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How to Win at Consulting (1/8): Making Do
 

wwconsultant's picture
 
Points)
 on 6/7/12 at 5:30am
win at consulting.jpg

Andy note: - I'm very happy to announce our newest contributing author wwconsultant. He is currently a consultant and has worked inside and outside the US. As a contributing author, he'll share some "on the job" consulting tips for interns and new hires this summer. If there's a topic you'd like for him to write about, feel free to PM him.

Want to win at consulting? Over the next 8 weeks, I’d like to share some lessons that I’ve learned from my career between startups and an international consulting firm. My aim is to pass on skills and habits to help you thrive in any working environment. Whether you’re an intern or a new hire, I hope you’ll find something useful.

About me: I work at a worldwide strategy consulting firm and have done projects in the US and Asia (think New York City, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai). After graduating from a target school, I worked at US and Chinese startups before entering consulting.

My posts will run as follows:
Topic: the topic
The story: a scenario based on real-life events or a real-life situation
Approach A: how a hire fresh out of school would approach the situation
Approach B: how a more experienced problem-solver would approach the situation
Wrap-up: conclusion and how to apply the lesson elsewhere

1) Make do– because sometimes there’s no time to ask for help
It’s 11:00AM and your manager is in meetings all day until your review with him at 2PM. Your colleague who usually helps you is unreachable today, since he’s at his hotel puking his guts out from a nasty bout of food poisoning.

You’re updating client budget figures for a meeting at 4PM. This means you’re looking at last year’s costs and next year’s budget to see if all the changes all make sense. It’s all going smoothly until you hit a roadblock.

The client made an acquisition last year, and the associated costs were all booked under a line called “misc. expenses”. They’re now reallocated in the new budget across each cost item (i.e. staff salaries, benefits, telecom equipment, travel, etc.). Without knowing last year’s details, you can’t say whether next year’s numbers make sense.

You go to the bathroom and stop by the vending machine. It’s now 11:20AM, there’s cheez-it dust on your suit, The meeting is fast approaching, what do you do?

Approach A: You panic. You email your manager and CC your colleague asking how they would handle the data. They’re more experienced than you, so they know what to do. Plus, you’ve given them hours to respond. You’re asking upward, which is what everyone at school told you to do. We all wish we could sit and solve problems out loud until we have the right answer out to 7 significant figures. This is rare. It’s up to you to drive things forward.

Approach B: You call up the client rep who first gave you the data. You tell him you’ve taken a look at the numbers and wanted to know if there was a more detailed cost breakdown. There is. He’ll get back to you within an hour, so in the meantime you check the other numbers. The email arrives with the data.

You redo the allocation, brush the cheez-it dust off, and - to be safe - pick a few numbers (subtotals, totals) for quick quality checks. There's even enough time for lunch today - you pick sushi. 2PM arrives, and you review your findings with your manager. Success.

Wrap-up: You’ve now seen two ways to deal with the same situation. The person in Approach A probably thought he was being collaborative and a team player, since he was speaking up and reaching out when he didn’t know the answer. Although the person in Approach B also realized he didn’t know the answer, he took action and went to the source.

Even if the person in Approach A got his colleague or manager, they’d both likely ask him to get the additional data from the client. Moreover, he did it autonomously and can now provide a reliable rationale to his manager describing how he solved the issue. The next time when you encounter a roadblock on your analysis, first take stock of all the information you have, then solve the problem.

That’s it for this week, good luck out there.

See all the posts in my "How to Win at Consulting" series
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Comments

burnsy's picture

excellent, thanks for this

 
Points)
 on 6/7/12 at 5:52am

excellent, thanks for this ww.

"All things are difficult before they are easy"
- Thomas Fuller

HWF's picture

Summary: If you are missing

(Monkey, 49
 
Points)
 on 6/7/12 at 8:27am

Summary: If you are missing info, go to the source directly. Don't bug a superior.

SirBarney's picture

Nice to see everything my

O
(Gorilla, 505
 
Points)
 on 6/7/12 at 8:49am

Nice to see everything my school and parents are telling me is pretty much anti-productive.

KULCE's picture

This is why I joined WSO.

(Chimp, 4
 
Points)
 on 6/7/12 at 9:23am

This is why I joined WSO. Great post.

joseph_sinay's picture

Thank you for this post. As a

(Chimp, 2
 
Points)
 on 6/7/12 at 10:11am

Thank you for this post. As a future MBB consultant I'm looking forward to learning the "best practices" of management consulting.

bonks's picture

Awesome post! Was going to

CO
(Orangutan, 316
 
Points)
 on 7/10/12 at 6:15pm

Awesome post! Was going to make a thread asking for advice for a newbie

Nothing short of everything will really do.

bonks's picture

.

CO
(Orangutan, 316
 
Points)
 on 7/10/12 at 6:14pm

.

Nothing short of everything will really do.

antmavel's picture

Good idea to have some series

CO
 
Points)
 on 6/7/12 at 11:01am

Good idea to have some series of advices related to Consulting. In this case though I would just mention that the solution might not be applicable depending on the corporate culture of your employer. Some firms are very very very cautious about contacting clients, especially at junior level

jos.a.bankhard's picture

antmavel: Good idea to have

CO
 
Points)
 on 6/7/12 at 12:04pm
antmavel:

Good idea to have some series of advices related to Consulting. In this case though I would just mention that the solution might not be applicable depending on the corporate culture of your employer. Some firms are very very very cautious about contacting clients, especially at junior level

This. Junior level people shouldn't really be firing off emails to the client, especially demanding a quick turnaround data request. It's a little different if you've been working closely with this person, but otherwise the client doesn't want to be bothered by every consultant on the ground. EM should be communicating.

djfiii's picture

joseph_sinay: Thank you for

 
Points)
 on 6/7/12 at 2:08pm
joseph_sinay:

Thank you for this post. As a future MBB consultant I'm looking forward to learning the "best practices" of management consulting.

One of the best practices is definitely showing creativity, initiative, and intelligence in figuring shit out on your own, using the resources immediately at your fingertips. Sometimes those resources are constrained, incomplete, less than ideal - and if you can figure out how to pull off your required task anyway? You will make a great addition to any project team.

Great post.

Status_Quo's picture

SUBD

 
Points)
 on 6/7/12 at 6:17pm

SUBD

redninja's picture

SirBarney: Nice to see

CO
(Gorilla, 601
 
Points)
 on 6/10/12 at 1:44pm
SirBarney:

Nice to see everything my school and parents are telling me is pretty much anti-productive.

I wouldn't go that far. There is, of course, a third possible outcome to the scenario: you try to do it by yourself and fuck it up, then you manager wonders why you didn't ask for help when you didn't know what you were doing. In the event that this happens, you end up being much worse off than you would have been if you'd just swallowed your pride and asked for help. Tread carefully.

helpmepleasethx's picture

Thx for posting

(Gorilla, 524
 
Points)
 on 6/12/12 at 5:37am

Thx for posting

GoodBread's picture

jos.a.bankhard: antmavel: G

AM
(Neanderthal, 3,604
 
Points)
 on 6/12/12 at 5:51am
jos.a.bankhard:
antmavel:

Good idea to have some series of advices related to Consulting. In this case though I would just mention that the solution might not be applicable depending on the corporate culture of your employer. Some firms are very very very cautious about contacting clients, especially at junior level

This. Junior level people shouldn't really be firing off emails to the client, especially demanding a quick turnaround data request. It's a little different if you've been working closely with this person, but otherwise the client doesn't want to be bothered by every consultant on the ground. EM should be communicating.

Agreed. It's kind of a catch-22 but you need to have some sort of relationship with the client you're emailing if you're going to request some stuff. (This is the case for any job really).

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WallStreetOasis.com's picture

thanks ww

EN
(Human, 12,074
 
Points)
 on 6/12/12 at 10:32am

thanks ww

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blastoise's picture

this post is absollute

O
 
Points)
 on 6/12/12 at 12:09pm
crusader's picture

I have to raise my hand as

CO
(Chimp, 13
 
Points)
 on 6/21/12 at 12:19pm
Senvik's picture

Thank you very much. This is

 
Points)
 on 6/28/12 at 1:54pm

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." - IlliniProgrammer

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