Every time a new ISO or European norm drops, I watch the same split happen.
One group of consultants races to learn it first, then sells it back to you at a premium, one billable hour at a time.
The other group just tells you how to learn it yourself.
I’ve spent my career trying to be the second kind, even when it cost me the mission. I give clients everything: the method, the tools, the reasoning behind them, so they can act without me. Which means the people who hire me want ME on the team because they don’t have the bandwidth, not because they’re missing a secret they could get from anyone else.
It’s the same thing happening right now with AI. Consultants are rushing to test tools so they can sell you their “magic sauce.” Some of that knowledge is genuinely useful. Almost none of it needs to be bought. Ask Claude or ChatGPT to teach you directly and it’ll do it for free.
This isn’t a side principle for me. It’s movement 3 of how I run every mission: Give a Role. We don’t try to change people or hand them a destination to accept. We meet them where they are, and equip them to design, test, and carry the change themselves. An organisation that depends on us forever hasn’t actually changed anything.
Comment below and I’ll send you the exact prompt I use to learn new tools before anyone tries to sell them to me.
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