On Structured Problem Solving and Consulting

Indian Blogger has a good post on structured problem solving as it relates to consulting. The post is based on a summary of a session by an Arthur D Little strategy consultant. I would like to add a few comments to Indian Blogger’s summary that:

As a Consultant, you should be very good at 4 things:
-Structured Problem Solving
-Creating Effective Presentations
-Writing Reports for the client
-Delivering Presentations

These are definite must-haves. There are also more extroverted skills and general management methods that consultants should seek to develop. Rock stars in the consulting profession (in my opinion) are the ones that are also able to take things to the next level by recognizing that "problem solving" often involves aspects of interdependent problem solving. This includes working with and facilitating groups to solve problems, getting regular feedback, persuading others, facilitating the client without formal authority, setting up the right project structure (e.g., order and content of events such as for strategy workshops), addressing issues and nipping them in the bud, and applying the right consulting engagement governance structure (e.g., core team leadership & steering committees).

Edit: On a related note to the importance of engaging people, here is a past post I wrote on the importance of the client interview (the post was written during a period when I was practicing as an independent management consultant for my first time).

Made-To-Order Business School Curriculums

Gautam Ghosh points to and comments on an article related to made-to-order business school curriculums. Gautam comments:

I’m not so sure whether such a trend is good or not. Sure, it gives a focus and builds knowledge about a particular industry, but as we HR specialists are finding out, the growth then becomes limited to the function/industry.

In my mind, one key benefit recruiting people badged with an MBA is that I have a good idea about what core base of knowledge that they possess. While perhaps not as rigid as engineering training, say, when someone has an MBA I can be pretty certain that they have more than just a basic working knowledge about things like competitive analysis methods, marketing strategy frameworks, discounted cash flow analysis, and financial or managerial accounting. These are transportable skills, and the foundation also helps one to be creative and adapt to unusual circumstances. One learns about core methods without being tied to what the current industry looks like. This can be important, especially since industries change over time and are influenced by other industries. In any case, if course curriculums are made-to-order, this may help to relieve supply shortage pressures in the near-term for companies, but depending on how the program is designed, training may have its limitations to the function/industry as Gautam mentions.

On a different note, the article does claim that business school curriculums are becoming outdated. While my MBA is pre-turn-of-the-centuryish vintage, I have not seen things that suggest the curriculum should be radically rehauled. Although I haven’t follwed the space rigorously, some areas that are more recent adds to business school curriculums are likely in the international business, ethics, innovation, and technology areas. What else have a missed? What else should be added? Or perhaps the article is just claiming that curricula is outdated in the sense that we are missing made-to-order b-school curricula that can serve long-tail needs (or at least vertical-specific needs)?

Edit (2/23/07): Social entreprenurship (tip to Wakechick) classes may also be more recent adds to b-school programs.

A Problem With Lessons Of Wants Versus Needs

As young children, we are often educated about the difference between wants and needs. Needs are basic things like food, clothing, and shelter that are required. Wants, on the other hand, are things that people desire but are optional, like toys, jewelry, etc. It is not uncommon for parents to diminish the importance of wants as compared to needs.

As some people grow up, they may become engineers and scientists. The training is very problem-solving oriented. Given a problem, how do we solve it? If there is a need, how do we fulfill it? I don’t recall much engineering training on understanding wants.

As one’s career changes, there can be troubles with carrying such lessons over to environments involving entrepreneurship, consulting, and other environments where purchases are emotional. In many of these environments as a supplier, one can easily get caught in a rational trap of trying to selling to needs as opposed to wants. That is, it is easy to say if I meet all of the customer prospect’s requirements and needs in a proposal, then surely the customer will buy from me. The problem is that one’s solution may be totally logical, but it may miss a critical aspect of the customer prospect’s deep desires.

Some examples of selling to needs versus wants:

  • structured process and framework for analyzing company acquisition versus recommendations and approval from top-tier consulting firm
  • comprehensive integration software versus contractual guarantee that integration will work
  • financial model that proves a business will work versus a complete business plan that has buy-in from the executive team, Board, and shareholders
  • 8-hour day care versus day care a family trusts and feels safe with
  • good husband versus sexy hunk
  • extremely innovative software from a startup versus pretty innovative software from a startup where source code is secured in escrow if startup goes bankrupt

Some of the examples I offer above are clearly in grey areas, but my point is that one contantly needs to be aware of the purchaser and whether old brain (desire) or new brain (reason) is the more active one at work at any given time.

World Wild Web

Some of the wildest technology news I noted from the past year:

The last one really hits close to home for me. I remember when I was a younger engineer designing computer chips perhaps seventeen years ago or so when state of the art chips were running at like 33Mhz. At the time, I recall that the DEC Alpha chip was running at like 50-60Mhz and people were saying that it was pretty much impossible to go faster. The clock signals simply couldn’t propagate fast enough or something like that (basically a limitation of physics). Well I guess we were wrong about technology progress slowing down. To put things in perspective, 1 Terahertz equals 1,000,000Mhz.

So as a message to those young engineers out there, in less than two decades one can see a tremendous amount of change in technologies. But more generally I suppose, in that period of time a lot can change in life too. Makes me reflect upon the kind of life we want to leave for future generations.

Edit (2/15/07): And as another technology one, I don’t if some people remember the early nineties. The World Wide Web was just developing then. I think I remember someone showing me the web, and there might have been something like 2 or 3 websites out there (well perhaps there were only a few interesting ones out there). No graphics at all from what I remember. Maybe a dozen hyperlinks or something. Now were are at a point where there are tens of millions of blogs out there, not to mention websites. Wild.

What A Sample Management Consulting Deliverable Looks Like

An updated version of this post with new sources and descriptions appears in The Consulting Apprenticeship (update September 2016).

It is relatively easy to find white papers, articles, magazine publications, etc. by management consulting firms. While these vehicles can be excellent sources of information, they tend shed light on either the thought leadership, research base, and/or marketing aspects of consulting firms. For those that are trying to learn about consulting firms from the perspective of what do consultants actually do and/or produce, there is relatively little information on the Internet that I have found that represents a concrete, traditional management consulting deliverable. In a large part, this tends to be because many consulting engagements involve confidential relationships between the consultancy and the client, and disclosure is not permitted.

That said, I have located a public sector deliverable (by the well-respected management consulting firm, Dean & Company) on the Internet at this site and thought I would share it (note PDF file – Download dean_report.pdf). It is an excellent example for at least a couple of reasons:

  1. It illustrates how best practice consulting should be driven by facts and a scientific method to the fullest extent possible – The presentation I show here is full of both benchmarking information and comprehensive analysis from numerous perspectives.
  2. The presentation style (which I call a “consulting style” perhaps incorrectly) reflects bottom-line titling of slides as compared to topical titling – This is a method that I did not see before entering consulting, and it is a method that I infrequently see in corporate environments (or at least much less frequently as compared to consulting environments). Notice how the title for slide 6 reads, “Expectations of selling service bundles are in line with other ‘triple play’ networks”. Even if one can’t read the blurry or busy figures in the slides, one can end up reading just the titles of the slides in the deck and get the overall executive storyline. Compare that to the situation if slide 6 was a topical titled slide that read, “Service Bundle Analysis”. Now one would have to read the slide to try to extract a bottom line message.

Now it is important to caveat this post by mentioning that this is only one type of deliverable by a consulting firm, but it is a great example. It is also worth mentioning that it is easy to look at a deliverable and completely miss the process aspect of how consulting deliverables may be generated. The process aspect may be equally, if not more important than the deliverable, and the process method varies by consulting firm. For example, the process to generate the deliverable (not necessarily the one here) may have been to facilitate input and involvement over a period of time from multiple divisions and functions within a company with oversight and/or steering by the executive team of the client. The benefits of that mix and method, while too detailed to go into here, should not be overlooked.

 

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Corporate Blogs Added To Bain & Company’s List Of 2007 Management Tools

Hat tip to Mark Lin on pointing me to leading management consulting firm, Bain & Company, and their Management Tools 2007: An Executive’s Guide publication (note PDF). As context from the publication (bracketed text added by me for clarity):

Every year or two since [1993], we’ve interviewed senior managers and conducted research to identify 25 of the most popular and pertinent management tools. We’ve defined the tools in this guide and, based on a detailed survey of managers, we explain how the tools are being used. We determine the rate of success for each tool. We also conduct one-on-one follow-up interviews to learn the circumstances in which each tool is most likely to produce the desired results. …

Our efforts to understand the continually evolving management tools landscape have led us to add five tools to this year’s guide—Consumer Ethnography, Corporate Blogs, Lean Operations, Mergers and Acquisitions and Shared Service Centers. While none is new, per se, each tool is growing in use and playing an increasingly important role in today’s business world.