Got questions on strategy; my answers

Managers ask strategy questions Had a great strategy session with 30+ senior managers and directors recently. Some of the Q&A that came through the chat (yes, John loves chat during remote sessions): 1. Defining a strategy? Q: What are some key steps to take to...

Psychology of Money (Housel, 2020)

Listened to The Psychology of Money audiobook on Libby app while driving to Florida recently. For those who want to buy the book here (affiliate link). The thesis is simple and powerful. You don't need to be a MBA to make good money decisions. A lot of this is not the...

Podcast interviews: learn from everyone

Listen to interview podcasts We can all agree that mentors are great. They have the wisdom that comes from experience. They've seen it before and they can save us the trouble and the heartache of their own mistakes. These can be people you don't know. This can be...

Self discipline: write down key takeaways

What is your key takeaway? At the end of each class, I ask that all students spend 2-3 minutes thinking of their key takeaway.  This helps us to reflect on what we learned. It also allows me (the teacher) to see if there is any confusion or things to clarify. Since I...

Using strategy to think about our careers

I teach strategy as my day job.  I also have the privilege or working with 500+ students, professionals, grinders, learners, athletes, performers, and winners.  So yes, I am blessed. During my conversations, I often find myself relating strategy concepts to career...

Be strategic: Work smart and lazy; think 80/20 rule

This is something I found myself saying a lot recently.  Not matter if you're a 20 year-old university student, or a 45 year-old corporate manager, life seems like it is a constant fire. Exams, recruiting, dating, conference calls, student clubs, PTA meetings,...

True professionalism (1997)

David Maister This gentleman has shaped the way I think about consulting, client-services, and my craft. If you look on the bookshelves of senior partners at law firms, accounting firms, consultancies, they have multiple books by David Maister.  Recently, I took down...

How to improve US healthcare?

Complex problems do not have simple answers There is not a simple answer. It took US healthcare 70+ years to get this fragmented, complex, political, entrenched, somewhat inequitable, and definitely exhausting place. It will take a lot of competition, collaboration,...

Get inspired with 600+ amazing Quotations

I am a huge fan of quotes Whenever I think of something 1/2 useful or deep, I quickly discover that someone has said it with more verve and brevity. Hence, a running list of great quotes. This is not exhaustive (of course) and I did my best to attribute to the right...

15 ways to find your unfair advantage

strategy has been on my brain Started teaching strategy at Emory six years ago. Sure, there were glimpses of strategy in my consulting deliverables, but now I am paid to think about it all day.  I am either reading, talking, debating, or questioning business strategy...

ChatGPT answers consulting questions

Really enjoying ChatGPT If you have not tried ChatGPT, please stop reading this blog post and do that first. It's worth your time. Massive hype The amount of (probably justifiable) hype on ChatGPT cannot be understated. Heck, my dad sent me a 20+ min video on how...

One pager: McKinsey argues industry boundaries are disappearing

PESTEL and Porter's 5 Forces Industry analysis is a core part of strategy. Think of Michael Porter's iconic 5 Forces framework.  Yet, we can all agree that the world is changing and fluid. Twenty years ago, would any of us have thought: Disney would broadcast their...

Why clients don’t implement

Clients pay $ millions for recommendations Management consultants are not cheap. Yes, consulting bill rates are high, AND a lot of client energy goes into rallying the client organization for kick-off meetings, focus groups, interviews, working sessions, status...

One Powerpoint PPT a day

One PowerPoint slide a Day I first heard the expression “One PowerPoint a Day” reading McKinsey Way (affiliate link), many many years ago and still find it useful. While management consultants have many flaws (oh yeah, we do), we are generally disciplined thinkers. ...

One pager: US copyright protection for 95 years, trademarks forever

Not a lawyer  So I couldn't tell you the difference between copyright and trademark (whoa, ignorance), until I read this article from the Economist. It turns out that many famous works are going into the public domain.  This means that you can adapt and use it without...

One Pager: The 15 year evolution of Amazon’s forecasting model

Amazon needs to be good at forecasting Saw this 6 page article here on how Amazon has tweaked their forecasting algorithm over the last 15 years.  I am not a statistician or machine learning expert, yet, I found the article very easy to read, undertsanding, and...

One Pager: Big Tech hires lots of economists

Yes, economists work for Big Tech Read a short, and surprising, article from the Economist. They shared these startling facts: Amazon has some 400 full-time economists on staff Tech firms hired one in seven newly minted PhDs in 2022 Heck, Uber hired a fifth of Harvard...

One pager: US states have a revenue surplus

One PowerPoint a day I tell junior consultants to practice making PowerPoints. Read a simple article, group the ideas into buckets. Write a useful title. Have a diagram that helps understanding. Use data points to persuade. This is one for today.   US state tax...

Jack Welch in his own words: Winning

Jack Welch, ex-CEO of General Electric To baby boomers and Gen-X, this a corporate titan who's name you will remember. He led a renaissance in GE, driving its market capitalization from $14B to $400B+ 20 years later. He famously whittled down GE's portfolio (think:...

McKinsey argues for STP (segment, target, positioning) in recruiting

STP (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) This is Marketing 101 for many reasons: There is no such thing as an average customer Groups of customers are not just defined by where they live or how old they are In a free market, customers will always have some choice,...

One page PPT: CFOs 3 jobs

Chief Financial officers have to juggle CFOs are trying to juggle 3 competing demands for resources and their time: Optimal capital structure Investor returns Investment in the business With the increase in interest rates, I thought this would be a mighty problem for...

Pitchbook: US Private equity in first half of 2022

Private equity (PE) has outperformed  By most measures, private equity has given investors better returns that most asset classes over the last 5, 10, and 20 year time frames. It's been an incredible run. The names of Blackstone, KKR, and Apollo have been become...

One Pager: Global education after 2 lost years?

Parents worry about their kids' education Of course they do. That's part of the job description. Clothe them, feed them, love them, teach them values, and give them the education they need to win in life. Yeah, talk about an underpaid job. The last two years...

One pager: Is there a Venture capital slowdown in 2022?

One-pagers are super useful Consultant put their thoughts on PowerPoint. Sometimes, it's for the final presentation, but much more often, it's for simple one-pagers. These one-pagers serve a diversity of purposes:  Checklist of data collection progress and potential...

Why are nurses burned out? 30+ reasons

30%+ of Nurses are Thinking about resigning Let's agree that 30% is a big number. You don't have to be an expert in organization design and change management to see that if 1/3 of your workforce is unhappy or disengaged, that's a problem. In contrast, if you are a...

How To Write A 1,500 Word Strategy Paper

Final project = Give strategic advice to a company After a long semester studying 2 dozen frameworks to breakdown problems, my strategy students have a final assignment due on Tuesday 8pm. They choose a company and give them strategic advice. The wrinkle is that the...

The best future client is the current client

Create and keep a customer For all the talky-talk about consulting, it really comes down to what Peter Drucker said 60 years ago, "The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer." BOOM, how simple and beautiful is that?    Create: know them, know...

New hires: What’s corporate / consulting life like?

I asked 40+ recent college graduates a bunch of questions. This is their response to the questions: What is your key takeaway about consulting / corporate life?  What surprised you about corporate life? What would you like to share with juniors and seniors in...

New hires: how to start well

Great, you got the job, now what?  How do you start your new job off right? I have LOTS of opinions on that, but why take my word? Let's hear from new hires who just started working over the last 1-3 years. Their direct quotes in blue italics. Celebrate before...

8 recruiting tips from new college graduates

Graduates from 2018-2021 I asked some previous students for their recruiting advice. They all went through grueling recruiting rounds and superdays. After a few years of work experience and reflection, here is their advice. You will see their responses in blue...

Consultants break down problems

Consultants break down problems Open up any newspaper and you see that problems abound. Problems vary from the specific (e.g., corporate concerns about market share) to the global (e.g., accelerating climate change). Yes, to some this may seem negative and a bummer....

100 smart things my strategy students said this semester

Strategy is not simple Like marketing, finance, or any large topic of consequence, strategy doesn't easily narrow down to sound bites. There is a reason why you study this stuff over 3-4 months with heavy use of case studies, discussion, and debate: Strategy sits...

Consultants help executives

What do consultants do? This seems like such a basic question - and yet, if you ask the parents of most management consultants - mom and dad would find it a bit difficult to explain what their son/daughter did every week. They might be scratching their heads and...

Two job offers, FOBO

My students are smart and disciplined. So what happens when you take talent, hard work, and marry that with a strong university recruiting engine and a healthy job market? Yep, multiple job offers Amazing, right? Trust me, I think it's remarkable too It's a great...

Clients (always) have data problems

No project has perfect data For the jaded and and road-weary consultants, this will sound like an understatement. In fact, it's usually like an Easter egg hunt where the team has a good idea where the data eggs might be, but can't be 100% sure until they really start...

Strategy class, 175 questions

As we near the end of the semester, I'm proud of my students and how much we've learned. It's a learning journey full of questions, curiosity, discussion and debate. A safe place to learn. These are 175+ questions that Emory BBA would feel comfortable answering about...

Consulting career = hourglass

Consulting is broad Management consulting is a disparate field with more than 700K+ Americans describing themselves as consultants. Yes, that's possible - even though there are probably a good number of project managers, contractors, subject matter experts, and...

Video: Business problems are like puzzles

Solving business problems is fun, and follow many of the same steps you take when putting together a 1,000 piece puzzle. Original blog post here. Now the 3 minute video summary: Don't forget to look at the box; what is the picture we're making? what does success look...

Video: How to Make Great (Consulting) Presentations

Executives are busy. Start with the overall story and answer. Frame the problem so they understand the distinct parts. Do the right analysis, so you are sharing insights (not data). Stand behind your PoV. Prove it. Make it easy to say "yes". Related blog posts: How to...

Crowdsourced Playlist Spring 2021

We listen to music before class starts. This is what the incoming strategy class curated.

21 Data visualization tips

Data visualization sounds fancy, but it basically means charts and graphs. Consultants are good at quickly breaking down problems and telling stories with data. Graphs can be succinct: yes, "a picture tells a thousand words." Lots of research has been done on this...

Winter reading: Economist December, January

During the winter recess (remember those days as a student?), I read through several weeks of the Economist. Some of the topics that caught my attention, direct quotes in blue italics font. Linked to the original articles. No one will forget 2020 It was a milestone...

Networking: be a useful human

Yes, Linkedin, GitHub, and Indeed make it easier to find and apply for jobs.  But after your first, second, third job out of college - it's all about relationships. Even with record unemployment, recruiters still find it difficult to find the "right" people....

HBR: Data Analytics Basics for Managers (2018)

Good decisions require data Of course. Without some robust thinking and analysis based on data, it's called (um) . . . guessing. Even if you are not a "quant", you better be able to explain what a regression is and roughly how it works. Look - we've all forgotten a...

Goldman Sachs: When will America re-open?

When will America re-open? Simple question on all of our minds, and yet, impossible to answer with certainty. Any forecast is doomed to be partially (if not completely) wrong. The first of the vaccines is arriving this week, and yet, new cases are climbing with...

Playing to Win, A.G. Lafley, Roger Martin (Chapter 5-8)

Huge fan of this book. Did a tear-down of the first half of this book here; this covers the 2nd half. As a quick recap, A.G. Lafley (ex-CEO of P&G) and Roger Martin (ex-Monitor, ex-Dean of Rotman School of Management) explained that strategy is a set of choices...

The danger of averages

For consultants and all those who solve problems for a living, we know that "average" is a bit of a dirty word. A misnomer. "Average" is a four-letter word Averages are lazy; shows a lack of effort. Averages are inherently reductive and often misleading. Averages are...

Questions about strategy,

Recently, I had the opportunity to spend a few hours with 20+ executives to talk about strategy. It was a thought-provoking and courageous conversation. Yes, executives are under enormous pressure to 1) continue to do their day job well (maintain uptime, eliminate...

Playing to Win, A.G. Lafley, Roger Martin (Chapter 1-4)

I've bought 6 copies of this book over the last few years: Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works (affiliate link). It was co-written by A.G. Lafley (ex-CEO of P&G) and Roger Martin (ex-Monitor, ex-Dean of Rotman School of Management) and breaks down strategy...

Bain: Global PE Report 2020 (part 1)

Bain & Co published their Global 2020 Private Equity Report here in February 2020. Like all things Bain, it is very readable and useful. Here's my tear down of the first 30 pages of the report: Buyout firms have outperformed Starting with the main point, PE firms...

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Skills and Tools

Management consultants wrestle with messy problems – ambiguous, uncertain, cross-functional, politically charged, and data-poor.

  • Thinking about complex problems
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  • Using best practices (or being lazy?)
  • Being “so good they can’t ignore you”
  • Learning how to (continuously) learn

Consulting Pyramid

Consulting is an elite profession. They choose the best (among the best). Case interviews are difficult, yet fun.

So you got the offer. How can you be a “rock star” among folks (honestly) smarter than you? Who is promotable?

What’s next? After consulting, how do I put this experience to good use?

Client Success

Consulting is about client service. We do the (dirty, hard, complex) work and give clients the clarity and confidence to take action.

Sure, strategy + implementation = success. That’s not controversial, but how do you actually do that?

Clients expect more than business robots.

Consulting Tools

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Strategy

Helping client’s play to their strengths and beat the market

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Operations

Smoothing out processes so they are (yawn) boring and lean

People

Getting the right people on the bus and keeping it a great ride

Profits

Keeping an eye on the “right numbers”

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Case Interview Prep

No question, this is the first step in a consulting career.  Like the Boy Scounts say, “Be Prepared”  Link to blog post here

What Do consultants (REALLY) DO?

Sadly, management consulting is hard to explain to your parents.  Perhaps this list of 150+ old blog posts will give them an idea what life is behind all those Delta sky miles and $500+ Briggs and Riley roller bags.  Blog post link here.

Saying "Yes" to Clients Can Get you into trouble

We all want to keep clients (and partners) happy, but blindly saying “Yes” can get you into trouble. Blog post link here,

How to Interview Clients (well)

100% of my consulting projects involved client interviews. Some were in boardrooms, while others were in hospital storage closets. Here are some tips for all situations.  Blog post link here.

21 Data Visualization tips

Executives want to understand your point of view quickly. Insights have value, data does not. Blog post link here.

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Strong believer in the consulting process as the most effective way to tackle complex and ambiguous problems – turning data into insights, drawing out consensus, and driving change through pragmatic plans. Fighting complexity with simplicity.

Applying lessons from 20+ years work experience in management consulting, strategic planning, and B2B marketing to the classroom. Creating learning with the 400+ smart and ambitious business school students every year on the topics: Strategy, Healthcare Strategy, Management Consulting, Executive Presence, Storytelling.

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