they assumed was the “right” way. But as the conversation unfolded, their ideas began to surface—small adjustments, subtle shifts, ways to align the system with the natural flow of their work. They weren’t trying to escape the discipline. They were trying to make it fit.

We listened. We adapted. We customized.

The transformation was immediate. The cadence became natural. The conversations became meaningful. The system stopped feeling like an external imposition and started feeling like an internal engine. They owned it—not because we handed it to them, but because we shaped it together.

That experience reinforced a principle I now consider non‑negotiable: no two clients are the same. Even when the underlying methodology is consistent, the expression must be unique. A system that ignores context becomes a burden. A system that embraces context becomes a catalyst.

Customization is not compromise. It is craftsmanship. It is the art of taking a proven framework and tailoring it so precisely that it feels inevitable—like it could never have been any other way.

When clients see themselves in the solution, they don’t just adopt it. They protect it. They improve it. They sustain it. And that is when transformation becomes real.

 19. Quality Personnel & Deliver Legendary Results

Legendary results are never an accident. They are the product of people—capable, committed, and aligned—who rise to the challenge with discipline and pride. Tools matter. Methodologies matter. But without the right people in the right roles, even the best-designed system collapses under its own ambition. One engagement early in my career made this truth impossible to ignore.

We were brought in to support a client whose operations were struggling under the weight of chronic inefficiencies. The processes were inconsistent. The culture was fatigued. The leadership team had lost confidence in their ability to turn things around. They didn’t need a miracle—they needed belief. They needed structure. And they needed the right people to carry the work forward.

From the moment we arrived, it was clear that the frontline teams were capable. They understood the work intimately. They cared deeply about the organization. But they had never been given the clarity, coaching, or expectations required to perform at their best. They were operating in the dark, doing their best with what they had, but without a system to guide them.

So we built one.

We established a cadence of accountability, created visibility into performance, and taught leaders how to coach instead of command. But the real breakthrough came when we identified the individuals who had the potential to become the backbone of the transformation. They weren’t always the loudest voices or the most senior people. They were the ones who listened, who learned quickly, who cared about doing things right.

We invested in them—intentionally, consistently, relentlessly.

And the results were extraordinary. Performance surged. Variability dropped. Teams began solving problems before they escalated. Leaders who once doubted themselves became confident stewards of the system. The organization didn’t just improve—it transformed.

The client later told me that the most valuable thing we gave them wasn’t a tool or a process. It was people who believed in their own capability. People who understood the system. People who could carry the work long after we were gone.

Quality personnel are the engine of legendary results. When you find them, develop them, and empower them, the organization becomes unstoppable. The system becomes self-sustaining. And the results become not just impressive, but enduring.

Legendary performance is never delivered by chance. It is delivered by people who rise to the moment—and by leaders who know how to recognize them.

20. Take Care of Yourself

Consulting is a profession that rewards endurance. Long flights, long days, long weeks far from home—it becomes easy to believe that stamina is the same as strength. You push harder, sleep less, grind through exhaustion, and convince yourself that this is what commitment looks like. But there comes a moment in every consultant’s journey when the body delivers a message the mind has been ignoring.

Mine arrived in the middle of an engagement that demanded everything—complex operations, high expectations, and a client who needed steady leadership. I had been running at full speed for months, telling myself I could rest later. Later never came. One morning, my body simply refused to cooperate. I wasn’t sick. I wasn’t injured. I was depleted. Completely, undeniably depleted.

I still remember sitting alone in my hotel room, staring at the wall, realizing that I had crossed a line without noticing. I had given so much to the work that I had nothing left for myself. And in that moment, a truth settled in: you cannot lead transformation if you are running on fumes. You cannot inspire discipline if you have abandoned your own. You cannot help others thrive while quietly burning yourself down.

So I made a choice. I stepped back. I rested. I rebuilt my routines—sleep, hydration, movement, boundaries. Not dramatic changes, just deliberate ones. And when I returned to the engagement, I was sharper, calmer, more present. The client noticed. My team noticed. I noticed.

Taking care of yourself is not indulgence. It is stewardship. It is the discipline of ensuring that the instrument—your mind, your body, your energy—remains capable of the work you are called to do. In consulting, where the pace is relentless and the stakes are high, self‑care is not optional. It is strategic.

You cannot pour from an empty cup. You cannot lead from a hollow center. And you cannot deliver legendary results if you are quietly falling apart.

Take care of yourself. The work will always be there. But you are the only instrument through which you can do it.

21. Take Time to Reflect Daily

In consulting, the pace can consume you. Days blur into weeks, weeks into months, and before you realize it, you’ve been moving so fast that you haven’t truly thought in a long time. You’ve reacted, delivered, solved, and pushed—but you haven’t paused. And without reflection, even the most disciplined consultant becomes a machine running on habit instead of intention.

I learned the necessity of daily reflection early in my career, during an engagement that demanded constant decision‑making. Every day brought new challenges—operational issues, leadership dynamics, shifting priorities. I was solving problems, yes, but I wasn’t learning from them. I wasn’t capturing the insights, the patterns, the lessons that would make me better tomorrow than I was today.

One evening, after a particularly intense day, I sat alone in my hotel room and opened my notebook. I wrote down what had happened—not the tasks, but the truths. What worked. What didn’t. What I had missed. What I had misunderstood. What I needed to do differently. It took ten minutes. But those ten minutes changed everything.

The next day, I walked into the engagement sharper. More aware. More intentional. I saw things I had overlooked. I anticipated issues before they surfaced. I understood the client’s dynamics with greater clarity. Reflection had turned experience into insight.

From that point forward, daily reflection became a non‑negotiable discipline. Not a diary. Not a ritual. A recalibration. A moment to step outside the noise and ask myself the questions that matter: Did I lead well today? Did I listen? Did I assume? Did I help? Did I grow?

Reflection is the quiet forge where wisdom is shaped. It is the difference between repeating the same year of experience twenty times and building twenty years of mastery. It is how you transform the chaos of consulting into a coherent journey of growth.

Take time to reflect daily. Not because it is pleasant, but because it is essential. The consultant who reflects becomes the consultant who evolves. And the consultant who evolves becomes the one clients trust to lead them through their most complex challenges.

22. Guide, Influence, and Provide Immediate Feedback

This was not natural to me. I had to learn it.

When I started in consulting, I struggled to give feedback. I could set people up for meetings with logic and instruction, but it wasn’t coaching. I wasn’t comfortable telling someone how they actually performed. Over time, I grew into it—slowly at first, then with confidence. This story takes place twenty years into my career, long after I had learned that real consulting requires intervention, not observation.

Before launching Tengu, I was filling in for a colleague on vacation and sat in on a client meeting. What I saw shocked me. Three things were unmistakably wrong for the seventh month of an engagement: people didn’t understand the KPIs, no one was prepared or knew the agenda, and the most senior person dominated the entire meeting. These are early‑phase issues, not something you expect after half a year of work.

I knew immediately that if I didn’t intervene, it would haunt me for weeks.

After the meeting, I called every key stakeholder and had real coaching conversations with them—walking through the KPIs, reviewing the agenda, and explaining the 40‑20‑40 principle of meetings. Then I called the Chair.

I told him plainly, “You need to stop talking in the meeting.”

I explained that in a performance meeting, his people should report what is happening, explain the variances, and present their actions. His role was to ask questions, challenge assumptions, and stay strategic. If he explained the indicators to them, he didn’t need them. They were capable, but they hadn’t performed because he hadn’t allowed them to.

He was stunned. Apparently no one had ever spoken to him that way. Then he said, “Aaron, you’re right. How do I take control of the meeting without doing all the talking?”

I told him, “You have an agenda with roles and expectations. Follow it. Ask questions. If you don’t like the answers, set actions. Hold people accountable. But don’t take the work onto yourself. The biggest complaint your people have is that you don’t let them do their job. So let them do their job—and expect them to deliver.”

The next week, after prepping everyone, I sat in on the meeting again. It was extraordinary. People were prepared. They understood the KPIs. They owned their actions. The Chair stayed strategic and asked sharp questions. The entire dynamic shifted.

Immediately afterward, he called me—energized, almost giddy.
“My people knew what was happening and had great actions to fix issues. It was so much easier this way than last week.”

That moment reinforced a truth I now consider non‑negotiable: if you don’t intervene when it’s needed, you are wasting the client’s time. Consultants are not passive observers. When we see a gap—whether with a client or internally—we step in. We guide. We influence. We provide immediate feedback so the work can move forward with clarity and purpose.

That is the craft. That is the responsibility. And that is how organizations get better.

 The 22 Basics are not a checklist to be mastered once—they are a discipline to be lived every day. They demand consistency when the work gets hard, humility when the stakes are high, and courage when the truth is inconvenient. They are the behaviours that keep consultants grounded when success tempts them to drift, and the practices that keep organizations moving forward long after the spotlight fades. If you commit to these fundamentals—not occasionally, not when convenient, but as a way of operating—you will not only deliver better results. You will become the kind of consultant people trust, follow, and remember. The kind who leaves every engagement stronger than you found it. The kind who builds a legacy worth carrying.