What's it like working in Corporate Strategy?
Hi everyone,
I'm a graduate student in a STEM field and I'm currently debating going to law school next year (I've been accepted to some high-ranked schools), or trying to break into management consulting. If I went the consulting route, my long term goal would be to end up in corporate strategy. Both of these career paths appeal to me since I love thinking strategically. I'm wondering whether anyone can shed some light on what it's actually like working in corporate strategy? Some questions I have:
- What's the day to day like?
- What do you like most about your job?
- What do you like least about your job?
- Do you frequently get the opportunity to think strategically and come up with novel solutions? (Or are
you supposed to always follow a specific kind of framework)? - Do you find the work exciting? Challenging?
- If you could do it all over again, would you still have picked the path you did?
Some more info about me in case it helps: I'm extremely competitive (thus the adversarial nature of law appeals to me), I have a quant undergrad/masters and so I enjoy using numbers to make decisions, I love structured problem solving (i.e. having a clear-cut problem and then trying to "optimize" to get the best outcome), I'm an introvert, I'm very goal-oriented, and I love doing research on problems.
Any input/advice is appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Hey intj1359 I work as a Corporate Strategy Manager for a Fortune 500 company (one of the biggest FS firms in the US) and my answers are below. Please note that my answers might be completely different than others working in Corporate Strategy.
What's the day to day like? I think the day to day is different that consulting. While the work is still very challenging and cyclical my belief is that consulting is a lot more fast paced. However the advantage Corporate Strategy brings is that you actually get to work in a variety of projects (new market entry, new product launch, competitor assessment, operations strategy, technology implementation and management analysis). In consulting (usually) you are stuck with a certain industry and capability (e.g. operations strategy or change management) so you get to work in less variety of projects
What do you like most about your job? That I get high visibility to senior management (ALL THE TIME) and also that I get to see the impact of my strategy after the project ends
What do you like least about your job? Once you are part of a firm you have less control on outcome of projects. Organizations can be very bureaucratic where as executives are more open to implementing your ideas when you are an external consultant. Also while corporate strategy brings a variety of projects some of them sometimes can end up being small scale and not the most impactful. We are first in line though when it comes to big company decisions.
Do you frequently get the opportunity to think strategically and come up with novel solutions? (Or are you supposed to always follow a specific kind of framework)? Do you find the work exciting? Challenging? Yes to both. It is less framework based than consulting projects. You have to be smart in both!
If you could do it all over again, would you still have picked the path you did? Nope I am actually changing my track to go back to consulting from corporate strategy. Corporate Strategy definitely has allowed me to do a lot of cool projects but I want to now specialize in certain areas and learn the aspect of business development in hopes to open my own consulting business later down the line.
Personally from looking at your background I think a move to management consulting firm might be a better move. Just my opinion
I currently work as a corporate lawyer at a top firm after having gone to a top 5 law school and would caution anyone who is thinking about going to law school to very carefully consider their reasons and other options first before doing so. If you think you might be interested in corporate strategy, I would try that out first, and if you don't like it, law school will always be there.
Law isn't a good long-term fit for many and it requires an expensive degree to get (not to mention the time it takes to get said degree), so if other options are equally attractive, I generally think you should exhaust those first.
Hi KyleKatarn,
Unfortunately, I think the answer is "it depends." To share some personal experience, I worked in Corp Strat this summer at a big F500 company (think billions in rev, headcount of about 20k, public, etc). Because we had billions in cash, the CFO is on an M&A roll. Needless to say, we were looking at lots of deals and putting analyses together to justify (or not) acquisitions. However, my group was structured as "Strategy & Corporate Development," so we did deals when deals were hot and other strategic initiatives (CEO offsite materials, board decks, etc) during other times. I was doing about 60 hr/wk as an MBA intern, but the full time people were working much more.
One of my friends also worked in Corp Strat at a different company (but similar industry) and she was busting banking hours type weeks and doing super time-sensitive stuff 24 x 7. Also the people she worked with sounded like a**holes the way she described them to me.
Depends on the culture at the end of the day - most firms have a lot of ex bankers in Corp Dev/Strat; think McK, Bainy's, GStypes, etc in those groups so there is always a unique sub-culture. You learn a ton and you DO get predictable vacation and a decent amount of respect. It's a great living; easily $250+ and more at the higher levels depending on options and bonus structure. I liked it way better than banking, but that's just me.
Feel free to PM me if you want; hope this was helpful.
Cheers,
offthegrid
I did MBB -> Corp Strat at an F100 CPG company. Answers below:
What's the day to day like? Like in consulting, it varied by project. But the general cadence of the day was very similar to what I saw in consulting. The only difference was that I was sometimes working on multiple projects at the same time.
What do you like most about your job? I got to work on top-of-mind strategic initiatives for the executive team. We worked directly for the C-Suite, and I got to interact with them regularly. And I got to see the projects through from the beginning to the end (unlike in consulting where you're there for a phase of it).
There was also a lot less of the arbitrarily manufactured sense of urgency pervasive in consulting. Because there isn't a client yelling at you on the other end, we got to cut out a lot of the iteration/review process and be a little more flexible with the timeline if we needed to be.
Finally, I had a lot more control over how/when I worked. While my hours weren't significantly lower than what I saw on chill/average projects in consulting, I had much more flexibility to set my own schedule as long as I got the work done.
What do you like least about your job? More so than in consulting, you have to navigate the internal politics when coming up with solutions and implementing them. You see a certain level of it as an external consultant, but it becomes more important since you have to work with your functional partners repeatedly.
Do you frequently get the opportunity to think strategically and come up with novel solutions? (Or are you supposed to always follow a specific kind of framework)? Do you find the work exciting? Challenging? Absolutely yes to both. I worked with extremely smart people on very challenging problems and produced high-quality work. And often with less resources than what I had in consulting.
If you could do it all over again, would you still have picked the path you did? Yes. For me, it was a stepping stone to a P&L role in an industry I liked. Being on the Corp Strat team gave me an amazing crash course on the industry as well as the ins and outs of an F100 company.