Under the pump ...

For my 5-10 faithful readers (that may be generous), apologies for not posting recently. I am currently being smashed on a due diligence engagement. Really interesting, and I will post my thoughts on it at some point, but a huuuge amount of work in a very short timeframe. Back to you all soon I promise.

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.

So why Business School?

I think I have boiled it down to five reasons – in no particular order.

1) A fun break. Psychologically, I am not the sort to pick up sticks for 6 months or a year and bum around the world (Damn my 1^st generation immigrant origins!). Unfortunately, I think it’s the kind of break I need after slogging away at the corporate grindstone for nearly 4 years. Business school offers the opportunity to have that time off, but spend in a way that keeps me from feeling guilty about wasting time. From all reports, it is seriously awesome fun with a little learning thrown in. Perfect.

2) Meet new and interesting people. Ever since uni finished, I have had a progressively more difficult time meeting new people. Apart from the fact that I am single (and have no desire to remain that way for ever), I genuinely enjoy meeting people of diverse backgrounds and learning about them. I don’t get to do it enough these days, and business school seems like a good opportunity to do so.

3) Career progression at current firm. In a lot of consulting firms, an MBA is seen as a quasi-mandatory rung on the ladder to promotion. Whilst I have spent much time wondering if I will stick with my current firm, lately I really felt strong ties to it. If I do decide to stay here for several years longer, an MBA will definitely prove useful.

4) Get a professional business qualification. Throughout my time consulting, whilst I have picked up things quickly, I have always felt bedeviled by a lack of a professional business qualification. I have had to work fairly hard to catch up on things that come easily to a commerce or business grad, so I figure its time to get a degree to give myself that solid bit of knowledge.

5) Open up future career opportunities. I also need to think about my long term future in business. Over the last couple of years I have come to the realization that eventually I want to end up as a CEO of a decent size corporation. Industry doesn’t matter as much – although something in biotech or consumer goods would be awesome. For that, I think an MBA will prove mighty useful, both in knowledge and network terms.

So that’s what I have so far. Individually they are not enough, but together I think provide a compelling value proposition. I may have some buried in my brain somewhere so will update then. 

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.