Comings & Goings
Are you moving to Detroit? Friends often ask this after I share about Foresight's several current clients there. Relocating would ruin the magic. Shifting locations every few weeks provides a welcome and invigorating change of perspective. Being in town for a limited period also creates a defined window of opportunity that can help facilitate and focus meeting scheduling. Consulting is similar. While extended, multi-year engagements can be meaningful, most projects are generally less than a year. Time constraints, if properly set and managed, can be useful, urgency-generating tool. (It can also be an unnecessary, anxiety-inducing modality as well!) While united by a common figuring-out-the-future theme, Foresight's clients have diverse foci and sets of issues, and particular time frames. I'm not attachment adverse; I'm stimulation hungry, which has taken me years to learn to manage. Working on multiple projects expands my perspective, with one undertaking, or place, often informing another. If I can successfully manage it, I'm a better consultant because of the associations, connections, and diversity of pursuits. If necessity is the mother of invention, then discontinuity—of thought, perspective and even place—is what propels it. It’s not easy though. Lately, I’ve particularly enjoyed working with my Detroit business partner because, after lots of work, we’ve started to really understand how our differences can fit together, serve one another, and create a product that is better than what either one of us could produce solo. So why move when you can visit, and with such good company?
