The Ultimate Guide To Consulting Skills For Advancement From Manager and Above

Consulting Skills as a Competitive Advantage Developing strong consulting skills such as the ability to communicate in a way that holds the attention of the room, the ability to solve complex problems in a structured and effective way, and the ability to build a peer-level relationship with the most senior executives of major companies. Developing strong consulting skills can be the competitive advantage that will allow you rise above the average and gain the momentum, respect, and opportunities you want. Not everyone working for major consulting firms have strong consulting skills. Similarly, you can develop strong consulting skills without ever working for a major consulting firm. In this post we are going to explore how to achieve career advancement from manager and above, and how to use consulting skills to help you achieve career growth. What is Career Advancement? Career advancement refers to the upward trajectory of someone’s career. Top professionals know the importance of professional and personal development. For anyone in the corporate world having a secure job to go to each week is important, but it is not enough. Humans crave progress. If we do not grow, we degrade. We do not stay still. Our skills deteriorate. So…

The Ultimate Guide To Consulting Skills For Advancement From Manager and Above

Corporate Strategy for Power Utility

Corporate Strategy for Power Utility Corporate strategy is not like a business unit strategy whereby the corporate objectives of the parent are guiding the business unit/division. Understanding business unit strategy is much easier if you think of a lighthouse analogy. The direction and objectives of the parent company are the lighthouse, and the purpose of the business unit strategy engagement is to watch the lighthouse and build a plan to get there. So, the lighthouse may be, for example, insisting on no less than 30% market share and a return of 18% on all investments. In business unit strategy, the consultants need to build a path to these objectives. In corporate strategy, there is no lighthouse. The job of the corporate strategy engagement team is to develop that lighthouse. What should be the purpose, direction and objective of the parent? The canvas of options is blank and it is scary. The longer the team takes, the longer you have life rafts aka the operating divisions floundering around for direction. This is why corporate strategy is so complex. There are so few rules and boundaries and an inexperienced consultant can end up causing a lot of damage. A too conservative management…

How to deal with hard questions from a client

How to deal with hard questions from a client A lot of times when you want advice on how to handle hard questions from clients, you would usually talk to someone that you think knows what they are doing. And they will tell you to do x, y and z. And you may think, “Ok, right, I will do x, y and z. I am going to run with it.” And here is the problem, and I am going to explain this in a lot more detail below. Depending on your philosophy of how you show value, how you view yourself, how you build confidence, the advice that you have been recommended to follow may be worthless. It may not even be useful, given your philosophy. This sounds like such a cryptic comment. What did I mean by that? Your philosophy has the single greatest impact on your ability to handle a client's hard questions Well, think about it this way. Imagine you believe that as a consultant, as someone who is supposed to know everything, you should never ever be challenged publicly. You believe it will simply destroy your worth. If that is your philosophy in life, then when you are openly challenged,…

Inner circle member? How to resign without burning bridges

Inner circle member? How to resign without burning bridges In this article, I want to talk to you about how to resign the right way, especially if you are a part of the inner circle. I think it is important you read this post because at some point in your life you will likely want to leave an organization. And you will want to leave an organization in a way whereby they don’t feel that you were selfish when you resigned, in a way so you don't damage the relationship with people who may have very well gone above and beyond in helping you and grooming you. Being a part of the Inner circle When you are a consultant, or an executive, you are either a part of the inner circle of key people that the organization relies on or not. This distinction matters. Now, what defines the inner circle? Are you a part of the inner circle if you have a specialized skill the organization needs? Are you a part of the inner circle if you have some unique knowledge or connections that the organization requires? No. That does not make you a part of the inner circle. What makes you a…

What is scenario planning and how to use it

What is scenario planning and how to use it In today’s post we are going to talk about scenario planning, the last technical input that went into the visioning workshop /strategy workshop as part of the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study. We will discuss what is scenario planning, some reasons why the scenario planning tool is insufficient to make decisions and steps in scenario planning. We will also offer an example of how to use this tool in visioning workshops with clients. What is scenario planning Before we discuss how to conduct scenario planning let's look at what is scenario planning. So what is scenario planning? Scenario planning is a planning tool used to make flexible long-term plans to deal with major, uncertain shifts in the organization’s environment. It is also a tool that allows companies to develop a resilient strategy or test the flexibility of the existing company strategy against various possible future alternatives. In other words, scenario planning is a structured way for an organization to identify and gain a deeper understanding of the underlying major drivers of change, think about how those potential changes may impact an organization, determine what is required for the organization to succeed if potential changes occur and develop…

Effective Practice for Building Client Relationships and Driving Sales

Effective Practice for Building Client Relationships and Driving Sales In this article and related podcast, we discuss an effective practice for building client relationships and driving sales. This is a critical article if you run a smaller boutique consulting firm or running a weaker consulting practice and trying to conduct more impactful studies. The issue I want to discuss today is related to what consulting firms would call sales but also related to building client relationships. Sales is not a common term at the elite firms, but ultimately that is what is done. A very common strategy for a consulting firm to displace an incumbent consulting firm and serve a client is to show an insight/problem/opportunity that the client has not seen before. Yet, this does not work that well in building client relationships and driving sales. This is because the new consulting firm makes one critical mistake. In fact, the mistake may lead to the incumbent consulting firm securing the work the new consulting firm pointed out! New insights help in building client relationships and driving sales, but only under certain conditions Many consulting firms try building client relationships and driving sales by presenting an insight or presenting an issue, or presenting an…

Why Value-Based Consulting is Seldom a Good Idea

Every consulting firm talks about value-based fees and they usually want to price themselves in this way since the value-based fees model offers a very high margin. Sometimes they succeed. Yet, they usually fail. This post and related podcast address why value-based fees are widely misunderstood and rarely work in consulting. The key insight is about the forces of supply and demand. You often find people trying to implement a value-based consulting approach as a cost savings measure, without realizing that they would get more value out of a different approach. So, what’s the goal behind value-based pricing? Why does value pricing not work as a pricing strategy in many instances? Let’s look at the economic value, how value-based pricing consulting fits in the consulting business, and what you should know if you’re considering it with a prospective client. Value-based fees can only work if certain supply and demand conditions in the market are met, or if your client is naïve. If a firm understands this concept, they have a higher probability of securing higher-margin value-based fees. What are value-based fees So let us take a look at what value-based fees are. Let’s assume you go to a client and…

Leadership Challenge on a Consulting Engagement

Leadership Challenge on A Consulting Engagement We will discuss a common leadership challenge consultants face on a consulting engagement. There are, of course, many challenges. But one central leadership challenge is how to balance needs for the success of a company/client and the personal happiness of the executive leading the company. In many situations, the personal happiness of the CEO of a company is always subordinate to the success of the company. Even if the CEO is going through a bad personal situation, consultants tend to define success as whether the company is successful in the short-term. They do not define success through the metric of the executives' happiness. The CEO may end up personally unhappy and burnt out from being forced to undertake the recommendations we put forward. And that is a problem for the longer term, shareholder value creation, and succession planning. A company that is performing well but has an unhappy CEO is essentially going to lose that CEO soon. Setting your consulting firm apart The problem is that client is not the CEO. If you position your consulting firm so that your client is the primary shareholder, and this makes sense when you are serving a…