Mo asks Monty Hamilton: Take us back to the moment when you realized that growth was great and it was something you wanted to focus on.
- Monty landed a job at Arthur Anderson Consulting out of business school, where he got his start learning how to program in COBOL. Business process reengineering and strategy became part of his day to day eventually. It was there that Monty met the group of guys that would start Clarkson Consulting with him in North Carolina.
- Business development came into the picture after Monty realized that if he could sell work where he lived, he wouldn’t have to travel far from his new family. His success became a matter of landing new work, so he decided to become good at it.
- Business all boils down to relationships and solving problems. Monty realized that going into a relationship with the goal of making a sale was counterproductive and so committed to a mindset of helping instead.
- You've got to spend an adequate amount of time appreciating the problem. If you can help a person identify and paint the picture of how gnarly their problem is, then you’re in the right room.
- Appreciating the problem starts with listening and asking good questions, and then discovering whether the issue is a symptom of the problem or if there’s something deeper.
- What are the upstream and downstream effects of the problem? Who else is impacted by it?
- What’s in it for the person you’re talking to if you can help them solve the problem? How will it help their career?
