After 10+ years blogging about consulting, I’ve finally put it down in a more systematic way for you.  Spent 8 months recording videos on the following topics.  You can access it here:  https://www.coursera.org/specializations/managementconsulting

There are 5 courses.  I’ve included a table of contents below, for your reference.  Use what’s useful, and forget the rest.

Course #1: Introduction to Management Consulting

1. Who should take this course?
2. What will you learn from this course?
3. Consultants help executives
4. Which executives hire consultants?
5. Consultants break down problems
6. Helping decision-makers to create change
7. Top 5 reasons to become a consultant
8. Consulting is a profession and a mindset
9. Demonstrating logic in the way they think, talk, and write
10. Conducting effective client interviews
11. How do I develop consulting skills?
12. 12 reasons clients hire consultants
13. What is problem solving? Why is it important?

Course #2: Getting a Consulting Job

1. What is consulting leverage?
2. Understanding project profitability
3. Competencies = what you need to be good at
4. Do simple tasks well (e.g., executive communications)
5. Do simple tasks well (e.g., meeting minutes)
6. Projects can vary from 3 weeks to 1 year
7. What to do before the project starts?
8. Internal consultants have a huge opportunity
9. Networking is important and it takes effort
10. Who should I network with?
11. What are consulting firms looking for?
12. Recruiting is a people business
13. What is a behavioral interview?
14. What is a case interview?

Course #3: Consulting Approach to Problem Solving

1. Think broadly about the problem
2. Scope should be both broad and narrow
3. Breaking the problems into “buckets”
4. Using “logic trees” to connect the “buckets”
5. Hypothesis-based consulting
6. Developing confidence in your solution(s)
7. Why do consultants love data?
8. Messy data is an opportunity
9. Data lends credibility
10. The journey from data to insights
11. Data request
12. Client follow up (data request example)
13. Data cleansing and structuring
14. DMAIC: A key tool for process improvement

Course #4: Consulting Tools and Tips    

1. Top 5 ways to get smart on a client’s business
2. Top 5 ways to get smart on industry trends
3. Finviz.com: A free way to analyze stocks
4. Paid research is expensive, and may be useful
5. Michael Porter’s five forces framework
6. Application of the five forces framework
7. Creating barriers to entry
8. Sometimes you need to create new data
9. Surveys are useful, and take a lot of time
10. Observations give a glimpse of reality
11. What is benchmarking? Why is it important?
12. How to stay out of (benchmarking) trouble
13. 10 tips for competitive intelligence
14. Use Exceljet.net to learn the Excel basics
15. Excel models vary from simple to fancy

Course #5: Consulting Presentations and Storytelling

1. Effective proposals and statements of work (SoW)
2. How detailed should the proposal be?
3. Consultants “sell” without selling
4. All presentations start and end with storytelling
5. Storyboard as if the presentation were a movie
6. The four hats of creative writing
7. Pyramid principle, start with the answer
8. Frameworks to show process or decisions
9. Effective charts and tables
10. Average graphs and charts examples
11. Bad graphs and charts examples
12. Getting ready for “game day” presentations
13. Presentation tips for “game day”
14. Presentations for other people
15. PowerPoint titles should tell a story
16. One-page executive summaries
17. What is executive presence?
18. What is gravitas?