Was a great performer when contributing to my engagements as a Consultant however I've been recently placed into a stretch role on an engagement that involves activities traditionally done by a Manager/Senior Manager on the project. I'm struggling to perform as per my usual self in the new role.
A few activities I was not necessarily involved with in my previous capacity but am responsible for now:
- Managing the budget/time/scope of the engagement
- Managing resources both Onshore and Offshore
- Determining what activities the Analysts focus on and providing feedback
- Being solely responsible for balancing difficult client demands with the workload/capacity of my team
What changed for me going into the new role is I've never really had to push back against a client or 'stand up' for my analysts/team members and play 'bad cop'. Now that I'm the person responsible for consulting team, I know I need to be tougher when representing my team, but at the same time, I don't want to lose the great client relationship.
I'd appreciate any advice on how you transitioned into a more managerial role and how you guys were able to better manage the consulting engagement?
This forum is mostly junior level people who are unqualified to advice on your situation. I'd encourage you to 1. keep calm and keep doing your best 2. post on /consulting reddit or fishbowl for advice from more senior folks
Thanks Rondo12! bump as well
Great contribution Rondo12 ...
To be the contrarian, there are plenty of talented people on this forum that can provide valuable advice for someone in a client facing consulting role. Especially from younger guys who have been placed into similar "stretch roles" and have done quite well for themselves, of which there are quite a few on WSO...
To address the topic at hand, managing clients is hard because every client has a different personality. Learning how to deal with different personalities and understanding what makes your client tick is important. Although I cannot garner enough specifics about your situation to advice directly, I can provide a few pieces of advice where I've seen others get tripped up in a client engagement:
Set all expectations upfront: Eliminating "room for interpretation" in the engagement is very important. Define for the client what a successful engagement looks like so they are aware of the scope of your team's work. Make sure that your team and the client's team understand each other's responsibilities: including who is providing what information, of what quality information is expected to be delivered in, and when work is expected to be delivered. Addressing everyone's responsibilities up front will give you a better compass to determine self-fault in the engagement or determine if something happened outside of your control. Did the client take three weeks longer than necessary to provide due diligence material which pushed your deadline? or did your team miss the deadline? Why?
Hold your ground with respect to the engagement agreement: Defend your team if you feel that they met their obligations as outlined in the scope of the engagement agreement. If the engagement needs to be revised during the process because your client is expecting something outside of the original scope of work, you need to let the client know that they are expecting something outside of the originally defined scope of work under the agreement, and the agreement needs to be revised.
When in doubt, De-escalate: Do not let small issues drive a fissure between you and your client. As a professional, you are required to maintain a working relationship despite your client's "poor" attitude. Practice politely de-escalating differences of opinion to maintain a working relationship throughout the engagement.
Set attainable deadlines: Do not push unrealistic timelines that will diminish your team's quality of work, and put your reputation with the client at risk. Make sure you allot padding in the project's deadlines for things to go wrong.
Have confidence in yourself: People who believe they can and people who believe they cannot are both often correct.
Delegate: Teamwork truly makes the dream work! Rely on your people and they will take you to the promise land.
I would also suggest reaching out to a trusted colleague for guidance. No one will be able to better advise on your situation than someone who directly understands your role. My guess is that you are in a stretch situation because management sees a lot of potential in you. Although expectations are high, you are not expected to be perfect right out of the gates. Your senior members will provide you with guidance if you ask.
Great response. +SB
It's called a stretch role for a reason.
Been there.
You just really have to keep calm and move on.
As a for the tasks:
Budget - nominate an analyst to collect hours weekly and put them into a budget tracker template for you..have them chase people individually. Helpful tip is on some engagements it's worth having a daily/weekly log of value add activities/milestone/ meetings. Helps you justify fees later on.
Onshore offshore - delegate roles to analysts and it's their job to farm out to offshore team. You can't manage and aren't supposed to be managing both. They can then report to you on status. Offshore team should serve as support for analysts not as direct report to you or you will be driven mad.
Delegation - it's something you have to learn. If you think a monkey can do it, it's for the analyst. If you think that the analyst has half a brain, give them more. Just remember to explain the why. Gives them context so that you don't get crap back. Set expectations on formatting and quality.
Review - can't help it. Just gotta do it.
If you are comfortable you are not being pushed hard enough and growing. Even the folks running your firm had to start sonewhere. These folks arent shit out of their parents full of wisdom. Hopefully you have one or more mentors through your engagements that you can leverage as well.
You're a consultant, a problem solver, a critical thinker. This is just another problem to solve. Someone upstream gave some very specific action items. Assess them. Will they help? If yes, implement. If no, figure out why they won't help and build a solution around that. The solution is in the Y!
Knock 'em dead!!
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