The problem with following role models

People say, “Success leaves clues.” The advice you often hear is find someone who achieved something you want to achieve, watch them carefully, repeat their steps, and you will achieve success too. It is useful, but to a point. There is one big problem with this approach. Each of us has a unique set of assets (talents, experiences, family, connections, personality, etc.). The person you are watching from afar and emulating as closely as possible will have a very different set of assets. Plus, they will have a different value system. What they will value in life will differ from what you value. The missing ingredient in this advice is to carefully study (if such information is accessible): WHY someone does something, not only WHAT they do. You also need good visibility on HOW they do it. This is something that most people will not be willing to openly share with you. Alternatively, they may give you some of the steps but leave out a few details that make the process they shared with you ineffective. Noteworthy This program aimed to drive improvements through Abhi, a mid-level executive with developing skills. We chose a strategy that required minimal new skills. The program shows…

Senior McKinsey partner on the most important skill you should develop

Senior McKinsey partner on the most important skill you should develop We trained our AI system on our proprietary information. It’s like having access to our brains 24/7. That said, you might still run into challenges. Maybe you ask a question and don’t get the response you want. This is very common with LLMs. This boils down to something called prompt engineering. And that is how do you ask the system the right questions or what kind of prompts you put into it. It's a sequence of questions to tease out what you need. Liz Hilton Segel, senior partner at McKinsey, said the most important piece of advice she gives people in the firm is to learn to become a great prompt engineer. Recently, I interviewed Mike Maples Jr. for the Strategy Skills podcast. He is a distinguished seed investor in Silicon Valley. He was an early investor in Twitter and Twitch. He passed on being an early investor in Airbnb but then learned from it and was an early investor in Lift. And I asked him which pattern will be disrupted in management consulting. And he said that a lot of cognitive tasks in consulting will be done by AI. It…

Career Stagnation. When Promotions End and the Runway Ends

In the final piece for Strategy Insights, called “When Promotions End and the Runway Ends,” I'm going to talk through an interesting client situation. We have an Insider, who later also became a coaching client, named Addie. He works for a large multinational company. There's nothing unusual about his career. He worked in industry for a long time. He did his executive MBA when he was 32-34 at a very good school. He interviewed at many firms and then joined this large multinational company. Like any immigrant, he wants to follow the American dream of having a healthy and wealthy family and life, but to also contribute to society, to be part of the fabric of a company that's making a big change for the good—not just in the US, but for the world as well. Addie followed our StrategyTraining.com programs to figure out ways to make his team as successful as possible. He did a number of things well and if you want to know what those things are you can read any of our journals or watch any of our programs where we teach all of those techniques. I'll summarize just a few things, but there are obviously a lot more…

CEO of Danone Learns That Being Good is Not Good Enough

CEO of Danone Learns That Being Good is Not Good Enough The next big theme is about how Danone’s CEO has just learned that being good is not good enough. If you follow the saga of Danone, it has branded itself as the socially responsible consumer packaged goods company, or as they call it outside of the Western Hemisphere, fast-moving consumer goods company. That's not to say that Danone is more socially responsible than its other major competitors. No, it's just branded itself this way. It's taken this flag of social responsibility and draped it around itself and told everyone, “This is what we're going to do.” But Danone has not done very well. Its share price is trailing peers. It’s PE ratio is trailing peers, and activist shareholders have stepped up and said, “Hold on a second. You're not doing well. We want the CEO to go.” That's basically what happened—the CEO has been released. Here’s the question: Was the CEO let go because he pursued a socially responsible corporate agenda? Or because he pursued it in a suboptimal way? And what does that mean for the world? What does it mean for strategy? Danone’s peers are also pursuing a socially…

Things Don’t Change Much—or Do They?

Things Don’t Change Much—or Do They? The next big theme I will call, “Things don't change much—or do they?” Over a period in the last week, BHP, an Anglo-Australian multinational miner, has become the most valuable company in the British economy, which is one of the most advanced, modern economies of the world and is heavily services based. If you've ever worked in London, you know that financial services are a significant driver of wealth in the British economy. But despite everything we're reading about the rise of service-based economies in wealthy, developed nations—the rise of climate-based industries, the rise of legal, the rise of consulting, the rise of wealth management—the largest company by market cap is a miner. The two largest companies behind that are Shell, an oil and gas company, and Unilever, a multinational consumer goods company. There isn’t a bank, a tech company, an auto company. We're not seeing what we would consider modern economy companies. What is the insight? There are two ways to look at this. One is that maybe the UK is showing us that we're going to live in a world where tech, finance and services will be the dominant drivers of growth, but companies…

One of the biggest strategy shifts ever in the next 10 to 20 years

One of the biggest strategy shifts ever in the next 10 to 20 years There was an interesting piece in the Financial Times related to how new is not always better. This shift is probably going to be one of the biggest strategy shifts in the next 10 to 20 years. [bctt tweet="This new is not always better shift is probably going to be one of the biggest strategy shifts in the next 10 to 20 years." username=""] Let me share with you a number of examples and analogies to make my point that. You probably celebrate a tradition with your family—whether it’s Thanksgiving, Diwali or Eid for different listeners around the world. Whatever religion you are, whatever culture you are, you prepare certain food on certain important days. It is unlikely that the food you prepare this year is completely different from the food you prepared last year. That's because you have certain traditions and you know certain things taste very good. Certain foods are not good because they are new. If something is newer but doesn’t taste very good, why would you eat it? [bctt tweet="There are certain books we always read in strategy because they are good. There are some books…

Strategic Consulting Knowledge Management

This is what is required to build intellectual property. It is a critical competitive advantage that most firms/professionals/consultants try to develop yet eventually quit. First Think of the time and cost savings in having the best slides available to your team. Not generic templates that are empty, but detailed study slides tracking a problem from start to finish. [bctt tweet="The value you can immediately bring to your clients/colleagues by having the right tools and seeing how they are used." username=""] Imagine being able to see how actual studies are done and being able to use/edit those files to support your clients. Video explanations of each slide of many studies in SCR-Advanced can be found on StrategyTraining.com should you want to understand how the partner developed/used the slide (FIRMSconsulting Insider level membership is required). Second Let’s assume you are part of a 10-person boutique consulting firm or part of a 10-person office within a large firm. It’s March and your office has completed four projects so far this year. Each consultant has created 100 unique files (word, PowerPoint, excel etc.) in those 3-months. The files are a mix of quality-standards. Some are unformatted drafts and others are incomplete PowerPoint decks. A…

5 Career Success Strategies When You Start From Nothing

5 Career Success Strategies When You Start From Nothing There are 5 career success strategies you need to follow when you are building your career and life from nothing. Follow them consistently and you will likely see your peers trying to catch you by the tail. In the recent article, we spoke about the confidence myth. We discussed why confidence is not a vital ingredient for success, despite popular belief. In this article, lets dive deeper into what is a recipe for career success, especially if you are starting with very little. You cannot control the circumstances of where you started but you can make the most with what you have First, let me share a personal story. When I was a business analyst I remember how uncomfortable I felt whenever consultants talked about where they studied or where they previously worked. I felt my background was embarrassing. At the time, I was completing an undergraduate degree from an unranked university. I had to complete that degree part-time because my music diploma was not recognized in the West. And my job prior to joining the consulting firm was a receptionist and an office manager at a tiny defense company because…

25 best strategy books to help you excel at business strategy

25 Best Strategy Books to Help You Excel at Business Strategy This is a curated list of the best strategy books that I, and other partners you know from the FIRMSconsulting training programs, think are best in preparing you to understand, apply and excel at the development and execution of business strategy. We are going to recommend books that we have recommended for our clients and the partners use themselves. These books teach you how to think like a major consulting firm's partner. They teach you how to think to develop unique solutions to your specific problems. 14 best strategy and critical thinking books recommended by Michael Succeeding as a Management Consultant When people think about the business strategy we often think about the field of strategy consulting/management consulting and firms like McKinsey, BCG, et al. If you are interested in learning how to conduct a management consulting engagement, you will likely enjoy this book. Succeeding as a Management Consultant is a book set in the Brazilian interior. This book follows an engagement team as they assist Goldy, a large Brazilian gold miner, in diagnosing and fixing deep and persistent organizational issues. This book follows an engagement team over an…