Some Additional Links and Resources on Management Consulting

Dr. Robert Lahm, Jr. (Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship with Western Carolina University) looks like he may have organized some links and resources on consulting here. There are a number of blogs listed along the right hand side of his web page, a number of which I have never covered on this blog before.

Additionally, about midway down the page there are some links on "Consulting 'How To'" and "Starting a Consulting Business". In the "How To" section, Dr. Lahm not only references a popular post of mine on client facilitation skills but also provides a presentation on "Consulting Basics (Class 2 Slides)" (note PPT). That Powerpoint presentation sheds even more light the importance of soft stuff in an engagement. It also provide some concrete advice on the cadence of a (desirable) consulting engagement.

ConsultantNinja Post on the Consulting Job Market 2008-2009

ConsultantNinja has an older but excellent post painting a picture of the prospect for jobs in the consulting market. The upshot of his annecdotes are that demand (for candidates) is down and supply is up. (Note: ConsultantNinja also has a later post that characterizes the current market as "the worst time in the last 20 years to try and get into consulting").

I'd complement some of his thoughts with a couple of things I've seen at the business schools and with clients:

  • As a gross simplification, I think of many of the business schools (pre-market collapse) as placing roughly 1/3 of folks into each corporate, consulting, and investment banking positions. If you have talked to any of the b-school students receiving investment banking offers this past year, a ton of offers were rescinded after the global economic collapse. Those one third of students that were seeking i-banking jobs – now they have become competition for consulting jobs (although I am mixing apples and oranges and cutting some corners, that one-third has now become two-thirds). With that context, is easy to see why one of the BCG recruiters that ConsultantNinja captures in his annecdotes indicates that attendence at (presumably recruiting) events has doubled.
  • Although the global downturn has probably affected more than double the number of countries as compared to the "typical" post-war recession, money still appears to be alive and well in the Middle East. My team has had some engagements and activity in places like Dubai/UAE, Egypt, and Morocco, and themes have been around launching new services and infrastructure upgrades (as compared to cost-cutting themes that seem to have top-of-mind in many other geographies). So I would concur with ConsultantNinja that those seeking consulting opportunities may want to look to the Middle East.

Personal Account of 1 Year of Blog Atrophy

It's been over a year since my last post. At the beginning of 2008, I basically burned out on blogging. My hands hurt, I developed other interests, there were too many blogs out there, and I needed to spend more time with my family. None of that has changed for me, but outside of those areas there are some things that have changed that are making me reconsider blogging again on a more regular basis:

    • Need to stay up-to-date with the times on a professional basis: In 2005, I noted that blogging as a corporate skillset was in its infancy. In 2009, I got feedback that I should have included my blog address on my CV/resume. In 2009, I also ran into a marketing and sales situation where expertise with social networking tools was a key differentiating need.

    • Need to feed my support structure and network on a passive basis: By suspending my blog, I lost some touch with my larger family, relatives, and friends. Now as context, I don't just keep in touch with these people via computer technologies. That said, content on my blog helped to keep my network passively in touch. It also helped to serve as a conversation piece when we got to talk live.

    • Need to stay up-to-date with technology on an active basis: When I was blogging, I was much more in the know about social networking tools and their real implications (social and economic). Now, my knowledge has become a little stale on things like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I'm sure that refreshing my knowledge will be like riding a bike, in that it all comes back to you, but having been away for one year, I have been feeling more disconnected with the power and pulse of the Internet community.

Each year I have reconsidered my motivations for blogging and the angle that I would take. Do others have observations about their own experiences in the past year?

Bonus link: For readers interested in consulting, there's a new management consulting blog by ex-McKinseyite Kevin Gao at http://managementconsulted.com. Looks like a very unique stopping point on the web in the consulting space.

A Perspective On Client Facilitation Skills

When I first started as a management consultant back at Pittiglio Rabin Todd & McGrath, one of the hardest things for me to grasp was the concept of "client facilitation". Many of the consultants I knew where eager to apply standard MBA frameworks like Five Forces (for competitive and profitability analysis), NPV and financial analysis tool, statistical regression, and the marketing 3Cs/STP/4Ps, but few talked about client facilitation in explicit terms.

In my mind, client facilitation refers to the processes (and skills) that a consultant uses to get a client organization to critical decision points, deep understanding, and committment to move forward or redirect.

A master of client facilitation is a person that can:

  • Master analysis skills of the trade: use top-down logical reasoning, use many analytical frameworks, work analyses from multiple directions
  • Communicate well: whether it be via face-to-face conversation, writing, phone, or instant messaging (yikes)
  • Teach and frame things properly: because interactions with parties may be varied, quick and because parties may have varying levels of knowledge, one must be able to ramp-up conversation levels quickly and put them in the proper context
  • Recognize where the organization is at and how decisions are made: is the marketing department behind in their understanding? who does the CEO look to as his/her right hand? if so, what are the steps to getting the right hand on-board or up-to-speed? how do we get things to tip? can we get there in one step or will it take two steps?
  • Lead people *without formal authority*: can you educate people, empathize with the organization, get the organization to trust you, and pave a vision and/or outline a set of tradeoffs with such clarity that motion must happen?

In my opinion, the last skill is probably the most important aspect to master regarding client facilitation. I daresay it is the essence of client facilitation, but I am pretty damn close to it. Client facilitation skills are specialized leadership skills which are all about leading people without formally being in charge.

Update 2/20/08: Gautam Ghosh points me to one of his posts that does an excellent job of discriminating between other types of "consulting" and "facilitative consulting". Again, this topic is not one that I’ve seen many people write about outside of more terse, academically-oriented publications. That said, the subject of facilitation is a very, very important aspect of management consuting and in my mind applies to more than 90% (just to pull a number out of the air) of the engagements I have ever been on or run.

Interesting Post On Whether Selling Is Practicing One’s Profession

Ford Harding has an interesting post entitled, "Is Selling Practicing Your Profession?" He takes the side of the argument that those who sell (e.g., partners in professional services firms, senior engineers) are indeed practicing their profession. But there are those that may argue (e.g., in the case of an engineer) that such and such a person is no longer an engineer because he or she now sells.

I tend to agree with the spirit of Ford’s argument – that those who sell are practicing their profession. In management consulting firms, it may be more obvious in some of the small- to mid-sized firms where consultants get involved in sales processes as early as the manager-level (this is in contrast to principals and partners I’ve interviewed at some of the big, well-known firms where sales experience is very limited to partner-levels). In management consulting, the product is complex, and one really has to understand all aspects in order to sell. One needs to understand the methodologies that can be used, the importance of engagement structure, the value propositions, all the potential variations of situations, the client organization and capability to change, potential pitfalls, what’s going on in the industry, etc. The best people in selling consulting engagements are those that have been consultants, done many engagements, currently involved in engagements, and understand when and why a client should or should not use a consultant.

That said, I have found that many people have a hard time shifting gears from delivering engagements to selling engagements. For example during the sales process, consultants newer to sales will want to ask about a lot of details, in effect trying to solve the client’s problem during the presales process. But the purpose of the presales process is to establish credibility and rapport, identify the problems to be solved, create the link between the problem and the consulting engagement that will solve the problem, and sell the engagement. The presales process is not about solving the customer’s problem in a couple of meeting sessions. Granted it is important to offer perspectives, opinions, industry data, case studies, etc. during presales meetings, but those that have spent lots of time in delivery and little time in sales can lose sight of where one is in the sales process with a customer prospect and what questions absolutely need to be answered for the consultant to propose a scope of work and engagement structure.

Shifting focus from a delivery role to a sales role takes work. I never really appreciated the investment required until having to step into a sales role out of necessity in a startup. Of all of the sales books and sites I’ve seen and read, Ford Harding’s blog and books are some of the best things to check out if you are looking at professional services sales.

Why I Dislike Microsoft Project for Management Consulting

Sort of as a follow-on to the post about project management and b-schools, I thought that I would post something (a bit one-sided) about the use of Microsoft Project in management consulting projects. I dislike the tool and sometimes even discourage the use of the tool by consultants running projects. Here’s some reasons why:

  1. While project management is a function that moves things ahead, Microsoft Project as a tool can create barriers to communication. For the average user, there’s generally not enough flexibility to do things like highlight workstreams in an engagement, create a view of danger/risk points in a project, show progress to plan plainly, and summarize a project plan on one chart.
  2. Because the tool is not part of everyone’s basic software configuration, there are additional barriers to communication because the native file format often cannot be easily exchanged with clients, colleagues, etc. who need to work and update things in real-time. Project plans in Microsoft Project need to get exported to things like PDF files, etc.
  3. Updating the project plan can become a project in of itself and prevent the project manager from doing other important things like communicating with stakeholders, managing risks, working to solve problems, and completing tasks.

Getting the theme behind my dislike for the software?

I much prefer using something like Powerpoint or Excel for developing project plans. I like Powerpoint because of its visual nature (which can be helpful in managing projects and leading people). I like Excel because of its greater structure over Powerpoint and ubiquitous availability to business people.

Am I right? Probably not entirely, but I have definitely seen the types of recurring problems described above in many engagements. The negatives often outweigh the benefits of using a more structured tool fit for purpose.

In Consulting The Process Is An Essential Part Of The Deliverable

Situation for consultant #1:

  • Client needs help in determining business strategy and writing business plan for its Board
  • Consultant follows traditional MBA frameworks by performing 3Cs (Customer, Competition, Company), Porter’s Five Forces and competitive advantage, etc. to research and analyze the best way for client to move forward
  • Consultant uses structured frameworks for outlining and documenting the tactics and logistics for pursuing the business (e.g., marketing 4Ps, traditional business plan outlines)
  • Consultant prepares full financial proformas (balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement, and notes)
  • Consultant writes business plan to spec
  • Consultant delivers written business plan to client
  • Consultant invoices $40,000
  • Client ends up being lukewarm about the deliverable.

Situation for consultant #2 (differences in bold):

  • Client needs help in determining business strategy and writing business plan for its Board
  • Consultant sets up engagement timeframe and governance structure with consulting team and client leads, extended resources for all key workstreams, and steering/approval committee
  • Consultant follows traditional MBA frameworks by performing 3Cs (Customer, Competition, Company), Porter’s Five Forces and competitive advantage, etc. to research and analyze the best way for client to move forward
  • Consultant sets up workshops and strategy sessions with the executive team, key functional managers, etc.
  • Consultant uses structured frameworks for outlining and documenting the tactics and logistics for pursuing the business (e.g., marketing 4Ps, traditional business plan outlines)
  • Consultant sets up regular review meetings and working sessions with client to review best practices, evaluate options, and refine and revise strategy
  • Consultant prepares full financial proformas (balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement, and notes)
  • Consultant sets up working sessions to familiarize client with models, align financials with chart of accounts for client, get client input, and educate client about industry benchmarks
  • Consultant writes business plan to spec
  • Consultant involves client with interim drafts and presentations and gets organizational buy-in
  • Consultant delivers written business plan to client (largely same as before)
  • Consultant invoices $250,000
  • Client is very happy and ends up getting multimillion dollar business moving forward through Board and project launched.

Vanilla business plan $40,000. Client buy-in … priceless.