by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
I listened to a lot of whining this week It was partly sad, partly frustrating. New consultants – unaware of what consultants really do – had a list of reasons why it is hard: I can’t get the data, so that’s why I am behind I sent an email;...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
This is a post I did 2 years ago. My new edits are in red color. Management consultants use the phrase “best practices” often. Perhaps too often. You will see that magical phrase mentioned numerous times in white papers and research on these...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
What’s the deliverable? You will hear this jargon often. A deliverable is the final product of a consulting phase or project. It comes in many forms: excel model, marketing plan, master facilities plan, workshop, customer research, or presentation. As an...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Nice things about consulting. . . Good food, restaurants, and wine New experiences and places New problems to solve, and things to learn People to teach and learn from Getting to know your team, becoming fast friends In my opinion, the 2 BEST things about...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Over the last 15 years, I’ve interviewed lots of candidates. Beyond the resumes and case interviews, it comes down to fit. When I think about the most important characteristics of a consultant – or anyone I plan to work with – it gets narrowed down...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Consultants, lawyers, accountants bill for their time For good or bad, the traditional time and expense way of billing still prevails. This means that your time is valuable to you (as a professional) and to the client (as an expense). Every hour that you bill, the...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting, Learning
You cannot know everything As consultants, clients know more about their business than you do. Fact. However, we have the logical structuring, resources, focus, and objectivity to do great work. It’s a life-saving skill to get smart quickly on the topic, client...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
How many consultants are there? Like a typical market sizing problem you might get during a consulting interview, it’s an interesting question. According to the last population census, there are 700K+ people in the United States who identify as a consultant. Of...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Save face This is a simple concept that is critical for consultants and sales people to understand. Never put your client in a situation where you are directly and publicly disagreeing with them. Never box them into a corner where they might be ashamed of the...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Leverage is how consulting firms make money As I discussed in a previous post, professional services firms – lawyers, accountants, marketers, consultants – are built on organizational pyramid structures. There are fewer partners than analysts, no surprise....
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Sigma You will hear about this a lot in operations consulting. It is the idea that a process is very consistent and repeatable. Six sigma means there are only 3.4 defects per 1 million units. Essentially, it is almost perfect. Motorola coined the term in the 1980s...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Deloitte published its 5th annual Top 10 technology trends recently here. It’s 137 pages, but very readable. Deloitte included lots of client interviews and real-life examples. They kept the consulting-y talk to a minimum. Thank you. Even if you don’t...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Best practices After 15+ years in Fortune 500 and management consulting life, I am convinced that business problems are similar. Yes, industries differ. Yes, companies are different. Yes, products are different. But many of the problems are similar Common problems...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Today I fired my CPA I have been thinking about it for a while. A few things have bothered me over the last six months, and in the end, it was the lack of courtesy and communication that really tipped the scales for me. Customer service is an attitude which makes the...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
I have never worked at McKinsey. Yet, I have 10+ credible reference points and 10,000 words of interview-worthy comments written by previous employees. Is this an ebook that you purchase for 99cents on Kindle? No. It’s on Quora, and it is free. What is it like...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
What does success look like? During a consulting interview, a candidate once asked me, “What are you looking for in a candidate?” No surprise, I answered “It Depends.” As I described in a previous post called Finders, Minders, and Grinders,...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
This is the most important thing you need to know as an operations consultant. Bold statement I know, but Lean is so pivotal and fundamental, it precedes other concepts I M H O. Lean cannot be overstated. Lean is a philosophy of management, corporate culture, set of...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Everyone understands inventory It’s the stuff sitting on Walmart’s shelves. It’s the frozen pizzas in the freezer. The unsold house in the neighborhood. The empty hotel rooms and empty movie seats. Non-billable consultants are no different....
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Does your project require excel / Tableau? Whatever your project scope, if you are not using excel – to categorize, count, calculate, or correlate things – I would argue that you really don’t have much of a project. It’s my bias, but a project...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Clearly, this is some type of slang, but what does it mean? David Maister coined this term to describe the different roles you find in a professional services organization. Yes, he advised law firms on how to build their practices, but this advice applies to...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Oh, ERP ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning (pronounced “E-R-P”) and anyone working in a Fortune 500 knows what this is. Many people use it daily at work. Quite simply, it is the software backbone that runs most large businesses. In the early days...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Consultants are structured thinkers They may not have as intuitive a grasp on the topic as the client – after all, the client has been living in this field their entire life – but consultants excel at piecing together bits and pieces of data until it...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Supply chain seems boring To most people, the phrase “supply chain” creates little excitement. To the chagrin of operational consultants everywhere, it probably ranks close to the bottom on the list of sexy MBA topics – somewhere close to the...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Vegetable pricing machine I was walking through Walmart the other day and saw this simple machine that weighs and prices veggies and fruits. On the surface it seems simple enough – shoppers can price their produce, and save time at check out. To this...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
It’s a marathon The hours are long, and the schedule erratic. It’s not for slackers or sleepy-heads. Including travel, it’s easily a 70+ hour a week job. Days start early This Monday, my flight was at 6:45am. Same thing this coming week. I live an...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
IT implementation is “bread and butter work” It often involves dozens of consultants, multiple locations, and sometimes 2-3 years for a full roll out of an enterprise resource plan (ERP) like SAP or Oracle. These are big hairy projects that cost dozens, if...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Mergers In 2013, Deloitte acquired Monitor. Now PWC is picking up Booz&Co for what some believe will be 1x sales at approximately $1 billion. PWC got PRTM 2 years prior. Towers Perrin & Watson Wyatt merged in 2009. Six reasons this trend will continue: Growth...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Consulting = Team Sport Consultants work in teams. Consultants work in packs. We are hired to work on messy problems which are often complex, ambiguous, political, and time-sensitive. Basically, it’s a lot of work that has to be done in a short(er) amount of...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Management consulting is changing Don’t take my word for it. There is a recent a Harvard Business Review podcast interview with Clayton Christensen of the Innovator’s Dilemma fame (affiliate link) and Dominic Barton (global managing director of McKinsey)....
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
With the recent publication of The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on Business (affiliate link) by Duff McDonald, McKinsey has been in the news a lot. As a disclaimer, I have not read the book, but even the reviews have some juicy facts: CEO...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Case interview If you are an undergraduate or MBA student who wants to get a consulting offer, you better do well on the case interview. If you ran a regression on consulting offers and good case interviews, the correlation would be 0.7 or higher. In non-geek terms,...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
14th Annual report Boston Consulting Group (BCG) released their 14th annual report on total shareholder value (TSR). It was worthwhile read, even if you are not in corporate finance. They talk about global trends in economics, capital flows, investor expectations and...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Accenture’s (ACN) reported Q3 earnings on Thursday (6/27). Revenues were basically flat at $7.2 billion, and net profits jumped up nicely to $810 million. It wasn’t all good news though. ACN said that bookings were slowing down to 3-4% YoY. No surprise...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
BAH is a reputable firm Booz Allen Hamilton is a reputable consulting firm, well-known for it’s deep relationship with the US government. As the news reminds us, it has not been a good week for BAH. Edward Snowden One of its employees, Edward Snowden admitted to...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Have you seen a TED video? If not, you should stop reading this blog right now. Instead, go to www.TED.com and watch any of the 1,400+ videos. They are all less than 18 minutes long and completely worth your time. Very thought-provoking. For those who watch TED, we...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Recently gave a talk on the topic of networking. It’s a vast topic that we universally agree is important, yet few of us really excel at. Books and books have been written on the topic, but here is my take: heart has to be the right place There are lots of...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Management consulting Continues to do well. The Economist posted this chart last week which shows that McKinsey, Bain, and BCG all grew by double digits in 2011. The revenue trend is clearly up. Bain grew by 17% YoY. The consulting outlook is good. Companies are...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
We are in the influence business Just like anyone who sells services to clients – markers, bankers, consultants, dentists, plumbers – we influence clients to do things we think is in their best interest. It’s harder than it sounds because: We are...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Consultants use buckets I know it sounds pedestrian and unsophisticated, but it’s harder than it looks. When you are trying to crack a complex problem, inevitably you will start to group things. Buckets, I tell you. Consultants use buckets. When you have a...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
“It Depends” This is a phrase you hear a lot in both business school and management consulting. As weird as seems, it is often the best short-answer to give a client. A boring half-answer? To some this may come across as timid or mentally lazy. As if...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Consultants (Keep) revising their work Yes, the end product tends to be high-quality because a lot of smart people have spent A LOT of time on it. Looking at recent files saved on my laptop, I see some with pretty absurd file titles like: ABC_phase 1_02082013 10pm...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting, Fun
Yes, I was delayed 7 hours before. . . In 2013, I had a flight schedule to leave at 4:45 that left at 12:30am. There were 58 people on the standby list. During this horrific wait at O’Hare, I had the good fortune of traveling with a work colleague. We talked,...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Who, What, Why, When, Where? These are five questions kids learn in grade school or when first learning a language. It covers the basics and helps you understand the situation and context. My high school friends can attest to my poor memory, but even I can remember...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Went to an improv theater recently. Had a a great time and laughed a lot. It made me ask: What can consultants learn from Improv? My first reaction to the question was dismissive. After all, improv is about entertaining the audience, making things up, and generally...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Recently, I was reminded that there are three types of influence in the workplace. You might not have all three, but you better have some. . . Positional, Relational, Expertise. I first heard this on a manager-tools.com podcast, but please let me know if you heard of...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Messy processes everywhere SIPOC is not a nice sounding acronym, but it’s a useful way to think through problems. Clients often present consultants with complex processes that seemingly don’t have a start or a finish. They go on-and-on. They are...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Client wants more for the same money Not pretty. It’s no surprise that consultants dread it. It usually means late nights, grumpy analysts, dissatisfied clients, and potentially lower project margins. All bad things. In the end, it is a fancy word for...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Accenture reported Q1 earnings I knew that ACN was publicly traded, but never bothered to look at the numbers. Here is what I found in their10Q. Q1 Revenues of $7.22 billion, up 2% YoY Q1 Operating income of $1.05 billion, up 7% YoY Q1 Net income of $698 million Cash...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Management consultants make good money They should not complain. If you look at the most recent MBA graduation statistics of Kellogg, you will see newly minted MBAs making a median salary of $165K + if they go into consulting. It is no wonder that it is one of the...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (affiliate link) is arguably the most famous book written on negotiations. It was written by Roger Fisher and William Ury in 1981 and has been compulsory reading for negotiations classes at Washington, Columbia,...
