by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Create a podcast with a few clicks NotebookLM is something new from Google. You upload a document, or link to a webpage. Then you can select “Deep Dive” on the top right, and it creates a super-real, fun, interactive dialogue between two people. Basically,...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
McDonald’s strategy presentation We have a strategy presentation due in a few days. It’s 8 pages total, including cover page and any appendix the students want to add. The target company is MCD, which is both easy, fun, and difficult. Easy because...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Some people might call this unconventional or “outside of the box” thinking. Being radically different. Instead of optimizing an existing part or process, ask the question, “do we even need the part?” This is Lean thinking Actually, I would...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
GenAI is kinda amazing If you haven’t spent an hour with Chat GPT or a LLM (Lamda, Bard etc), you’ve been missing out. It’s a super easy, personable chat friend, who is 100% interested in what you are. They are like super-smart, ivy-league interns...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Books are magic Before ChatGPT, before YouTube, before podcasts, before audiobooks, there were books. One of Tim Ferriss’ common question during interviews is “Which book do you most often gift to others?” In a similar way, I asked readers and...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
What advice do you often give? This is one of my favorite questions. It’s interesting to learn from others. The advice is usually pithy and to the point (no book purchase needed). It usually says a LOT about the person, where they are in life, and what’s...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Congratulations There are many joys to being a teacher. Watching “sharp-as-a-pin” seniors graduate is one of them. You’ve finished this race, you’ve done the work, you’ve earned your seat at the alumni table. Your paid back your...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
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...
by Consultant's Mind | 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,...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
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,...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Healthcare
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
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...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Podcasts are a great life hack, a low time-cost way to learn something. Recently, I’ve been enjoying the Goldman Sachs’ Exchanges podcast even though I am not a finance wonk. It has an interview format. The heads of different Goldman Sach’s business...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Urgency “Urgency” is a word that I heard twice last week in separate conversations. And it’s no wonder, right? So many reasons why things feel urgent right now: Economy – we are collectively still stumbling out of a global economic coma....
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Happy 4th of July weekend. The country’s birthday makes me reflect on a lot of things – history, freedom, national governance, community, the future, and money. What? Money? Really John? Let’s not ruin the BBQ. Yep, money, let me explain why. . ....
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
I started this blog in 2012. Now, eight years later, I am starting a new blog here. I will be the editor, not the writer. Started blogging in 2012 When I started a new job in 2011, there was not a lot of work. Our group was not that busy and I was a bit bored. ...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Starting in mid-March, I went on an intellectual camping trip with 226 university students. We decided (a generous expression) to take our learning remote. How did it go? What did I learn? What worked? As with all things strategy, it involves trade-offs and using your...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Small gift. Found a great business resource online, for free, that chronicles 40+ years of business thinking. Written by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, legendary investors at Berkshire Hathaway (BRK). All put together into a book, it is 600 pages long with 4.6...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
First of all, you gotta love the provocative title of this article from Roger Martin, ex-Dean of Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto here. Big. Lie. Hard to get past those two words. Big Lie. Why is strategy (potentially) a scary thing? Martin starts...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Writing is a superpower Putting your thoughts on paper in an organized way pays massive dividends. If executives can learn quickly from the work you’ve done and make smart decisions, then you are winning. If it’s a pleasure to read and reflect on, even...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Yuk, news all the time. . . Like everyone else, I’ve been a bit glued to my phone – looking at the continually “breaking news” on the Covid-19 crisis. Frankly, there is a lot to know and be concerned about. As I told my students, the entire...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
For many readers, your are excel professionals. You get happy – almost excited – to create tricked-out excel models to impress your boss and clients. The fact that there are 500+ formulas,100+ functions, and 200+ shortcuts, is kinda cool. Yes, you are a...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
I listened to a podcast interview with Kai-Fu Lee a few months ago and immediately ordered his book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (2018, affiliate link). Since then, I’ve order several copies for friends. If you want to get...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
It’s the end of the semester, so I will be grading 50+ final strategy papers. Unlike previous write-ups, the students have the freedom to choose their company and use any resources they want. This sounds deceptively simple: choose a company, do the research,...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
It’s good to have a healthy skepticism with “business books.” Afterall, there are 8,000 of them published every year. Most are banal, reductionist, or derivative (fancy way of saying, boring). Rework (affiliate link) was written in 2010, and...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Deloitte published their 2019 Banking and Capital Markets Outlook here. (2.4Mb, 40pgs). Times have been good, historically low interest rates with moderate growth. What’s not to like? High-level takeaways Return on Equity (ROE) for Western banks is up to 8.6%...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Many of you have probably seen Hans Rosling’s famous TED talk where he describes 200+ years of economic history using animated bubble charts and a very big stick. See below. Factfulness is the book. Factfulness: 10 Reasons We’re Wrong About the World,...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Huge fan of this book, phrase, and career philosophy. In fact, I mention this book to 400+ Emory students every year. So Good They Cannot Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Question for Work You Love (affiliate link). This was written in 2012 by Cal Newport,...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
This HBR article has a catchy title: Why Consultants Quit Their Jobs and Go Independent (July 2019). You can easily guess the top 3 reasons: 1) More work-life balance 2) Better compensation, sometimes 3) Less internal politics. The potential downsides are equally...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Recently read a 150pg book on personal financial advice targeting physicians. It’s called White Coat Investor (affiliate link) by James Dahle, a practicing emergency room doctor. Good title, huh? It has a matching website, and podcast here. My physician...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
July the 4th is Independence Day in the United States. It’s exactly the right time to reflect on what it means to be American, and how America fits in the world. Yes, its more than fireworks, BBQ, and swimming pools. Exactly six years ago, I blogged saying July...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Consultants excel at making sense of disparate, messy, and sometimes conflicting data. This is not a robotic exercise in copy/paste into an excel – no – you’ve got to think through the problem. What’s relevant? What’s valid? Can you find...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Deloitte recently published Pivoting to Digital Maturity: 7 Capabilities Central to Digital Transformation here. They surveyed 1,200 executives (74% C-level executives, remainders VPs) and identified 7 PIVOTS that can help organizations push the digital transformation...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
For all of its faults, the United States has been the destination of choice for emigrants since – well – for half a century. Personally, I have friends and family who got their green cards just within the last few years. The US continues to be a magnet for...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Bain & Co released a Healthcare Private Equity and Corporate M&A Report 2019 here. (1.7Mb, 64 pages) Last week’s blog post was on private equity portion. This week, I am covering the M&A portion. Healthcare M&A = $435 Billion in 2018 As a...
by Consultant's Mind | Healthcare
Bain & Co released a Healthcare Private Equity and Corporate M&A Report 2019 here. (1.7Mb, 64 pages) First blog post on the private equity half. Bain & Company notes that “there was significant activity across all segments of the value chain.”...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Yes, you may have seen him on Shark Tank. He is an UBER-successful angel investor and venture capitalist. Famous for his wearing vintage cowboy shirts and being on the ground floor of Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Facebook. Listened to a 90 min interview of him by Tim...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Gift for you – podcast playlist Someone recently asked for a few podcast recommendations (hat tip: JZ), so I put together a playlist of 60+ podcast interviews. Two ways to subscribe: From your Iphone, click here and hold down for 1 second. It will open...
by Consultant's Mind | Healthcare
Yes, US Healthcare can be a puzzle. Or worse, a labyrinth, a Gordian knot. First, I would probably spend 5-10 hours skimming The Health Care Handbook 3rd edition, 2023 Askins, Moore. Google things of interest. As a second step, here is my resource list of 90+ links to...
by Consultant's Mind | Healthcare
Interested in healthcare? Buy this book. Just held a talk for 25+ MBA who are heading into healthcare this summer and told them to buy this book. I even gave them a money-back guarantee, saying that I would buy the book from them, if not satisfied. BOOM. If you are...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
US Healthcare has so much potential, yet, it remains a super-fragmented, inefficient, and often unjust system. In sum, it’s broken in many places. In the fall, I facilitate a graduate-level course where we try to grok the root causes of an industry which is 1/5...
