Category: Management Consulting

Analytical Engine has an excellent post/illustration that demonstrates what many management consultants strive to create for their clients as far as presentations and analyses go:

• Creating The Killer Picture – A picture is worth a thousand words. Summarizing a complex concept in a structured, scientific, and visual way is invaluable in consulting engagements. Successful consultants must prove wrong the saying that "consultants use their client’s watch to tell them the time". Consultants are on the right track when they can synthesize analyses into a crisp picture and get the client to react with something to the effect of "that’s really important and something I didn’t know about myself". The picture that Analytical Engine shows combines a structured breakdown of consumer and business segments, subsegments, and product offerings with information about customer churn, churn reasons, and scorecard-like indicators.
• Answering the "So What?" – Creating fancy pictures is not enough. Without a bottom line or a prescriptive message to the analysis, consultants and/or managers are just brain dumping information with no end purpose or goal. By adding scorecard and ranking information to the chart, one can imagine that the analysis presented by Analytical Engine naturally leads to something important, like "Client needs to focus on improving six red flagged areas which cost the client $X per annum in above average churn."

The combination of "creating killer pictures" and answering the "so what" questions is a gold standard in management consulting.

Related post: using bottom line messaging in consulting presentations

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).

Heidi wrote a very thoughtful post that profiles my blog. Her blog is currently oriented towards the research of the management consulting profession. Her investigation appears to be in part motivated by an investment banking friend that indicated, "… you should be a management consultant. You’re a good question askerer and it suits your personality". She is trying to learn more about how to get an internship with one of the top firms. In my opinion, the Vault is a go-to source for information on careers in consulting.

Heidi’s post made me realize that I have posted very little on analyst positions within consulting firms. Analyst positions are non-partner track positions within a firm. Often analysts are hired into a consulting firm with the expectation that after a couple of years with a firm that the analyst may return to get an MBA degree (after which, the analyst may choose to return to a consulting firm at an associate-level position [which is an entry-level, partner track position]).

To set some additional context, the most popular paths to becoming a management consultant fall into three categories:

1. Get an MBA at a top school and get a decent shot at becoming an associate with a firm (this is the path I took into the field)
2. Get a PhD and get a shot at becoming a consultant with a consulting firm that has a track record of hiring PhDs
3. Get an undergraduate degree (e.g., business, economics, liberal arts, engineering) and get a shot at an analyst position with a consulting firm

Although analysts vary widely, the consulting analysts I have worked with strike me on a number of dimensions:

1. Good to excellent at marketing research, combing the Internet, and finding sources of information – many of the analysts I have seen are better than the average associate, manager, principal, or partner within the firm in terms of obtaining factual business information to support a project, whether via press releases, research reports, company filings and financials, company knowledge base, questionaire, or even client secretary.
2. Good to excellent vertical industry knowledge – it is not unusual for analysts to know more about industry trends, stats, happenings, etc. within a vertical (e.g., healthcare or mobile wireless) than 1st- or 2nd-year associates who may be more focused on project concerns and problem solving.
3. Diligent, organized, and curious – based on a combination of having to both comb through tons of information and support numerous consultants working particular workstreams of a consulting engagement, analysts have to be diligent and organized. Curiousity is something else I’ve noticed in many analysts. Many are hungry to learn and to seek knowledge.

Analyst positions are great ways to enter the consulting area. Although I haven’t performed a detailed numerical analysis, I would suggest looking at larger firms (e.g., Booz Allen, Accenture) for these types of positions. It is my feeling that smaller firms tend to have much fewer of these positions available proportionate to demand (which makes it hard to land a position from a pure probability pespective).

Update (1/25/07): Amaresh has another great point below, which I replicate here "One more point I will add is that most of the good analysts have atleast one very solid core skill (i.e. doing very good research,financial analysis, statistics etc.), which they have developed during their undergraduate project or course work."

Client workshops are elements that I have often seen as part of consulting engagements, but I have found little written information about them (unlike the topic of client interviews, which I discussed here). I have often set up workshops for engagements related to business or marketing strategy, but workshops are not limited to these scenarios.

Suppose a client is looking to enter a new business, and they want to determine a strategy for entering the business (in terms of business structure, channel structure, pricing methods, division of operational responsibilities, etc.). A consultant may structure a workshop where key elements are discussed in a management or executive setting with a client:

• case studies of competitors
• case studies of comparable companies in related sectors
• consultant research and points of view on client issue area
• client point of view and prior experiences
• industry trends, unsolved problems, and/or sexy solutions

By engaging in a workshop, the consultant helps to level set with the client and to ensure that many points of view are brought in (especially to encourage "blue sky" thinking). Note that the workshop is also very focused on setting up a fact-based foundation. In this structure, any opinions can be framed within a structured environment. Such a structure helps consultants from giving and clients from receiving shallow advice.

Note that other frameworks can be weaved into the workshop structure. For example, suppose the consultant has specific methodologies for assessing whether a product development process can be improved and that this methodology covers four distinct areas. The workshop can be carefully designed to weave around those four areas.

The workshop needs to have specific goals in order to be effective. In some cases, the workshop may be a first step to get the client thinking about where they think priorities should be for their business. In other cases, the desired outcome of the workshop may be for the consultant to help the client with two to three focus areas that become evident during the workshop. Other outcomes might include performing financial analysis of different business scenarios/ideas generated during the workshop. The possibilities for workshops within consulting engagements are endless. But one of my favorite ways for thinking about workshops is as a way to stretch people's minds while facilitating a fresh start in attacking business problems within a fact-based framework.

Update (1/17/07): Phil's comment (#1 below on role playing) is very noteworthy to mention, especially since he is a very experienced consultant part of the inner circle of consulting (principal and partner+ levels within many consulting firms).

Update (1/23/07): Gautam Ghosh contributes to the workshop dialogue here. Thanks!