PRTM – Stephen Shu, PhD

I’ve had some interesting discussions on how corporate politics play a role when consulting to clients. Perhaps I have a parochial view here.

My take is that consultants should take no part in corporate politics.

It was a lesson that I learned early on while at the management consulting firm PRTM (a great firm to work for BTW – see Consulting Magazine PDF here).
Here’s the rationale for "no politics": consultants are often brought in to make things
better. Clients pay a premium for consultants for any number of
reasons. One common reason is that consultants are supposed to be
unbiased third-parties. If one gets consumed in politics, there’s not
enough focus on motivating everyone to get to the end goal.

Here’s another distinction (my own wrinkle) as it relates to consulting:

In consulting, empathy is the ability to understand what a person is going through.
Sympathy goes one step further. One not only understands a person but also agrees with the person on an emotional level.

Sympathy can be the "dark side of the Force". Suppose one is working
within a business unit (sponsored by one of the EVPs) and there are two
VPs below the EVP that don’t get along with one another. You are alone
in the office with one of the VPs that you may like better from a
personal chemistry point of view, and this VP starts to bad mouth the
other VP. If you join into this sort of thing, while you may be
ingratiating yourself with the one VP, you are hurting the client by
participating in politics. Bad mouthing is just not constructive. In
this sort of scenario, you should probably consider something like
letting the VP know that you can understand why he/she might feel this
way but that as a consultant, you can’t have any part in this. Other
good options would be to try to get the VPs to work it out
face-to-face. One may also want to probe a bit with the VP to see if it
is a worthwhile thing to bring things up with the EVP if the
disfunctionality is hurting the productivity of the business in a
significant way. Junior consultants should probably also consult with
their firm’s primary manager for the engagement, especially before
escalating things to the client sponsor level.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting an increased amount of traffic from three groups of readers (as far as I can tell):

those pursuing MBAs or contemplating MBAs
those seeking information on McKinsey
those seeking information on PRTM (see below).

Let me give a short preface by saying this:

I am not a McKinsey alum, but there is a post I wrote about a lack of management consultant blogs – this appears to have attracted some attention (here)
I have a number of McKinsey alumni friends whom I compare notes with (to the extent allowed by ongoing confidentiality obligations to either PRTM, McKinsey, or clients of these firms)
I am a present freelance management consultant, and I am an alum of the firm Pittiglio Rabin Todd & McGrath (PRTM), a relatively well-known firm at the top 20 business schools or so
I have an MBA from the University of Chicago

Given the above, I thought I would write some posts that compare both PRTM and my freelance management consulting practices to the McKinsey practices outlined in the well-known book by Ethan Rasiel, "The McKinsey Way". Although I am slightly late in terms of typical business school recruiting seasons, perhaps these posts will be of interest to those looking to gain more insight to the profession. Anyway, Ethan’s book is an excellent introductory book on general management consulting, and many of the practices can be used as a general manger within a company as opposed to just a consulting firm. Whether Ethan’s account is an accurate representation of all vintages of McKinsey consulting, I cannot say because there has been some shifting around in the past five years. That said, his book is likely not too far off in terms of breath. It is definitely a great foundation to base a discussion on because it is publicly accessible by all.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that, in general, I am a fan of both PRTM and McKinsey. I do not plan to make any disparaging remarks about either firm, and I will tend to highlight my perspectives on greatest strengths as opposed to weaknesses. If I highlight weaknesses, they will likely be directed at the general industry.

Posts will be forthcoming. Stay tuned.

Steve Shu

Tag: PRTM

Empathy Versus Sympathy In Management Consulting

Management Consulting and MBAs (Part 0)