I’ll leave the link at the end.

Would you know how to perform these functions?

It talks about:

• Risk detection instead of crisis management: Recognising risks before they escalate.

• Informed decisions at the right time: Structured risk and quality insights for fast, confident action.

• Proactive interventions: Keeping complex programmes on track.

• Transparency that creates trust: Clear, actionable risk transparency.

That sets the bar very high.

How would you manage the risks of a complex programme of projects?

Would you feel capable of performing these functions?

The first lesson of Unwritten Rules of Consulting will be about risk management.

A fairly simple formula for doing it, not for large programmes specifically, but for everything, even day-to-day tasks.

It’s based on anticipating risk.

You don’t need to know exactly which risk might affect you.

You don’t have to.

It will bring you closer to jobs like this and help you move up.

Anticipating risks means being one step ahead, even of your bosses.

It will be published on Friday the 10th, but it’s very important that you join before then.

In this mentorship, members don’t automatically get access to past lessons, only future ones.

Join here: LINK

The article I mentioned: here

Daniel A.
+13 years in Big4 consulting companies, where I serve as a Senior Manager | Top Account with +22k followers on LinkedIn.

> Invite a colleague here. Opt-in is limited to recommended people by members

See you.

Today, inside The Lead Identity Ahead, the unique mentorship program for IAM professionals or candidates, I have realised a bonus lessons about learnings, and common mistakes when working on an IAM Strategy project.

September Special Price for a limited time and limited seats. Here: https://www.skool.com/the-lead-identity-ahead-6191/about?ref=47a748de286440018e90b5c3f080bfc6

These are:

• How a Bad Kickoff Can Damage an Entire Project

• What to Do When Key Stakeholders Show Little Interest

• The Challenges of Integrating One IDM with Another IDM

• Unclear Scope

• Legacy Platforms

• Unpredictable Technology

• Too Abstract to Be Applied in Practice

• Too Many Decision-Makers

• They Pay for a 5, but Expect a 10

• Resistance to the Project

Join Here: https://www.skool.com/the-lead-identity-ahead-6191/about?ref=47a748de286440018e90b5c3f080bfc6

See you

Today, I want to show you exactly what it is and what you’ll find inside.

Because today is open HERE: LINK

Unwritten Rules of Consulting is a mentorship program for professionals in consulting and professional services who want to prepare for senior, management and leadership positions.

Because doing good work matters.

But at some point in your career, doing good work is no longer enough. You need to understand how consulting organizations actually work.

How to build visibility.

How to lead.

How to develop commercial awareness.

How to manage your career strategically.

How to communicate with senior people.

How to identify opportunities.

And many other skills that consulting firms expect you to develop — but rarely teach explicitly.

That is what we work on inside Unwritten.

First: understand what is holding you back

The program starts with two fundamental lessons:

Top Reasons Consultants Get Stuck

Identify the organizational and personal factors that can slow down your career — from visibility and leadership to career strategy, business skills, development and mindset.

Top Unwritten Skills

Discover the skills consultants need to progress but nobody formally teaches.

Together, they give you the starting point:

Identify what’s holding you back → Understand what you need to develop.

Then: train those skills

Every week, I publish a new practical lesson.

Real situations, frameworks and lessons based on 13+ years of consulting experience.

The objective is simple:

Identify what’s holding you back → Learn the unwritten skills → Train them.

This is not another course to buy and forget about.

It is a mentorship program designed to help you progressively prepare for the next stage of your career.

Take a look HERE: LINK

And joining early matters

Everyone who joins gets access to the foundations.

From there, members receive the new lessons published during their membership.

Lessons published before you join are not automatically included.

The earlier you join, the more of the program you experience.

And right now there is another advantage:

For a limited time, the first members can join Unwritten for a founding member price.

You keep your Founding Member Price for as long as you remain a member.

As the program grows, the price for new members will increase.

Founding Member places are limited and this price will only be available for a limited time.

No long-term commitment.

Cancel whenever you want.

If you want to understand the rules nobody explains — and start preparing for your next promotion — you can join Unwritten today.

HERE: LINK

See you

Daniel A.
+13 years in Big4 consulting companies, where I serve as a Senior Manager | Top Account with +22k followers on LinkedIn.

> Invite a colleague here. Opt-in is limited to recommended people by members

What that essentially means is doing strictly what was contracted, with enough quality for you to be able to invoice.

No more, no less.

For some time now, I’ve believed that this is wrong because it puts you on the path to becoming a commodity.

If you do the work just like everyone else, without adding much quality, what happens then?

The main deciding factor becomes price.

And then you have to compete on price.

If you deliver a 6, you should charge a 6.

Bad business, although understandable given how corporate contracts work.

But you have the alternative of creating products that are a 10 and charging a 10.

Those of you who have been following me since I started publishing on social media know that I now have two products:

The Lead Identity Ahead: a mentorship program for cybersecurity professionals who want to build a career in IAM. My LinkedIn posts about this are what made me known.

Unwritten Rules of Consulting: a new mentorship program designed to help you prepare for senior, management and leadership positions by developing the skills that consulting firms rarely teach explicitly.

My goal is for both of them to be a 10 in terms of quality.

Each one has its own community on Skool.

Given the positive response, today is the last day to join the Unwritten waiting list, as registration will open tomorrow.

Everyone on that list will receive special conditions, with absolutely no commitment to join afterwards.

Here’s the final link:

Link

See you.

Daniel A.
+13 years in Big4 consulting companies, where I serve as a Senior Manager | Top Account with +22k followers on LinkedIn.

> Invite a colleague here. Opt-in is limited to recommended people by members

Today I published a new application lab (lesson) about How to define an IAM Strategy.

Here: LINK

Why You Should Read This:

IAM Strategy is one of the skills that separates technical IAM professionals from Architects, Leads and Managers. This Application Lab will teach you how to assess an IAM environment, define where it needs to go and build a practical transformation roadmap.

This is for:

• Cybersecurity professionals

• IT professionals

• Project managers who wants to specialize in cybersecurity

It contains a lesson about how to:

• Identify the Main Pain Points: Identify the most significant IAM problems and understand their business, security and operational impact.

• Identify the Strategic Drivers: Understand why the organization needs to transform IAM and connect its problems with business, technology, security, compliance and operational Drivers.

• Assess the Current Maturity: Evaluate the main IAM capabilities using a structured 1–5 maturity framework and identify where the organization stands today.

• Define the Target Maturity: Determine where each IAM capability needs to be in three years and calculate the gap between Current and Target State.

• Define the Target Outcomes: Describe what each IAM capability should actually look like in the future instead of relying only on maturity scores.

• Define the Strategic Initiatives: Transform the identified gaps into a manageable portfolio of IAM initiatives focused on capabilities and outcomes.

• Prioritize: Decide which initiatives should happen first based on value, risk, regulation, dependencies, complexity, cost and time to value.

• Build the Three-Year Roadmap: Organize the initiatives into realistic transformation waves and define measurable outcomes for each stage.

• Sketch the Target IAM Architecture: Define how the main IAM capabilities should work together in the future without getting lost in product-level technical design.

• Define the Operating Model: Establish who owns IAM capabilities, decisions, processes and risks across IAM, Cybersecurity, HR, Business and IT.

• The Final Challenge: Turn everything into a five-slide executive IAM Strategy, choose the three initiatives you would fund first and defend your decisions.

Here: LINK

See you

There’s one that is particularly striking, and I heard it not long ago:

“There is no clear development plan for experts at my current company.”

If you think this way, you’re confused.

Especially because you’re approaching your relationship with your current job in the wrong way.

Do you want your company to give you a career plan?

And… why would they?

Is it right to delegate something so important to your life to a third party?

Companies generally define career plans, but these are adapted to their needs.

Their needs, not yours.

Let me give you an example.

A couple of years ago, I had to define the career plan for my business division. It was the training the team was expected to have from that point onwards, with an adaptation period.

So I chose certifications and studies that were required in the tenders we usually competed for.

That training will suit some people and not others.

Should those who don’t fit simply accept it or complain?

Having your own career plan is one of the most enriching things you can do.

Now, do it properly.

That’s where tutors or mentors come in.

It’s difficult for someone on their own to get their own career plan right.

The perspective of someone external, with more experience and a genuine desire to help, can help you accelerate.

Unwritten Rules of Consulting will be a mentorship program designed to help you accelerate your career in consulting or professional services.

There’s not long to go.

See you.

Daniel A.
+13 years in Big4 consulting companies, where I serve as a Senior Manager | Top Account with +22k followers on LinkedIn.

> Invite a colleague here. Opt-in is limited to recommended people by members

Replace “product” with “skill” or “service”.

A few years ago, I saw a company that didn’t apply this.

It was a vendor of a software solution.

In a client meeting, that vendor told them that its product was perfectly suited to their business case.

They did a PoC, and it really seemed that way.

Among other things, a menu with functionalities that fit perfectly caught everyone’s attention.

The client bought the tool and discovered that this menu was actually a third-party plugin that was currently unsupported and not recommended.

Many of the things they had been told required so much custom development that it almost looked like a completely different tool.

And what happened in the end?

A lot of dissatisfaction.

A lot of arguments.

Did the salesperson care?

No.

He had already achieved his sales objective.

It was almost as if they could have decided to burn the tool after buying it.

But that damaged the brand, because word spread among other competitors.

This is something that can be managed from both sides, both from the person buying and from the person selling.

We’ll cover this in Unwritten Rules of Consulting.

It starts soon.

You can find more information here:

https://agdani.com/Unwritten

See you.

—

Daniel A.
+13 years in Big4 consulting companies, where I serve as a Senior Manager | Top Account with +22k followers on LinkedIn.

> Invite a colleague here. Opt-in is limited to recommended people by members

One of them is “Top reasons Consultants get stuck”, which I’ve been researching for weeks.

And I’ll tell you something.

I’ve come to a conclusion.

A lot of people get professionally stuck.

But there are certain signs that can be detected in advance.

It’s like someone going to the doctor for a check-up and finding out that their vitamin or iron levels are low.

It doesn’t mean you’re ill, but you need to take care of yourself and take some medicine.

And that will help you get better.

This is similar.

I’ve prepared more than 20 symptoms or reasons for professional stagnation.

You don’t have to have all of them.

Nor none of them.

That’s very difficult.

But working to solve as many of them as possible will help you progress in your career.

Some are surprising.

Others, not so much.

The lesson will go through all of them, and I’ll analyze why each one affects you, what it means, and how NOT to interpret it.

The idea is for all of us to be able to make our own diagnosis and see whether our career is promising,

Or whether there are obstacles along the way that we’re not properly identifying.

The lesson will be included in the trial.

Registration will open next week.

I’ll leave the link to the waiting list below

Link.

Those who are on it will have special conditions when registration opens.

Today is the last day.

See you.

—

Daniel A.
+13 years in Big4 consulting companies, where I serve as a Senior Manager | Top Account with +22k followers on LinkedIn.

> Invite a colleague here. Opt-in is limited to recommended people by members

The worst one is generally always the same: wasting time on things that don’t sell.

For example, putting too much focus on the presentation.

On the PowerPoint.

And notice that the people I see selling best have barely prepared the presentation.

I can even mention cases of people who go in without a PowerPoint at all.

One of the people in charge I saw some time ago simply went in with a few notes in a notebook so he wouldn’t forget anything.

He remained very calm.

As we mentioned yesterday.

He had a sufficient command of what he was talking about.

And above all, he knew how to sell.

The most important skill in this kind of work is the ability to sell.

And it’s an unfair skill because many people who know how to sell don’t know their craft.

And the best technical people don’t usually stand out in this area.

But once you reach a certain level of responsibility, you have no choice but to sell.

And that can be external or internal.

It can mean selling a project or selling the work you’ve done to your bosses.

We’ll work on this in Unwritten.

Finally, some of you already know this, but the only way to access this newsletter is through a recommendation from another member.

If you have a contact who might be interested in these topics, I’ll leave the link here so they can enter their email, or you can do it yourself with their permission:

https://agdani.com/joinus

See you.

I’ve created a new Identity Job Report. The results are similar to the previous report.

Take a look, We’ll work on its insights in the upcoming lessons

IAM

Quick read

• IAM demand is overwhelmingly concentrated at Mid, Senior and Lead/Manager level; genuine Junior hiring is extremely limited across all three markets.

• Employers increasingly want a combinatio…

Read more

Generally, they’re things you pick up from watching people with more experience.

I could write an entire newsletter just about how people behave in meetings. There are many different ways to behave.

Some are rather intimidated, like The J. I’ll tell those of you who are new more about him another time.

Others behave dominantly and try to impose themselves in every possible way, almost always aggressively.

But there’s one behavior I’ve seen beat them all.

Every single one.

We can put it this way:

“The calmest person in the room usually controls the room.”

Everyone I’ve seen apply this has always come out on top in these situations.

If you internalize this, being subscribed here has already been worth it.

I’ll develop this further in Unwritten.

You can find all the information here if you’re interested:

Link to Unwritten

See you.

I have just enabled the second part of the Microsoft Entra ID Application Lab for members of The Lead Identity Ahead mentorship.

For those of you who are not signed up, there is a trial available to see how it works. The objective is to prepare to reach a senior position in Cybersecurity-Digital Identity. The link:

Link

You can find it in the Skool community in the classroom section.

You can also see the following publications in the calendar section.

Why start with Microsoft Entra?

Because statistically, it is the most requested. You can see it in the Identity Job Reports.

You will see that the entire module is focused on understanding an architecture based on Entra, rather than looking at very technical aspects. There is no need to memorize the code part.

Once understood, the final part is the most important: how to prepare for an interview, including likely questions and scenarios.

It is an extensive read and, if you decide to do your own tests, which I recommend, you can spend several hours on it.

If any member of the mentorship has problems with their access, let me know. For everyone else, I’m leaving the link again. The trial has no cost and you can cancel before it expires and you are asked for payment.

Link

See you

For you, the result of the work may have been of very high quality.

But what about your boss?

And your client?

And your client’s boss?

There’s a significant chance that at least one of them won’t like what you and/or your team have done.

I remember a project years ago where, in our opinion, we did a great job.

Then it turned out that:

My boss thought it was too much.

My client didn’t like it because he had asked us for some additional adjustments that were out of scope, and we couldn’t make them within the deadlines. It would have required several additional weeks.

My client’s boss didn’t like it either because there were some audit priorities we hadn’t addressed, but nobody had communicated them to us.

In other words, all three stakeholders thought the work wasn’t right.

Do you know who ultimately turned out to be right in that debate?

Us.

Not my boss, not the client, and not his boss.

Why?

Because we simply did WHAT THEY HAD HIRED US TO DO.

There are tools you should keep in mind almost as if they were the Bible.

One of them is requirements mapping.

We’ll cover this in Unwritten Rules of Consulting too.

I’ll leave the link here to what we’ll be doing.

Link Unwritten Rules of Consulting

See you.

One of my earliest mentors used to say that a good manager had the ability to see the future.

Maybe he was exaggerating.

There’s nothing esoteric involved.

But that person was able to prepare a scenario in which losing a project was actually something positive.

On another occasion, he anticipated a client complaint before the project had even started.

Those kinds of skills make you invincible.

And deep down, it was simply that this person was very good at anticipating risks. To the point of turning risks into opportunities.

The first lesson of Unwritten Rules of Consulting is about that.

Anticipation.

You might think:

“There are free courses on the internet.”

Of course there are.

But information isn’t really the problem.

There is an enormous amount of free technical content available today.

And yet, people still spend years professionally stuck.

Because knowing how to do the technical work and understanding how to progress in consulting are two different things.

That second part is what I’m building Unwritten Rules of Consulting around.

If you want to know more, the link is below. It starts in September.

https://agdani.com/Unwritten

See you.

Metrics.

Techniques.

Anything that could help me see problems before they actually became problems.

Some time ago, I tried using progress percentages.

The idea was simple.

You measure how much progress you should have made on a task, compare it with how much progress you’ve actually made, and if the difference is too big, you raise an alert.

It didn’t work.

Then I tried something else.

Intermediate milestones.

You define partial deliverables between tasks, and if one of them isn’t completed when expected, you raise an alert.

That didn’t work either.

I could probably write hundreds of words in this email about everything I’ve tried that didn’t work.

But there is one technique that does work for me.

I still use it today.

I first heard the idea from a famous businessman.

And it’s very, very simple.

I call it:

“50% of everything will go wrong.”

It’s based on removing the optimistic bias we tend to have when managing projects.

That assumption that somehow…

Everything will go well.

The interesting part isn’t assuming that everything will fail.

It’s what you do differently once you start managing a project with that assumption in mind.

“50% of everything will go wrong” is the first lesson of Unwritten Rules of Consulting.

If you want to know what I’m building, the link is below.

https://agdani.com/Unwritten

See you.

The one with less experience had been working for 10 years.

The thing is, one day they had to write a short white paper about identity management, the area I work in.

It was going to be about 10 pages.

Well, at one point, one of these geniuses says:

“Come on, let’s split it. You write the even-numbered pages and I’ll write the odd-numbered ones.”

And the other one says:

“Perfect, problem solved.”

I almost lost my faith in humanity right there.

How on earth was that problem solved…

Well, sometimes, this is the level.

I haven’t seen these people again, but as far as I know, they’re still working in those same jobs.

They both manage teams.

Don’t assume management roles are reserved for the most capable people.

This is one of the things I’ll be talking about in Unwritten Rules of Consulting.

See you.

But there’s one that is particularly striking.

The purpose is to talk about AI-related topics.

Or at least I think that’s what it is.

Random people always join because those who were invited delegate it to people who don’t even know what the meeting is about.

Topics are discussed that have nothing to do with the purpose of the meeting.

Which is normal.

Very few people actually know what it’s about.

And there are no conclusions.

No next steps.

Nothing.

But here’s the interesting part.

The value of the meeting itself is attending it.

People actually brag about the fact that they were invited.

You might think the problem here is incredibly obvious.

The absurdity of it all.

Well, no.

It’s apparently not that obvious when you see how many people attend this forum.

There are few things more draining than sitting through pointless meetings.

You lose time.

But you also lose focus.

And that matters.

Especially as you move toward senior and management roles.

You might think:

“I already have experience.”

But technical knowledge isn’t usually the problem.

People get stuck for other reasons.

Visibility.

Leadership.

Business.

Networking.

And sometimes, simply not understanding where their time and attention actually create value.

Sitting in meetings like a zombie doesn’t help.

This is the kind of thing I’ll be talking about in Unwritten Rules of Consulting.

See you.

Let’s call him LOR, to preserve his anonymity.

He had been at the company for many years, came from another generation, and had a much slower way of working.

I don’t know if it had to do with his generation or his age.

I don’t know.

But that’s how it was.

The thing is, as we started getting closer to the end of the year, he told us that very little more was going to get done during the time we had left.

We were at the end of October.

Yes, yes.

October.

From the perspective of someone working technically on the project, this sounds great.

Someone has just removed quite a lot of stress from your next two months.

But from a management perspective, you have a problem.

Because when a project is billed based on completed milestones, if the client doesn’t do their part to move the project forward, it becomes very difficult for you to invoice.

If they are already telling you that, from their perspective, the project isn’t going to move forward during the final two months of the year…

How exactly are you going to invoice them?

Because their answer will probably be:

No.

Nothing has progressed during these two months.

So there’s nothing to invoice.

Well, that’s the kind of situation you come across when you manage projects.

And once again, it’s something they don’t really teach you at university or in training programs.

It’s another one of the things we’ll cover in Unwritten Rules of Consulting.

And although the name says “Consulting”, this is useful for anyone who manages projects — or wants to.

The waiting list will close soon.

If you’re curious about what I’m building, the link is below.

https://unwrittenconsulting.substack.com/subscribe

See you.

That’s starting to change.

I’ve now opened a private Skool community for members of The Lead Identity Ahead.

Why?

Because the material is becoming too deep to manage properly through email alone.

The Role Fit Series is growing.

The Job and Market reports are growing.

And now the first Application Labs are starting to appear.

The first one is focused on Microsoft Entra ID.

It is not a short lesson.

It is designed to be studied over one or two weeks and focuses on the kind of practical skills that repeatedly appear in real IAM job descriptions.

Inside the community, members now have access to:

The Role Fit Series.

The first Application Lab.

Job and Market intelligence.

The publication calendar.

And from October, regular audio/video sessions analyzing real job opportunities.

The idea is simple.

I don’t want The Lead Identity to be just something you read.

I want it to become something that helps you become a stronger candidate for better IAM roles.

More structured.

More practical.

More focused on what companies are actually asking for.

The first members are already inside.

If you want to see how The Lead Identity Ahead works, the link is below.

See you.

You should have received an email invitation to join Skool, where I’ve created the new community for The Lead Identity Ahead.

If you’re not familiar with it, Skool is a platform designed specifically for communities and online learning.

You can create your account directly from the invitation email and access the community. If you have any problem acce…

Read more