That time has rolled around again when a major client decides to shift direction. In this case, the client has moved to an “internal first” approach in which all projects are by preference run by internal staff rather than consultants or vendors. Part of a rather neat way of upskilling their permanent people.

I have been through this two or three times before. It is an expected part of the corporate life cycle. The challenge is not the decision itself, but how you handle it. Given the nature of what I do and the skillset I have, I am usually involved in several projects at once, each with its own timeline and statement of work. Even though I have been working on multiple projects over the last couple of years for the same global group, they will not all finish neatly at the same time. About half will wrap up at the end of the financial year. but one will carry on for a couple of months beyond that.

This leaves me with only a 50 percent commitment for the first 2 months of 2026. Normally this is not a problem. You simply take on additional clients, join my fellow LDC Via members on other projects, and carry on as any consultancy would. This time is a little different because I have been on call for this particular client for more than a year. Moving back to a restrictive and rigid time allocation could spoil an excellent existing relationship.

So how should I handle it?

In this case, skill development has come to the rescue. Like everyone else, I have been upskilling in AI and related technologies, but the deeper I dug into the true nuts and bolts of its implementation rather than simply jumping on the bandwagon, the more I realised how serious a discipline it really is. AI integration is far more than bolting a chatbot on top of your database. There is an enormous amount of nuance and variance in structure and architecture if you want it to be genuinely useful to a client.

Add a few months of relatively fluid time, and the situation more or less screams “deep dive learning”. Fortunately, there are proper boot camps where you effectively become a developer for a couple of months, work in sprints, and demo at the end of each one. It is an intense way of learning, and the one I have enrolled in and paid for should fill the gaps in the AI knowledge I have identified from my work so far.

It also means I will remain on call for the major client through January and February, giving them the level of delivery they want at the price that suits us both. I get the learning in, and the next client benefits from everything I have picked up.

What surprises me is how new this mindset seems to be for some colleagues. This is not contractor thinking. This is consultancy thinking. You plan ahead by at least three months, build your capabilities, and make sure that for the next engagement you’re stronger than the last.

And on that note, if you are looking for a technical PM or an integration architect at the end of February, do feel free to knock on my door. Or speak to LDC Via and we will see how we can help.

This is an insight that struck me recently, though it’s hardly new. In fact, anyone working in marketing or public relations will tell you the same: people, as individuals, are intelligent. People in groups, however, can behave in very odd ways.

So how does this play out in the corporate world? It often comes down to the gap between how small groups of experts expect people to react and how large organisations know people actually react.

Take something as simple as installing software. If you give a set of instructions to technical experts or developers, they’ll follow them making intuitive choices along the way. Rarely will anything need spelling out. The target audience will just handle it.

Now compare that with giving the same instructions to the general public. Suddenly you need to specify every click, every option, every screen. What feels like minutiae to an expert is essential detail to ensure success for the rest of humanity.

Now you have this understanding, you can explain it to your experts as they will often wonder why corporate infrastructure demands such exhaustive, step-by-step detail. To the expert, it feels pedantic, even pernickety and pointless. But for a corporate support team, responsible for thousands of people with widely varying levels of knowledge it is just dealing with a very broad baseline of humanity.

Because in that large, mixed pool of users, someone will get it wrong. Someone will click the wrong thing, misread the obvious, or inadvertently cause chaos. And if support hasn’t built in the safeguards, they’re the ones left cleaning up the mess.

So next time you find yourself rolling your eyes at “silly” questions from corporate support, remember: they’re not being awkward. They’re working to a broader baseline of understanding, one designed to prevent the inevitable finger-pointing blame game from happening

One of the core differences I’ve found between the highly technical work I did for most of my career and the more managerial, higher-level work I’ve focused on in the last decade is the need for certifications.

When you’re purely technical, certifications are often slightly looked down on. Think back to the old MCSE days: we’d do boot camps, pass them in droves, and they became less and less relevant. On top of that, so much technical work is done in ways the vendor never intended. Salesforce and IBM are both particularly famous for this.

In integration work I often found ways to do what they didn’t want you to do or to get round things without paying extra. Certifications mattered very little. You went to technical interviews, had proper conversations, and your reputation for solving problems, plus the evidence on places like this blog, proved you were worth the money.

In the managerial space, it’s harder. Almost everyone can talk the hind legs off a donkey. People are very good at making a case because they’ve sold projects and big ideas for years, and they’re used to selling themselves. So when I reviewed my CV (as I do every six months) and asked, “What can I update to show I’m better at my job for a client?”, there wasn’t a great deal I could change. I had more projects under my belt and more experience, of course, but it didn’t give me much I could actually update. Unlike technical roles, much of management has been, frankly, the same for decades, if not centuries.

So what to do? Well, I’ve sounded out clients informally and looked at what potential roles are wanting, and I’ve landed on a list of qualifications, courses, and bits of paperwork I should complete to demonstrate the progression I want to show as an individual and a consultant. Quite a lot of them are stuff I have been actually practicing for many years, so passing should hopefully be a case of phrasing my existing knowledge in the format the examiners want, but some will be genuine learning, and that is always fun.

This post is mainly a line in the sand for me, something I can update over time, but it should also give others an indication of what you might need if you’re heading down a similar path. They are as follows:

• PMI Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)
• PMI Project Management Professional (PMP)
• ITIL Foundation
• SAFE for Teams
• BCS Certification in Business Analysis (Level 4)
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) ¹

Then the Big boys that will take some time to complete

• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305)
• CII RQF level 6

1. This one is more an in-passing item [↩]