Author: Steve Shu

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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.

 

The Consulting Apprenticeship is available for purchase at Amazon.

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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.

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Sorry … Computer Issues

There have been many folks trying to reach me at my normal, personal email address at s4management. Email is broken for me. Severely. Suffice it to say the problem has been going on for more than a month, and there is no immediate resolution path (given my lack of time and the technical severity of the problem). I am setting up a temporary Yahoo email address – for those that have a need to know you can find it on the bio page. Sorry for the troubles.

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Musings on the Makeup of Consulting Analysts

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."

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The Workshop Method As Part of Strategy Consulting

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!

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On The Contributions of Management

One of my wife’s professorial colleagues in the business school, Dr. Steven Postrel, has a post over at Organizations and Markets (hat tip: Virginia Postrel), which starts off by posing the question, "What contribution does management make toward producing output?". One item that drew my attention (snipped a little out of context) is:

In other words, management’s effect on capabilities is best understood as avoiding incidents of inconsistent behavior.

Consistency analysis can be an important tool to use in management consulting. I refer to a different flavor of it in an earlier post as one fail-safe method (method of last resort) for approaching management problems when one cannot rely on external benchmarking information or clear business theory. I will say, however, that seeking consistency at a tactical management level presumes that consistency is the right strategy in the first place (which may be considered a leadership or portfolio concern)!

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For My iPhone Diary

The sneezers are singing the praises of the iPhone today:

  • Om Malik (communication and telecom blog) here on the end of an era (or mark of a new era) and here on form factor and packaging
  • Mark Evans (Canadian telecom blogger) here
  • Paul Kedrosky (finance, VC, and tech blogger) here on capital market reactions of Apple, Nokia, Motorola, Palm, and RIM/Blackberry to iPhone showing
  • Matt Marshall (at VentureBeat) here
  • Esme Vos (Muniwireless blog specializing in municipal wireless coverage) says here that we need more muni WiFi just for the iPhone
  • Kottke (uber independent blogger) here

Some of the competitors are shrugging or more lukewarm:

  • Microsoft’s pre-emptive pooh-pooh
  • Nokia VP’s statements that the iPhone confirms convergence but that 2G device slant (versus 3G device) was a surprise

Other notes:

  • Cingular has 58.7 million subscribers (see here)
  • "iPhone will be available in the U.S. beginning in June 2007 in a 4GB model for $499 and an 8GB model for $599, and will work in combination with Apple’s iTunes running on either a PC or Mac." (Cingular news release)
  • Note that I am not clear whether the prices above are retail or inclusive/net of typical handset subsidies that are borne by carrier as part of subscriber acquisition costs. There have been reports that a 2-year contract is required, but it is still not clear whether the prices mentioned are net of subsidy.
  • Apple wants to sell 10 million in 2008 (here). (Note: That’s a lot of subscribers and/or channel pumping given my first bullet point above in this section and given an exclusive carrier relationship)
  • Random history on iPod pricing (post includes graphs)

It will be interesting to see what the mavens of the world uncover about the iPhone specs. It looks like a cool device presentation-wise for sure. I am curious how the battery life will be though. I am used to running my iPod down on power, but I don’t like running my cell phone down on power.

Updates (1/11/07):

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