Public Sector Consulting

When I was asked this question today, I had a flashback that took me all the way to the early days of my career. When I first joined management consulting I wanted to only do strategy work for the greatest blue-chip stocks on the planet; GE, GM, P&G, Pepsi, Exxon-Mobil, Verizon and AT&T where the kinds of the companies I dreamed about advising. After all, they were the leaders of corporate America. Why would I want to do anything else? Unfortunately life and circumstances take us on a different path. I eventually ended up doing a tremendous amount of work in the emerging markets. Even then, emerging markets were dominated by state-owned businesses. In hindsight, working in emerging markets and the public sector served me well and in many ways equipped me with better skills. Thankfully, many consultants today see things that I only learnt after much time in emerging markets. If you speak to many consultants today, they are attracted to major markets like Brazil, China, Dubai, Russia, India, Indonesia and the Philippines. Public sector clients with quick decision-making, lots of funding, really complex problems, lots of these problems and major ambition mostly exist in the developing markets. You…