Management consulting continues to be an attractive career for many. I receive expressions of interest from fresh graduates, people who are seeking a career transition, and others pursuing their master’s degree in international management schools. Although schoolbooks, articles, and podcasts provide an ocean of theoretical (and sometime practical) knowledge, they fail to equip aspiring consultants with tools and competencies needed to successfully handle the colossal scope of work parachuted on them.
I spent more than 16 years working as a management consultant, hiring management consultants, and managing them. I like to think of management consulting in three buckets.
Bucket 1: Project delivery and management
Consultants are assigned projects with clients. Entry to mid-level consultants spend most of their time understanding the client’s problem, defining it, and solving it. More senior consultants – referred to as managers – focus on managing the project: its scope, budget, risks, client’s expectations, and more.
Bucket 2: Business development
The more senior the consultant is, the more they allocate energy towards retaining clients, upselling, and identifying new clients. They build and maintain relationships. They formulate technical and financial proposals. They pitch to their prospective client and seal deals. They have financial targets to achieve and they need to make sure that any commitment to the client is achievable (e.g., available skillset).
Bucket 3: Practice development
Although consultants usually focus most of their time and energy at work on client engagements, they are still part of their organization (or community as I would like to call it). Successful consultants establish rapport with their peers as well as they do with their clients. They allocate time to contribute to the practice through various means (e.g., corporate social responsibility, diversity and inclusion, entertainment, article writing). Some consultants pitch for new initiatives they know would nurture a sense of belonging among professionals.
If anyone has interest in management consulting, they must develop and refine five key competencies to thrive:
1- Problem solving: clients hire consultants to crack problems
2- Analytical skills: consultants need to make sense out of data at hand
3- Team work: best client engagements are delivered in a spirit of collaboration
4- Communication skills: proper communication preempts issues and leads to early acceptance of outputs
5- Mental agility: consultants work with a variety of clients and on numerous engagements. One size does not fit all
