Been talking to my Dad a bit about the nature of consultancy – principally round the difference between consultants that tell you what you want to hear, and those that tell you what you need to hear. My Dad has always fallen into the latter camp – rarely sugarcoating difficult news, that’s his style, through well over 30 years of corporate lawyering – and I think I do too (although PR consultancy tends to require a bit more… tact).

One of the things that’s really satisfying is when a client takes on a piece of advice, acts on it and changes the way their company operates.

In the context of social media communications as part of corporate communications, I’ve had a considerable amount of experience of this lately. One client in particular took on the advice we gave and has been doing a great job of it – and the feeling you get when this happens is what makes the job worthwhile, and it’s when you know you have a client you’ve got the potential to do great things with.

Great fun. A nice perspective for me to take as I lean back and look at things from the comfortable distance of a sabbatical.