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Ask before you build
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I have a friend. A colleague. She is very interested in putting her knowledge to work. On her own. In the consulting space. I always tell her that selling air conditioners probably has a much better future. You know. Climate change. Installation fees. Recurring maintenance revenue. All that. But she loves infrastructure. Let her be. She wanted to know how to create a service for a particular government agency. My answer was simple. Ask them what they need. Do not spend three months creating a beautiful product that nobody has asked for. Start with this: Which part of your upcoming projects concerns you the most? Where are you lacking internal capability? What delayed your last procurement? Which commercial problems do you not want to repeat? Would you bring someone in for 8–12 weeks to resolve them? What would they need to deliver for the engagement to be worthwhile? And who actually holds the budget to commission the work? That last question matters. A lot. Because the person who loves your idea may not be the person who can buy it. As in any business, if there is no real need, you can have the best product, the best knowledge and the most impressive PowerPoint in the world… And still have no clients. Things I know clients may be interested in include: ​THE ROOM: 15 Great Lessons of a Successful PPP Project​ ​THE ROOM: The 15 Top Lessons of a PPP Project Nightmare​ ​THE ROOM: How to Break Into PPPs (Without the Bullshit)​ ​The ROOM: The ONLY way of doing a proper procurement process​ ​THE ROOM: Back-to-Back PPP Gap Analysis Explained​ ​THE ROOM: The Top 10 Errors That Kill Your PPP Deal​ ​THE ROOM: How to Deal with Frustrating Lenders' Approvals in PPPs.​ ​THE ROOM: THE ROOM: Minimum size for a PPP Project​ ​THE ROOM: Buildings in PPP - Discussions with an African colleague​ ​THE ROOM: Key Challenges and Solutions in PPP Highway Projects - 5 Clauses You Should Improve​ Or… of course, you can have them all… and many other interesting lessons in The Room. ​The Room​ PD 1: If you liked this email, don't keep it in secret and forward it to a friend. They will thank you enormously one day. PD 2: If somebody has sent you this email and you want to receive emails like this yourself, visit vicentevalencia.com PD 3: If you want unsubscribe, click the link below. |
Vicente Valencia
Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
Governments love plans. Ten-year plans. Twenty-year plans. In NZ, we are bold and we have now even a thirty-year plans. A great recollection of projects, without a vision. But still… Beautiful documents. Pipelines. Strategies. Dashboards. Digital systems. All useful. They normally forget one small thing… Very small… Almost invisible… Someone still needs to do the work. That’s it. Someone needs to understand the information. Challenge the assumptions. Structure the project. Run the...
You don’t need to be loud to be powerful. But you do need to stop hiding behind safe opinions. Mainstream opinions. Collaboration. Governance. Value for money. Quality. Those words per se mean nothing. They have been used so much that they have become empty. Give me an example. Be specific. What exactly do you mean? Give me your definition. If you believe something deeply, say it. Stand by it. Own it. And own the reaction too. The people who matter won’t always agree with you. But they will...
Not the usual story about engineering genius. When George Washington Goethals took control of the project in 1907, he inherited something close to a nightmare. The French attempt had collapsed. Two American chief engineers had already left. The workforce was enormous, multinational and frustrated. People lived and worked in brutal conditions, with disease, landslides, accidents, racial discrimination and constant labour disputes surrounding the project. Goethals was a military engineer. You...