The importance of being selfish

As I recover from the rigours of the business school app process (no news yet, but I will update you once I know), I have begun putting together my thoughts on how the process has affected me. Its not finished yet, but in the meantime, find below some thoughts that recently coalesced while “mentoring” a junior colleague.

Talking to a colleague the other day, it struck me that one of they key things you need to learn in a consulting firm is that you need to be at least a little selfish to survive. As an incoming grad, its easy to kowtow to whatever everyone wants, especially when its partner doing the asking. “Need help with that? Sure, I am free”. Those words would escape my mouth all too frequently in my first couple of years. In the fullness of time however, I realized that no one was going to look after my time, or care about how many hours I worked, except me. So I started being a little selfish. If I was already working on something, and was asked to help out on something else, I was guarded in my reply, always checking I could fit it in without totally destroying my work life balance. Same was true on projects – I started out trying to work on everything, and now focus narrowly on my area.

I think the initial “everything to everyone” behaviour is common for consultants, perhaps as an artifact of how we are tossed, fresh from university, into a fast paced, high pressure work environment, and told that the only thing that matters is your work. The insecure overachiever type so common in consulting immediately interprets this as an order to do as much as possible, and hence the somewhat destructive work cycle of consulting begins.

If I have any advice for junior consultants, its this – think strategically about how much work you accept. Sometimes, for the good of your career, you have to accept doing work that takes you through the night and weekends (usually to build goodwill / relationships). Nine times out of ten, a politely worded “I am at capacity right now”, or “I am already doing two things for partner X”, will help you manage your workload. As I said above, no one is really looking out for your sanity except you – so keep an eye on it, and be selfish.

Consulting vs Banking - Some Thoughts

So I have alluded to many times that I will blog about the difference between bankers and consultants. We all know that there is an age old rivalry between bankers and consultants, as typified in the hilarious and oft-cited video below.

Now, my AV skills were tapped out creating a 21^st video for my bro so I won’t be dazzling you with my own musical today (legions of music appreciating fans heave a sigh of relief). Additionally, I find the process of writing b-school essays has sucked every last bit of my will to write extensively, so I am not going to offer you the comprehensive comparison you might be expecting. Instead, I thought I would focus on one question – What can consultants and bankers learn from each other?

So, in my limited experience, I think I have an answer to this question from both perspectives. From the consultants side, I think what we can learn is the concept of materiality. Bankers are concerned with money on the table, and they realise that small differences typically have little effect on the big picture. Consultants on the other hand care about literally every little thing. Bankers use the term materiality to denote a concept whereby they will focus only on the stuff that actually will really shift value. If you are reading closely this is of course an extension of the 80:20 rule – which is always on the tip of consultant’s tongues, but somehow goes out the window when your engagement manager is asking you to align boxes at 2am. If we focused only on appropriate levels of detail, our lives would much easier, without any reduction in client service.

From the banker’s side, I think they could stand to learn how to tell a story much better. For consultants, telling a story is at the heart of what we do. We gather facts, do analysis and make recommendations, but at the heart of what we do is taking the client on a journey such that by the end of the case, they are fully bought in to the result. See Steve Shu’s post on the topic for more detail. Bankers have the recommendation part down cold as you would expect, but from my experience they don’t do enough to get the client bought in – I think it would greatly improve the quality of some of their work.

Anyway there are my two cents. Anybody have thoughts on the topic?

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?

Managing Teams

So for the past couple of weeks (actually a month now that I think about it), I have been working on what I had thought would be a nice easy pro bono project in the world of film. Unfortunately, it seems nothing is ever nice and easy in the world of consulting.

The seniors on the project decided in their infinite wisdom that given the low risk nature of the assignment, they would assign a lowly senior consultant (me), to run the damn thing. This has meant that, for no more incentives, I have been stressing for the last four weeks like never before.

I never quite appreciated the jolt to the heart a manager gets when the junior consultant cant answer questions about the numbers, or presents numbers that change day to day with no good reason. Maybe I am too invested in it, or have too high expectations, but sometimes I feel like I just need to grab control of all the detailed work myself, so I know its right.

This is balanced by my desire to not emulate the worst job managers I have worked with. I have no desire to be the work until 2am guy (even though we did that a couple of days ago), and I find the idea of making people work on the weekend abhorrent. I worry sometimes though that in my desire to be an nice guy, I am not sufficiently preparing my junior consultant for the rigours of real world consulting.

All in all, I think its been a formative experience, although one that is not over yet. Due to the size of our organisation, this will probably be a rare event until a promotion or two away, but I think I will take away some valuable lessons on managing people. I haven’t got enough distance yet to work out what those are, but I will post when I do. Any thoughts would be welcome.

Next post – a discussion on an interesting quirk on the film distribution industry.

Its been done before, but …

Ways you know you have been a consultant for too long (not all of these are me, most obviously the wedding related ones). Hat tip to my anon. colleague who brainstormed these with me. No particular order.

1) When someone tells you they are going on holiday to a place you have already been to, all you can talk about is the awesome itinerary you produced in excel …

2) … and then you really want to pass it on to your friends as a framework for their holiday

3) You plan your wedding with highly flexible excel spreadsheet, sorting it by person, task and nature of responsibility. You refuse to give up ownership of said spreadsheet on the day of your wedding

4) Reading the newspaper, your primary thought is how little the headlines resemble the articles below them, and how the articles themselves have no coherent structure

5) When you go on holiday, you don't consider staying in a hotel less than 5 stars, even after you realise this time you are paying for it yourself

6) You drink sparkling not still

7) Being separated from your laptop for more than 12 hours makes you uneasy / physically unwell

8) Whenever someone gives you a compliment, you go on alert for the inevitable criticism that will follow

9) You start wondering why doctors and lawyers get all those cool TV shows, and consultants get nothing

10) You start a blog on consulting

11) You are satisfied you have achieved “buy-in” when your girlfriend agrees to sleep with you

12) You chart your success at bars, and then have a long think about decomposing the drivers behind that success or lack thereof

13) Despite understanding the last thing that happens at a steering committee is steering, you still stay up until 2am getting the document ready

14) The highest praise you can give to a restaurant is that the service is quick

15) You would never, ever, spend good money on a consultant

16) You have eaten a club sandwich from hotel room service in excess of 100x

17) You consider the full stop to be your greatest enemy

18) You often muse that the local sandwich joint would benefit from some judiciously applied process improvement

19) You justify the fact you don't get paid as much as bankers by the fact you don't work as hard, only to discover that you do

20) You dream about becoming close personal friends with the data guy

Any more that people can think of? As can been seen from above, humour is not mandatory, but always appreciated :)

Review Cycles

I figure, a huge proportion of time spent working late nights on consulting jobs is all down to review cycles. I am at a client site right now, and the junior consultant on the project has just waited from 7pm to midnight for the engagement manager to come back with comments so she can progress the work. Don’t get me wrong, the engagement manager isn’t skiving off – she is really busy herself, but just didn’t have time to get to it. As a result, the poor junior has been stuffing around for hours. I tried to help, but couldn’t sufficiently get into my manager’s head. 

When I get to the point of managing projects, I don’t want to leave my juniors hanging – I know how frustrating it is. My hypothesis (well, one I have read about)  for why it occurs is the crest of ignorance. Essentially, juniors don’t know enough, and work can only be progressed by people with knowledge. Given the typical structure  of a project team, with an inevitable green consultant or two, there doesn’t seem to be a way around this.

Has anyone else come across this problem?

Expertise

What does it mean to be an expert? Malcom Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers, talks about the 10,000 hours of practice needed to master something. In consulting, we rarely have the luxury of that much time in any one area, at least initially. I remember on my second project out of university, we were sitting down for the kickoff meeting and I was a little bit shocked to be described as the cost to serve modeling expert. This was after doing one cost to serve project. So it is pretty clear that when we talk to clients, consulting expertise is not always particularly deep.

Within the walls of the firm, its generally another story. Expertise is valuable in a couple of ways, and generally it will be gained because of more than one project you have worked on, or just a general ‘rep’ around the office. This rep is crucial to your development as a consultant, but it can cut both ways. If it’s for good, interesting things, then it will drive you towards those sort of projects – if it’s not, you’re screwed, because you will keep being put on those things people think you are good at. I came to this realization the other day, when someone came up to me and asked me a question, prefacing it with “Seeing as how you are a government expert …”. I was pretty annoyed, and for good reason. I have only been on a couple of government projects, and I hated every minute of them. I am kind of screwed if this is my rep, and I have no idea how to get out of it. Any ideas?

By the way, I know it has been a bit of a gap between posts. I can only promise to do better - this is still fairly new to me.

The deadliest insult in consulting ...

Ok - wil get to the B-School post later, but just had to get this thought down. A recent revelation of mine is that the worst thing you can describe a fellow consultant as is "you are not [insert name of firm here]". Its the kind of imprecise description that can spell one's doom at a consulting firm. It doesn't mean you are not good at your job, doesn't mean you aren't smart or personable, it just means that you somehow don't quite fit. It could be a variety of reasons - maybe you have the wrong type of personality, maybe you are too industry (and not consulting) focused, maybe you just pissed someone off. In any event, once people start believing it, you are pretty much finished.

Hasn't happened to me thankfully, but I can think of a couple of examples at my place of work. How about you all out there - any thoughts?

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. 

First Ever Post - Get in on the Ground Floor!

So here’s who I am - Lowly drone at a big 4 consulting firm.

I probably don’t have the sense of humour to pull off a Leverage Sellout style laugh-fest, but I wanted to write about my experiences and insights in consulting. Over the next few months, I will probably go on secondment, and begin the arduous trek into business school. Thus, my postings will be a combination of random observations, intermixed with useful tips and tricks. Hopefully, if anyone actually reads this they might find something of use in here.

As you will probably notice, I am a first time blogger, unless you count a short lived holiday blog that was really just a way to avoid sending spam-like update emails to friends and family. Be kind therefore, and I will happily to respond to any insights you might have.

That is it for an introduction – I will be back shortly to begin posting proper. Happy consulting all.