Aspiring and some young consultants tend to have a narrow outside-in view of management consulting. They make significant assumptions about why and how strategy studies are done, and try to replicate this assumed behavior. They think "being analytic" means analyzing things before every decision is made.
Aspiring NBA stars make a classic mistake when trying to watch, analyze and replicate the reasons why someone like Michael Jordan was so successful. In this podcast I explain why aspiring management consultants and those in industry make the very same mistake when watching, analyzing and replicating the reasons why McKinsey and BCG are so successful.
[Update June 11] The 1st strategy training map is live! All 16 steps of strategy planning and 200+ critical points are complimentary to all our members!
It is fair to say that being assigned to develop the case studies to help a team on the strategy study is considered a dead-end role for most consultants. An associate or analyst would much rather want to be leading the corporate strategy analyses, business case or even the business unit analyses versus studying how other companies have tackled the same problem as the client.
This podcast was prepared for clients in our case coaching program. Each week I will consolidate the main questions and challenges clients are facing in the program and use these podcasts to communicate suggestions and advice to your unique preparation needs.
The Firmsconsulting Emerging Fellows program is a program we run whereby we find and mentor promising young students from impoverished parts of the world. Working with them over several years, we guide them into elite schools and eventually into McKinsey or BCG.
We have a section on the website where I list all of the articles I read on a daily basis: What Firmsconsulting is reading. The thinking was that readers could replicate the reading of a former strategy partner at an elite firm by reading what I read.
If you wanted to move from BCG / McKinsey to private equity, how do you make the career change?
This very insightful and unusual podcast discusses the unique situation 5 of our clients face.
This podcast addresses a major misunderstanding about billable hours. The concept is not bad at all, but works only in certain circumstances. This podcast carefully explains those circumstances, and crucially examines how billable hours hurts consulting assignments. It has nothing to do with the focus on profits, but rather who has the focus on profits.
In September 2013 we published the inspiring story of Irina who worked her way from a Ukraine vocational school into McKinsey. This podcast tracks her progress since joining McKinsey and explains the mistakes she made which ultimately led to her leaving McKinsey.
This is a short podcast offering subscribers advice on how to best use the enormous amount of information in both seasons. In particular, the podcast offers some important reminders and explains how the watch cases will allow you to write the strategy MBA exam at any major business school.
In Season 2 of The Consulting Offer, you will regularly see Alice breaking down the case problem into the correct logical components. She is impressive at doing this. However, you will also see Kevin pushing her to offer more. This podcast explains what Kevin was looking for. In other words, being logical in a case interview is insufficient to impress a partner in the final round interviews.
We insist candidates read extensively to improve their business judgement. However, we find candidates really struggle to demonstrate they have indeed read the article, and more importantly, have improved their thinking in some way as a result of reading the article. This counter-intuitive piece demonstrates how to generate 2nd, 3rd and 4th order insights when communicating with partners.
Candidates approach Merger and Acquisition cases with a very generic framework where Merger and Acquisition and JV's tend to be lumped together. This podcast demonstrates the power of effectively framing the case problem and introduces candidates to a very elegant / effective technique to develop strategies to capture the profits from a market. In fact, this technique demonstrates why an Merger and Acquisition is the absolute last resort to enter a market.
This podcast teaches readers how to extract up to 80% of the useful information about an article before you even read the article. The podcast first explains the difference between news, facts and opinions, before showing you the steps to analyze an article. Finally, the podcast uses the recent New York Times article about McKinsey and Dominic Barton to apply these very same concepts. You will see that what McKinsey what you to read from this article is very different from the information you sh...
Between 17 January 2013 and 30 January 2013 we will be rolling out some significant and exciting changes to the website. Many of these changes coincide with the premier of Season Two of the Consulting Offer, and are useful because they make the material easier to watch, interact with and learn from. We will also be making changes to the way club members and clients access the material. We spent a long time thinking about these changes and while they will impact many members, remain completely al...
Alice Qinhua Zhou holds a candid interview with Michael where she answers a wide variety of questions clients posted on social media and emailed in, about her involvement in The Consulting Offer Season 2. Alice talks about managing her confidence through the interviews, why she chose NYC, picking an academic career over management consulting, finding and taking tough feedback from mentors, Season 1, her advice for viewers and much more.
We discuss the steps taken to make this session as realistic as possible. From the selection of the meals, the use of surprises like the waitress to test behaviour, Kevin's style of changing the flow of the conversation and the method through which candidates tried to build a connection with Kevin, and vice-versa.
The Consulting Offer II (TCO II) records the entire interview process from networking, through to the closed-list dinner, PEI, group interviews and all interview rounds, including extensive debrief interviews with a former McKinsey partner and real candidates who went on to successfully interview.
MBA programs around the world encourage experienced technology employees to forgo salary, experience and promotion in the hope of obtaining an MBA and the path to a consulting or banking career. However, this rarely if ever works. Sometimes, it causes more problems not to mention the addition of mountains of debt. In this podcast we discuss the options available to technology employees and when an executive MBA program is actually a better option than a full-time MBA.
In this detailed strategy specific podcast I discuss a railway privatization and commercialization engagement I co-managed earlier in my tenure as a corporate strategy principal. I outline how we reorganized the client, exited non-core businesses, improved inefficiencies and prepared the client to compete in a deregulating market.
In podcasts 237 and 238, I discuss a fairly muscular and risky set of strategies I used to increase my leadership standing in the firm and challenge mentors whom I believed were damaging the firm’s values. My style of interaction was developed due an early engagement in my career which directly impacted the way I managed all future interactions. I unpack this engagement and explain how it impacted me, allowing you to determine how your own early experiences are shaping your own leadership style.
Having mentored a large number of older consulting hires, all were older than myself, this podcast distinguishes between older hires with working experience and those without working experience. Depending on the category you fall into, peers will view your profile, strengths and image very differently. In fact, your career strategy will be different. In other words, no two older candidates are the same.
Finding the right mentor is one thing, getting rid of the wrong mentor is quite another problem. In this podcast I discuss the relationships I had with 3 of the most influential mentors in my consulting career. I discuss mentors I had when I was an analyst, manager and eventually a partner. Finally, I discuss the difficult choices I had to make when I fundamentally disagreed with a mentor and had to do things which could jeopardize the relationship. Knowing when and how to outgrow a mentor is an...
It is a myth to assume that you are automatically awarded leadership roles as a bright associate or consultant. Competition for these roles are fierce, assuming you get it, and being “awarded” a role is far less useful than having earned the role in the eyes of your peers. In the latter, teams follow you because they choose too. In this podcast I will outline a technique I used throughout my career to find “rules” which could be broken to take control of engagements and earn the trust of peers a...
What can Darth Vader from Star Wars and monkeys in Africa teach you about effective mentoring? This podcast touches on those things which define a good mentee both in management consulting and for clients seeking a consulting career. The podcast describes the attributes of both an effective mentee and mentor, and the typical behavior of a “good” and “bad” mentee. Surprisingly, a good mentee should actually give you a small headache.
Having spent a large part of my consulting career in my twenties, since I joined the Firm just shy of my 22 birthday, I personally know what it was like to successfully manage a young image. I was generally the youngest analyst, associate or engagement manager on a team, and a very young principal leading teams. I recall several times managing teams where the youngest person was older than myself. Those kinds of situations invariably raise challenges in controlling one’s image and client percept...
One oversight we have corrected as we have learned more about our clients, is to understand the role their significant others play in their lives and decisions. We tend to assume that the advice we provide, and actions you take, are largely influenced solely by your wishes. That could not be further from the truth. In some ways, your significant other is a major investor and she/he can cause a lot of problems if you take actions not in keeping with his/her wishes. This interesting podcast, exami...
The issue of gender disparities and the increasing African-American ratios in management consulting firms have rightly become important issues. Yet, the latter is a frighteningly narrow interpretation of racial prejudices.
