by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Fixed costs are everywhere What do airplanes, hospital equipment, and full-time employees have in common? They are all fixed costs. These are costs that a business incurs, regardless of how many passengers you carry, patients you treat, or products you sell. ...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Two hours with executives Spent a great morning. Facilitating a discussion on the topic of strategy. Open discussion, good learning, excellent examples from high-performing managers, directors. Creating a sustainable competitive advantage = strategy. Yes, we covered...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Who wants to learn consulting stuff? Over the last 10+ years blogging about consulting, teaching at Emory University, and corporate clients – I talk A LOT about consulting stuff. More recently, I put 70+ videos on management consulting on Coursera here. So,...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
This is an apprenticeship Successful consultants are intrinsically motivated. We value a sense of purpose, autonomy, and mastery. We enjoy working in flow state and getting good at our craft. Ideally, we get so good that new clients coming looking for us. After seeing...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
I am a procrastinator, so is my sister We both do good work, AND we do our best work at the last minute. Agreed, it’s a weird way to live and something both my wife and brother-in-law don’t approve of, heh heh. Yes, I have gotten better Learning how to...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Consultants help executives Executives have big, enterprise-size problems, and Fortune 500 budgets. We understand the industry landscape, work well cross-functionally, dig through the messy data, prioritize recommendations, and generally help them succeed in their...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Strategy is difficult There I said it. Strategy is about winning and that ain’t easy. They call it “average” for a reason, because that’s the central tendency of everyone. Yep, scatterplot. A LOT of people end up near the middle of the thing....
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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. ...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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....
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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 –...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
The fancy phrases are “contingency plan” or “business continuity.” A year ago – if you were mature and prescient enough, you would have called it “scenario planning”. For now, it’s shocking and disorienting. In my...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
What should you be doing mid-project? Just got off the phone with a project manager (hat tip: FH) about working smart in the middle of the project. Seems like we talk a lot about the beginning (proposal, kick-off, problem set up) and the end of the project...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Proposals are the life blood of any professional services, consulting firm. As Peter Drucker said, the purpose of business is to create a customer. In professional services, easier said that done. Customers don’t always know with clarity what they want, who...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
1. Consulting work/life balance? This is a question I get asked a good bit, so I sent out a survey and 90+ readers responded. Thank you. I asked several questions about the quality of the work, people, travel. See the original survey here. Will include a good...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Last Friday, I spent time with two of our case competition teams. We chatted about the logistics, judging, teamwork – but the majority of the time was spent on making killer presentations. Here’s the way I framed the pow-wow. 1.1 Start with the audience...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
It’s September/October, so case interviews will be in full swing for undergraduates and MBAs. More than 14% of Harvard’s undergraduate class goes into consulting, and it’s a great career that gives you life-long learning, good compensation, and many...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Operational transparency is exactly what it sounds like. Showing the customer how hard you are working for them. Think of a restaurant with an open kitchen format so you can see the food being made. Think of Amazon that let’s you track the progress of your...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Client service . . . Consulting is a service profession, which at its core, means only one thing. There is a client. As a consultant, you do the work, you worry on the client’s behalf. You make the client’s life better. You serve. I believe this is...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Recently read The Firm: The Story of McKinsey, by Duff McDonald (affiliate link). Before I do a write up, please find a 16 min video by CNBC which highlights some of the strengths (reputation, history, alumni, 17,000 over-achiever consultants), and controversies...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
PWC surveys CEOs every year and publishes the results at Davos (nice timing, right?). PWC believes that CEOS’ confidence – broadly speaking – on the economy, and business climate can be a leading indicator of actual GDP growth. Seems plausible, in...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Stanford d.school is the gold standard for all things experience, design, and honestly, cool. What do you expect when you combine smarts, engineering, meritocratic Groove-style culture, VC money, and graphics. So, it I was fairly delighted to find this 90 pg+ free pdf...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Successful client service means doing great work AND exceeding the client’s expectations. If the client worries unnecessarily, gets surprised, or is somehow unaware of the scope of work, the consultant has done a poor job of communicating. For experienced principals,...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
When is the last time you heard the word “strategy” or “strategic?” They are common words and largely misunderstood. While strategy is certainly important, it’s means more than just “long-term” or “impactful.” I...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Consultants, by the nature of their project-based work, are process oriented. Projects have a start-middle-end. That’s part of the luxury, tempo, and fun of the work. At the beginning, proposals are signed and kick-off meetings held. At the end,...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
It’s the beginning of the year and firms are lining up their projects and consultants. Proposals and statements of work are getting written and signed. My students (management consulting class M 10-1pm) have a proposal-writing assignment due, here’s what I...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Had statements of work (SoW) on my mind a lot. Writing some, fulfilling others. What you put in a SOW will affect the quality of your life. Do it well. For the consulting finders, proposals and SOW are the lifeblood of business development. If a fisher, these are...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Charles Aris is an executive recruiter out of North Carolina that all consultants are Linkedin. They have a great track record of placing ex-consultants in great roles. Here is their annual compensation survey here. This came from 500+ consultants at the big 10...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
I work at a business school. So we teach (yes), stay curious about business (yes), and also cheer students on to get great jobs (definitely yes). Set them on the way to career satisfaction and success. Many business students (undergraduate and 2 year MBA) are aiming...
