(Re) Building a Consulting Practice

In this series we follow Michael, when in his mid-20s, as a senior associate, he changed offices and led the turnaround of the strategy practice across multiple weaker offices by first rebuilding one office’s stature on the back of a landmark operations engagement.

It was scary, difficult and no one asked him to do it. In fact, he was largely marginalized at the receiving office despite moving from his releasing office on a high note. He saw an opportunity to do more for clients and the consultants, and did it, usually without permission.

That is what changed his career and made him a partner in my late 20s. If that seems complicated, this program will explain it all and teach you how to do the same. This program is a continuation of Partnership. Memoir. That program covered the first 3 years and this program covers the next 2 years.

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This program covers just that period from associate to principal. He was promoted rapidly so this program covers a time period spanning under 2 years of his career. It is not a long period. You will see that a lot can happen in such a short space of time if you want to be productive. You can completely reboot your career.

We will explain everything done. And he will document the failures and silly mistakes made along the way. There were many of them. Do not worry if you lack fancy degrees and/or work at a smaller firm. You can learn all the skills we applied in this step-by-step program. We will teach you to think like a partner and achieve significant impact both at your firm and clients.

The strategy and how we implemented it is far more important.

This program focuses on the time period when he changed offices and joined as a senior associate. He had been at the releasing office for 3 years and this was a critical time for him. 3 months after joining the receiving office he “forced” myself into leading the economic modeling stream on an operations engagement.

In the space of 15 months you will learn how he anchored the effort to turn this into one of the firm’s most important clients worldwide, took over the client relationship, improved the overall firm and client, and was promoted 3 times to become a principal.

This key operations engagement was one that he converted into a strategy engagement and, thereafter, converted into multiple engagements at the same client. (The techniques from this key engagement are built into the training programs on corporate strategy, market entry strategy and the fundamentals of any engagement).

The client also excelled in the market and that helped. Those individual engagements will be covered in separate programs because they focus on the issues related to leading engagements versus turning around a practice, as covered here. Here he will focus on the backstory of how he was using this one client to drive a revival of the strategy practice in a few offices: a grander vision to revive the strategy practice and growth practice in one office, and eventually many weaker offices around the world.

Why a corporate strategy consultant chose an operations engagement to revive the strategy practice is counter-intuitive and worth understanding. Most importantly, you will learn how to make an impact at clients and leave them better off than when you first arrived. At the end of the day that is all that matters.

We are known for our detail and this program is no different.

This is the time period and engagement that MADE his career. While other engagements are important for other reasons, this is the one that put him on the radar of senior partners of the firm and demonstrated that he could not just lead an engagement but build the firm.

Like all our training programs, this will be incredibly focused on teaching you the underlying thinking skills we applied. And you will see that building a practice/office/firm can be done with a disciplined approach and a good strategy, which he will share here.

The content is exclusively available to Firmsconsulting Insiders.

Episodes Released

Ep 1 Rome partners meeting

Ep 2 Arriving in a new office

Key Insights to Differentiate a Key

Ep 3 1st Insight. How offices, cities, regions and countries compete

Ep 4 2nd Insight. Productivity

Ep 5 3rd Insight. A very specific team moves a mountain

Ep 6 4th Insight. Breaking generational brainwashing

Ep 7 5th Insight. Understand how rebels work

Ep 8 6th Insight. The export strategy

Ep 9 7th Insight. Generating career freedom to do big things

Ep 10 8th Insight. Write this letter now & business cases

Ep 11 9th insight. Competition is not the opposite of collegiality

Ep 12 Is this program applicable to all parts of the world?

Ep 13 The unrelenting personal challenges you will face

Ep 14 How should you use this program?

Seven Sales in 1 Yr That Made me a Partner (You need to sell. Period)

Ep 15 Win 1- Resources – Corporate Strategy in December

Ep 16 Win 2 – Resources – Operations strategy in Jan-March

Ep 17 Win 3 – Resources – Supply Strategy in April

Ep 18 Win 4 – Resources – Operations Implementation Planning in June

Ep 19 Win 5 – Resources – Corporate Strategy in July

Ep 20 Win 6 – Resources – Growth Strategy

Ep 21 Win 7 – Resources – Corporate Strategy

Rocking the Boat = Facing Resistance

Ep 22 First disciplinary hearing

Ep 23 Second disciplinary hearing

Ep 24 Win 8- Biotech – Impact Study

Ep 25 Third disciplinary meeting

Ep 26 Mapping a Partner’s Career

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