The past year I have been working as consultant in Customer Relationship Management for a large consulting firm, in this post I shall look back on the lessons learned.

Communicate about what you are able to do. Your clients, as well as your manager should be aware of what you are able to do for them. Some people complain they never get the chance to show their qualities, but people will only ask you to do things if they know you are the man for the job. So talk about what interests you, talk about what you have done in the past and show excellent results.

Also I believe it’s very important to communicate about what you are not able to do. With your clients this means setting the scope of your project, make sure the boundaries are clear and (over)deliver. With your manager this means talking about what skills or knowledge you miss, what’s going well, what’s not going well. I have the (maybe misguided) belief that there is nothing I can’t learn, if I do not know how to do something, either someone hasn’t explained it to me well enough or I haven’t put in the effort to learn. I notice that a lot of people starting a new job have a problem with acknowledging they do not know how to do something. Not knowing something is not a problem, not making sure you learn is.

Deadlines are important, communication is key. One of the biggest compliments I got this year was “if we ask you to do something, we know you get the job done”. When I asked to compare me with someone else, the main reason was that I communicated about my progress, where others wouldn’t. The most horrible thing for a manager is to find out that something is not even close to ready the day before the deadline. That means there is no time left to fix whatever is the problem. Be open about your progress, if you need help, you need help, it’s not that big of a deal. With clients it’s quite simular, don’t create unwanted surprises, if people understand what is causing a delay they mind it a lot less.

If you feel sick, stay home. No matter how you try, sometimes you’re just better off staying in bed. Nothing worse than having to correct a days work just because you weren’t able to concentrate.

I know none of these are shocking new findings, you might even say they’re just common sense. Still you can see people struggle with these issues almost daily..