Hello there to my little corner of the republic of newsletters!
Firstly - welcome to all of the new subscribers. Quick background and refresher for those who are new:
I'm Tom Critchlow, independent strategy consultant in Brooklyn, NY. This newsletter is mostly filled with musings on media, consulting, digital art and whatever else is interesting to me right now. I do a bunch of blogging over here: https://tomcritchlow.com/ and that's probably where you signed up. Welcome! (and of course, there's an unsubscribe button at the bottom).
This newsletter has no real theme or direction but there's just been an accumulation of *things* that I feel add up to a "thing worth sharing" but it's mostly just a list of links I've enjoyed recently...
Consulting Fiction - novels about consulting are pretty few and far between in my experience so it was a delight to stumble across Venkatesh Rao's old story The Art of Gig. This fast-paced adventure starts with a 2x2 and quickly dives head first into Structured Conversation Operations™.
This prompted me to make a (short) list of great works of fiction that appeal to the life of a consultant: stories about consultants.
Indie Consulting - what is indie consulting anyway? Venkatesh (again!) posted a deeply interesting and navel-gazing speculation on some different types of indie consulting in a twitter thread here. (Can you locate yourself on the 2x2?)
Oh - and Venkatesh just started a $5 / month newsletter for indie consultants specifically, called - you guessed it - the art of gig. You should subscribe right here - the first email goes out this week and it should be excellent.
Diagrams & Mental Models - a coffee meeting with a friend the other day blew my mind when he showed me a *new type of diagram*. Why is diagramming and doodling so powerful for consultants? I think it's because the unit of work is the mental model. Creating, challenging, clarifying mental models is the essence of a consultant (I think). Anyway - I've got a whole blog post brewing here but I'd love to hear from you: what diagrams and visualizations are your go-tos? Who have you learned from here? I posted a thread on Twitter and there's already some great responses. Add yours too!
Narrative & Consulting - Narrative arc is important to any consulting relationship. Controlling how the organization sees you and your work is very important and can make or break a contract renewing. My friend Arnold posted a really fascinating post managing the narrative arc where he links to a podcast from A16Z with Brian Koppelman. They explore the concept of "Showrunner" which was a new one to me but really feels like a great analogy to CMO (or consultant) within an organization. Have a listen and read Arnold's post and let me know how you think about managing the narrative arc in your work...
See also: I really *love* seeing independent consultants actually show their work so this post from buddy Elan Miller was wonderful to see. Real work! Real slides! Real thinking! Love it. Narrative-drive product development.
Book writing! - I've been writing about independent consulting work a bunch over the past 6 months and I'm starting to explore turning that writing into a book. Working title: The Strategic Independent. After my last post (called the strategic independent) and the positive reactions to it - I've started to consider finding an agent/publisher for this book. I've got ~20k words posted on my blog and another ~20k in draft so I think I have enough to talk about with an agent/publisher! Any intros or suggestions send em my way please.
Also - if you enjoyed my last post I recorded a podcast all about that post where I explain some of the thinking in more detail (and hilariously try and describe the diagrams with the podcast host!). Listen to the episode here on the Ditching Hourly podcast.
The art-business-consulting-made - This is an aside but as well as indie consulting I run an art business with my partner called Fiercely Curious and we have an art show in Manhattan this week May 1 - 5. More details here. Entry is $15 or something but I have VIP passes so hit me up if you wanna go! Erin does all of the curation for the show and I think it looks absolutely amazing.
Thanks for reading! As always - hit reply with anything on your mind. I reply to everything.
Tom
Firstly - welcome to all of the new subscribers. Quick background and refresher for those who are new:
I'm Tom Critchlow, independent strategy consultant in Brooklyn, NY. This newsletter is mostly filled with musings on media, consulting, digital art and whatever else is interesting to me right now. I do a bunch of blogging over here: https://tomcritchlow.com/ and that's probably where you signed up. Welcome! (and of course, there's an unsubscribe button at the bottom).
This newsletter has no real theme or direction but there's just been an accumulation of *things* that I feel add up to a "thing worth sharing" but it's mostly just a list of links I've enjoyed recently...
Consulting Fiction - novels about consulting are pretty few and far between in my experience so it was a delight to stumble across Venkatesh Rao's old story The Art of Gig. This fast-paced adventure starts with a 2x2 and quickly dives head first into Structured Conversation Operations™.
This prompted me to make a (short) list of great works of fiction that appeal to the life of a consultant: stories about consultants.
Indie Consulting - what is indie consulting anyway? Venkatesh (again!) posted a deeply interesting and navel-gazing speculation on some different types of indie consulting in a twitter thread here. (Can you locate yourself on the 2x2?)
Oh - and Venkatesh just started a $5 / month newsletter for indie consultants specifically, called - you guessed it - the art of gig. You should subscribe right here - the first email goes out this week and it should be excellent.
Diagrams & Mental Models - a coffee meeting with a friend the other day blew my mind when he showed me a *new type of diagram*. Why is diagramming and doodling so powerful for consultants? I think it's because the unit of work is the mental model. Creating, challenging, clarifying mental models is the essence of a consultant (I think). Anyway - I've got a whole blog post brewing here but I'd love to hear from you: what diagrams and visualizations are your go-tos? Who have you learned from here? I posted a thread on Twitter and there's already some great responses. Add yours too!
Narrative & Consulting - Narrative arc is important to any consulting relationship. Controlling how the organization sees you and your work is very important and can make or break a contract renewing. My friend Arnold posted a really fascinating post managing the narrative arc where he links to a podcast from A16Z with Brian Koppelman. They explore the concept of "Showrunner" which was a new one to me but really feels like a great analogy to CMO (or consultant) within an organization. Have a listen and read Arnold's post and let me know how you think about managing the narrative arc in your work...
See also: I really *love* seeing independent consultants actually show their work so this post from buddy Elan Miller was wonderful to see. Real work! Real slides! Real thinking! Love it. Narrative-drive product development.
Book writing! - I've been writing about independent consulting work a bunch over the past 6 months and I'm starting to explore turning that writing into a book. Working title: The Strategic Independent. After my last post (called the strategic independent) and the positive reactions to it - I've started to consider finding an agent/publisher for this book. I've got ~20k words posted on my blog and another ~20k in draft so I think I have enough to talk about with an agent/publisher! Any intros or suggestions send em my way please.
Also - if you enjoyed my last post I recorded a podcast all about that post where I explain some of the thinking in more detail (and hilariously try and describe the diagrams with the podcast host!). Listen to the episode here on the Ditching Hourly podcast.
The art-business-consulting-made - This is an aside but as well as indie consulting I run an art business with my partner called Fiercely Curious and we have an art show in Manhattan this week May 1 - 5. More details here. Entry is $15 or something but I have VIP passes so hit me up if you wanna go! Erin does all of the curation for the show and I think it looks absolutely amazing.
Thanks for reading! As always - hit reply with anything on your mind. I reply to everything.
Tom
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