Professor of Practice of Behavioral Economics
From an article at OrlandoSentinel.com:
At business meetings the world over, PowerPoint-style presentations are often met with yawns and glazed eyes.
At one of the world’s top business schools, though, such slide shows are an entrance requirement. In a first, the University of Chicago will begin requiring prospective students to submit four pages of PowerPoint-like slides with their applications this fall.
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:
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.
For a snapshot of what I am sensing in 2007:
Compare this to what we saw in 2003-2004 and the rise of the blog in 2004.
My wife is quoted in a recent U.S. News and World Report feature on credit cards where she talks about a quirky aspect of consumer behavior:
Suzanne Shu, assistant professor of marketing at Southern Methodist University, says rewarding people with luxury experiences gives them permission to indulge in splurges that they might otherwise feel guilty about buying. The risk, she says, is when the experience seems so special that people wait to schedule it and end up putting it off into the future indefinitely.
"People get into the problem where no occasion is quite special enough where they feel like they’ve earned the right to use the reward," she says, whether it’s an expensive bottle of wine or a gift certificate to a high-end restaurant. Her advice is to set a specific date for the reward and then use it. "It’s the drive for the perfect occasion that really throws people off."
Note to self: Companies that can better understand systemic quirks and biases related to consumer behavior can apply such learnings to improve their sales and marketing programs.
Situation for consultant #1:
Situation for consultant #2 (differences in bold):
Vanilla business plan $40,000. Client buy-in … priceless.
First saw this post at Virginia Postrel’s site. The originally referenced post is by her other half, Dr. Steven Postrel here. Dr. Postrel writes:
A peculiar fact about business schools (at least in the USA) is that project management is not part of the regular MBA curriculum. Why is this peculiar? Only because a huge percentage of the work managers do is organized into projects, the success or failure of strategies often rests on the quality of execution of projects, and many of the principles and techniques of good project management are not immediately obvious. But hey, if anyone needs to know about this trivial stuff they can always go to a two-day workshop and get a certificate (probably from an engineering department). Or learn it on the job, which in this context often means screwing things up and trying to guess what you did wrong.
I guess on the one hand, I would agree that core management "science" topics (a bucket in which project management perhaps fits into) should be covered in business schools. That said, similar to a somewhat controversial post I wrote here on ethics courses in business schools, my perspective (from the vantage point of an MBA alum rolling back time and putting himself in an MBA student’s shoes) would be that I would not have wanted to shovel out top dollar for that type of course as a customer of the business school product. Project management is a knowledge base and skill set that many people pick up on the job, regardless of whether effectiveness of process, tools, and outcomes are measured systematically. At least I would not have wanted to pay for a project management course in a naked form. The topic could be combined with some other product, such as a product development/management, consulting methods, change management, operations, or governance course. Although I am clearly biased, I think it could play well in a consulting course, especially since projects and engagements are related (but different animals).
Between different consulting firms and practices, the job responsibilities and experience levels of engagement managers vary widely, but there is one characteristic of the position that I like because it captures the essence of management consulting better than do characteristics of other typical consulting positions (e.g., principal, partner, director, associate, manager). By understanding the central function of "engagement management", one can better understand the essence of management consulting.
Engagement managers own the problem statement from the perspective of the customer, and thus, have the responsibilities to ensure that consulting team both structures the problem solving methodology correctly and executes on the problem solving methodology.
Thus as an example, a problem statement may be to help figure out whether a client should enter a wireless business, identify under what circumstances it makes sense, define the strategy and plan for how it should be done, and get cross-functional buy-in from the management team and Board of Directors. In this case, the engagement manager may need to work with the consulting team to synthesize primary and secondary marketing research from end users and distributors, construct financial analyses, develop technology scenarios and architectures, conduct client workshops on various subjects to gain insights and share best practice perspectives, perform gap analyses between present methods of operations and desired future states, or perform competitive analyses and forecasting.
Another problem statement might be, "figure out the root cause of declining customer satisfaction and fix it because my internal management team is giving me mixed messages". Yet another one might be, "how do I transform my business from doing lots of low margin X to doing more high margin Y". (As a quick digression, one should note that setting up the problem statement properly is very key to selling consulting engagements and solving them – do not take it for granted that the problem statement is articulated properly).
In essence, the role of the engagement manager is to help the client to solving their problems by synthesizing the work of smart people and subject matter experts in different functions and areas from throughout the firm.
In closing, I find that people frequently confuse the role of project managers with that of engagement managers. There are definitely some overlapping functions, but the essence of project management is more to ensure that things are accomplished on time, on budget, and according to customer specifications. On the other hand, the role of the engagement manager is to own the client problem statement as if it were their own. At risk of sounding like I am diminishing the importance of the function, project management becomes more of an execution detail in the greater scheme of things.
There are many variations on interviewing people, but practically across all methods I have used whether case study or more traditional "walk me through your resume" style, I find myself examining two areas very closely. I don’t know if they match up with other interviewers’ experiences, but in any case here are the two areas:
Just because someone has greater degrees of separation from the job they are applying for does not mean that they should be precluded from being hired. However, when that person is selling me on whether they are appropriate for the job, they need to recognize that they may need to either sell me on other skills that I value or try to frame their background in such a way so that the degrees of separation seem as small as possible. Drawing similarities between work done in the past with work needed for the new job is one potential way of doing this (e.g., "I performed competitive analysis of product offerings as a product manager – these types of tasks likely share a number of similarities with competitive analysis performed by consultants").
As another approach, some people may want to view career changes as a continuum. If the degrees of separation for one job change are too large, then perhaps that person should seek an immediate job position that is closer. Such a step may make it easier to change to the other job at a later point in time.
In closing, I will say that have deviated from these two frames in some circumstances because there are blind spots. For example, it is possible to simply wind up finding someone that is energetic and can excel at the job. Some people may simply want it enough. In these cases, I may prefer to set up some sort of trial environment, inspect past deliverables/work products, and/or do deeper digging with background checks (e.g., checking customer references).