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Disastrous First BCG Engagement

A young BCG associate, lets call him Bill, recently faced tough questions after his first engagement turned out to be, in his words, an utter disaster. If you are a younger consultant in Bill's situation, you may ask yourself similar questions: What happens when your first engagement is not just bad, but is a disaster? What went through partner's head when you performed poorly?  Do you have a future? Should you consider leaving? When this happens you will also want to know if this was an anomaly or if management consulting is just not for you. Management consultants must have 5 attributes to be successful Management consultants must have 5 attributes to be successful. You can learn all of them over time, but you must be aware of them from day 1 with the firm: Will – do you have the burning desire to be a successful management consultant? Capacity – do you have the time and space to be successful? Capability – do you have the skills to be successful? Emotional Intelligence – can you read the personal dynamics at play? Political awareness – do you understand the rationale and motivations for client decisions? The filter to understand the reasons for failure and the…

A young BCG associate, lets call him Bill, recently faced tough questions after his first engagement turned out to be, in his words, an utter disaster. If you are a younger consultant in Bill's situation, you may ask yourself similar questions: What happens when your first engagement is not just bad, but is a disaster? What went through partner's head when you performed poorly?  Do you have a future? Should you consider leaving? When this happens you will also want to know if this was an anomaly or if management consulting is just not for you. Management consultants must have 5 attributes to be successful…

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Learning From Consulting Mentors

I have spent a long time examining my own career path from associate to principal. Mainly because there was always a fair degree of luck involved. It is not as if I was a break-out superstar and knew I would become a partner. I was good, but there were other better associates who did not become partners. So, I must have done a few things differently to compensate for this perceived disadvantage I possessed. I eventually realized that I succeeded not only because I was analytical, could communicate well, develop great storyboards, was great at math etc. Let’s not be mistaken, I needed those skills. Yet, they were not enough if you did not know how to use them. Everyone had those skills when they entered BCG, McKinsey et al and these were not enough to distinguish oneself. Even today, many outstanding candidates are managed out every month and most are surprised when it happens since almost all have the skills listed above, and in great abundance. I know because we receive several emails a week from distressed management consultants seeking guidance. I succeeded because a partner took me under his wing and personally mentored me when I was just…

I have spent a long time examining my own career path from associate to principal. Mainly because there was always a fair degree of luck involved. It is not as if I was a break-out superstar and knew I would become a partner. I was good, but there were other better associates who did not become partners. So, I must have done a few things differently to compensate for this perceived disadvantage I possessed. I eventually realized that I succeeded not only because I was analytical, could communicate well, develop great storyboards, was great at math etc. Let’s not be…

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Ethics is Shaped by Your Social Network

In light of major scandals driven by ex-McKinsey employees (e.g. Jeff Skilling, Rajat Gupta and Anil Kumar) and consequent sharper focus on ethics by top consulting firms, lets continue our discussion about ethics and delve deeper into how to think about ethics, and what shapes ethics. Ethics is required when the law is not written, not enforced or wrong To think about ethics, let’s picture a bar chart running vertically. The entire bar represents all the actions you could undertake in your country. It is obviously a hypothetical bar since we could not list every action we could take. Yet, we know we can do countless things. The bar chart goes from one all the way to the one billion things you could do. The bar is split into two parts. Twenty percent of the bar is dark blue and eighty percent of the bar is white. Everything that is dark blue depicts every action you can undertake in your country that is covered by the legal system. Therefore, for the dark blue part there is a law that determines if what you are doing is legal or illegal. Everything in the white section depicts actions not covered by laws in your country. When we talk about…

In light of major scandals driven by ex-McKinsey employees (e.g. Jeff Skilling, Rajat Gupta and Anil Kumar) and consequent sharper focus on ethics by top consulting firms, lets continue our discussion about ethics and delve deeper into how to think about ethics, and what shapes ethics. Ethics is required when the law is not written, not enforced or wrong To think about ethics, let’s picture a bar chart running vertically. The entire bar represents all the actions you could undertake in your country. It is obviously a hypothetical bar since we could not list every action we could take. Yet, we know we can do countless things.…

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Consulting Storyboard for Strategy Engagements

Storyboard matters in consulting studies because useful insights mean very little unless they can be woven into a compelling story. Critical insights which are not presented as a story, generally fail to get any traction at a client. In fact, that is one reason strategy studies collect dust on a client’s desk: they did not present a clear message. When one of FIRMSconsulting partners, Michael, was a corporate strategy partner, he pretty much drove teams a little crazy to constantly refine the story. He still does that. If you are following the US Retail Banking Study (one of step by step consulting studies we released to help train our clients) you would have seen us push for a crisp and compelling story. We do the same on the current power sector study (another step by step consulting study we released for our clients to help them develop strategy, problem solving, leadership, and communication skills). We just push and push for the best story out of the data. A great storyboard will get the client to act. That’s exactly why you should be looking into a consulting storyboard - to create a compelling story that will convey the key message to…

Storyboard matters in consulting studies because useful insights mean very little unless they can be woven into a compelling story. Critical insights which are not presented as a story, generally fail to get any traction at a client. In fact, that is one reason strategy studies collect dust on a client’s desk: they did not present a clear message. When one of FIRMSconsulting partners, Michael, was a corporate strategy partner, he pretty much drove teams a little crazy to constantly refine the story. He still does that. If you are following the US Retail Banking Study (one of step by…

Read more…