I'm back, and musings on managing consultants

So after excessive time away, I am finally back to writing this blog. I wish I could tell you that in the last 2 months, I have finished all my essays and am ready to go with b-school apps - but that would be a lie. Its mainly been a combination of busy projects, and believe it or not an actual social life.

So today I thought I would pose the question - what makes a perfect engagement / job / project / case manager?

There are, in my view a couple of archetypes. Note the definition of archetype – these are extreme examples. Any evident bitterness is my own, and not referable to any one particular manager J

1) The Micro-Manager (MM)

This person loves the detail, and doesn’t trust their team. They want to know what is happening every hour of every day, and if you have a meeting, they want to be in it too. Only really good thing about the micro manager is that the poor worker can disengage their brain – they won’t be needing to be the excel / ppt monkey this manager desires

2) The Insecure Competitor (IC)

This person is really worried that his or her team is actually better at the consulting gig than they are. Typical motivations for this include a recent promotion, a recent failed attempt at promotion, or general lack of faith in their own abilities. The Insecure Competitor (IC) exhibits many traits of the Micro-Manager, but adds a veneer of competitiveness – the team shouldn’t bother to have ideas because the IC will always trump them, even when the replacement idea is worse. In meetings, the team can try get a word in edgeways, but the IC will inevitably be there first. The worst part is, the IC will always take credit for your work

3) Content Free, Hands Off (CHFO)

The CFHO is a great believer in laissez-faire economics, without really understanding the implications of said theory. He or she will let the poor consultant “manage their own work”. No help is offered, and in my opinion no value is delivered. No one really knows what the CFHO does with their time.

I think though that a really good consulting manager has to combine characteristics of all three archetypes – the content knowledge of the MM, the thought leadership of the IC, and the independence for the team of the CFHO.

To be fair, it’s a tough gig – there is a reason why the case manager level is widely known as the worst level in terms of rewards v work across many consulting firms.

Any thoughts on this? Does anyone have a different type in mind?

Associates

So now onto the Associates. In reality, there are two type of As, the newbies who are fresh from business school without having been at the frim previously (the majority of hires in the States are like this), or the ones who have been promoted from SC, either via business school or not.

The newbie A will get assignments much like an SC, with a slight extra helping of responsibility. On a given project for example, the A might lead a workstream just like the SCs, but would typically be given the most difficult / important one. Expectations are also higher – after all the firm is paying you 40% more. Having said that, performance of new As often lags behind the seasoned SCs – the SCs simply have more hours on the ground doing consulting projects, and are familiar with management. However, where the As sometimes come out on top is by virtue of their wider work experience – it is not unusual to have As who have gone to business school looking for a career change and hence have a good bit of outside experience under their belt. Theoretically this gives them a “business voice”, the ability to talk knowledgably about business issues. I don’t buy it personally, but then again I’m not running a consulting firm.

As who have come up through the ranks are on a bit of a faster track than the newbie As. They know the territory and have either demonstrated A level skills already or have gone to business school. This means they get tougher and better assignments, and are on the track to team and job management much faster than newbie A.

Overall, the attrition rate is said to be highest amongst As. I haven’t done the analysis to back this up, but it feels right. I would take it one step further and say it is highest amongst newbie As – I suspect “come up through the ranks’ As stay at least until Engagement Manager.

Next post will be not be on Engagement Managers. I am working on one that announces why I am applying for business school – kind a of a cathartic reflection that hopefully will motivate me a little to get moving on GMAT study.

So now you think you know what you are doing ..

So, onto the next level – Senior Consultant (SC). In some ways, this one of the better places to be in a consulting firm. For your tenure, the pay is pretty good, the responsibility is nowhere near as much as higher levels, and you have been around long enough that you have a real identity with the firm. This last is more important than you might think – having a reputation at a professional services firm is crucial if you want to progress. By rep I don’t mean “check out Joe Blogs, he is a real ladies man”, but instead “Joe Blogs is the go to guy for customer segmentation models”. Yes, its not as cool, but it is how you get staffed on good projects, and where you are staffed is an important determinant of how well you do. Many a good worker has been screwed because they got staffed on a series of projects that didn’t let them “tick the boxes”.

Anyway, as an SC, you will almost immediately see a difference in the way seniors treat you. Even though the management model is pretty light touch even for newly minted consultants, it becomes even more so for SCs. You have been around for a few years, so people will start to only give you vague directions, and leave it to you to make some consulting magic happen. Hopefully you know enough to get things done – if not learn fast! Depending on the size of the team, you will be leading workstreams, or at the very least sizeable chunks of independent work.

Your soft skills will also need to be used quite often – even more than as a consultant, you will have your own clients to look after, either managing them or as direct relationships. Just as it is for anyone senior, you have to keep them happy. One technique I have found useful is to try and help them with something non project related that you have expertise in – I often find helping them out with Excel related issues is a great way to build credibility and trust.

Of course, keeping the client happy is the minimum requirement – you also need to make life easy for the engagement manager, and live up to the high standards set at a consulting firm. The rule is, always know the background to everything you do – be able to answer all the questions, even if the number that is being queried comes from the client. I don’t know is the absolute worst thing you can say. Also, make sure you raise issues quickly and transparently. Asking for help sourcing some benchmarks two weeks before a steering committee is much much better than not having them the day before.

Once you are an SC for a little while, its time to start thinking about business school. I will be a writing a post on why I want to go to business school (and where) in the near future, but for the SC job description, lets just say that it is an almost expected part of your career progression. You go away as an SC, and magically come back as an Associate. Therefore, you should be thinking about the process, what you need to do, and whether or not you want to go. 

Next post in this series will be on Associates. 

Fresh Meat

So I have just rolled off a lightning engagement of 3 weeks – fair bit of work, but the client was happy, my job manager was happy, and when the partners paid attention, they were happy. It got me thinking as to how the consulting role differs between levels – how is a grad’s job different from a case manager?, and so on throughout the levels. So here it is, the Consultant Insider’s guide to consulting levels. I will separate them into different posts as it might get a bit long.

For the purposes of this outline, I will use the following terminology – its not common across firms, so I have constructed an amalgam. Consultant will refer to wet behind the ears undergraduate hires. Senior Consultants are the promoted version of these – usually two years in. For MBA hires, or promoted SCs, I am going to use the term Associate. After this, the next stop is Engagement Manager, Principal then Partner. Ok – onto what they actually do. 

Consultant

As mentioned above, this bright eyed individual will come in straight from an undergrad degree. After a rigourous screening process (it really is – I participated in one last night – but more on that in another post), these kids are typically very smart, highly motivated, and after having gone through the interview process, actually have a decent personality – the really nerdy back room types get knocked back in an interview.

So what do we get these eager beavers to do? Well, when staffed, the ultimate first job a consultant does is baselining. This is essentially simple excel data cleansing and modeling, to give the rest of the team a good data source from which to prove and disprove their hypotheses. This is a relatively thankless job. You will be blamed for every error in the client’s data, team mates will bother you for updates before you are ready, and then blame you when the interim versions change. Stick with it though – a good baseline is an absolute necessity on most consulting projects. It also gives you a good appreciation for the basics of excel and possibly excel’s most important function – Pivot Tables. For an explanation – see this post by the Consultant Ninja.

That isn’t the only thing we ask newbies to do of course. New consultants start the long road to death by PowerPoint by getting successively larger sections of decks to create. When you start, we won’t ask to write many ages by yourself, but you have to learn fast. Interviews with competitors or client staff are another popular task – we might get you to come along to take notes, or more likely conduct them yourself. There may be more advanced modeling too, but I will expand on that in my Senior Consultant post.

Ultimately however, your job as a consultant is twofold – make your job manager’s life easy (give him or her some leverage), and when the odd senior person deigns to notice you, speak up and get noticed. New consultants have to be on senior peoples’ radars, else staffing becomes difficult.

Does anyone have any other thoughts on the job of a newly minted grad consultant?

I will post later on SCs.