The Thing That Actually Loses Consulting Engagements
It is almost never the analysis.
Engagements go sideways because somebody said they would send the vendor list and did not, or because the client believed the second workshop was in scope and you believed it was not, or because a decision made on a Tuesday call quietly failed to reach the person who needed to act on it. Small operational leaks, compounding.
The common factor is that the commitment existed in a conversation and never made it into writing. Consulting runs on a chain of verbal agreements, and every link in that chain depends on one person, usually you, remembering it accurately while simultaneously running the meeting.
That is a poor system, and it is the default one.
Why Note Taking Fails Precisely When It Matters
Note taking works fine on a quiet call. It fails on the call where the client's operations lead pushes back on the timeline while the CFO reframes the budget question and someone mentions, in passing, a compliance review nobody told you about.
That is the call where you needed the notes, and it is the call where you got the worst ones, because writing competes with the thing you were hired for. You cannot fully think through a client's objection while transcribing the previous sentence. Something has to give, and what gives is either the note or the thinking.
Consultants generally choose the thinking, correctly, and then pay for it later at eleven at night reconstructing the call from four fragments and a hunch.
Capture the Conversation, Not the Video
The obvious fix is to capture the call. The reason more consultants do not is that "capture" has historically meant video, and video introduces problems that outweigh the benefit.
