-“The deck is the product.”

“No, No. the deck isn’t the product. The change, the result is the product. The deck is just a tool to help us get there.”

This was a real conversation that encapsulates the difference between content consultants, who proide answers, and process consultants, who ask questions to drive change.

Consultants and consulting firms, whether content or process spend far too much time focused  presenting. There are hours of angst about, “the deck,” “the slidepack” “the panelset.”

This has always been true, even before PowerPoint, the now ubiquitous Microsoft presentation software. In prehistoric times, when I started in consulting, slides or charts were made by hand using Letraset press-on letters on acetates or “flimsies.”

I know people who worked for firms like Alexander Proudfoot and its’s descendent United Research who hired calligraphers and artists to hand draw “panels, ” 30” x 40” hard white posterboards bound into a leather bound book that was flipped through with the client executive team.

The presentation delivery technology has changed. Now typos are easily correctable and changes can be made up until the very last minute, no, make that the very last second. Some consultants insert video or online connections or TikTok or. . . whatever, because, well. . . because “they can.”

But the process is the same  – a presentation must be :

Planned —- Validated — Practiced —— Presented

In my view too much of the focus is on the last step. Consultants want to sound smart and confident. They want to “Wow” the client. This is unfortunately true for both content and process consultants. Presentations are the “Big Reveal,” the surprise finish to the project.. Consultants dream of a “standing ovation.” In my experience vigorous applause is a rarity and worrying, because the focus may be on the consultant’s “big idea,” and not on achieving results for the client.

Storyboarding: Planning starting with the end.

In an early project as a young consultant, I had learned so much about the industry and the product we were studying I wanted to showcase that knowledge. My project lead, a man who had worked in advertising and entertainment stopped me cold.

“What do you recommend that the client do?”

“Well, because of. . .”

“No, one simple declarative sentence.”

“Well, the channel says that. . “

“What part of ‘simple declarative sentence,’ didn’t you understand?”

I’ll spare you the further repetition of this conversation untill I finally got it.

“Build one product; ignore the other.”

Then my project lead asked me, “Which one finding leads you to that conclusion?

Then, “What other supporting findings?”

He walked me backwards to the beginning, “What did the client ask us to do?”

Each time he asked he wrote the simple declarative sentence on the top of a blank page.

“That’s your story” he said. “Now fill in the data that fits that story, whether it is from interviews, analysis of market data, competitor information. If it doesn’t fit the story or has too much detail it goes in the Appendix.”

The story is what is important. I know some consultants want to tell a “three act story” or the “hero’s journey,” but I favor simplicity

• You asked us to look at this
• Here is what we found
• Here are the implications
• Recommendations and Next steps

Some consultants build highly complex slides that show the depth of their analysis. They feel this justifies their fees. If the client is confused they look smart. I put those slides in the appendix.

Pre-presents, validation and commitment building

As consultants, we look at data, that might or might not have been easily available to parts of the client system. We talk to customers and suppliers, and staff who might not have been talked to in a while. We might bring some industry  or management knowledge from other client projects.

All of these data may lead us to our conclusions. What we want is for the client to take action. If we are content consultants, we want clients to act on our recommendations. If we are process consultants, we may work alongside our clients, but we want them committed to action rather than just waiting for us to leave so they can go back to doing what they’ve always done.

The “Big Reveal” presentation, where we surprise the client and/or embarrass members of her leadership team  runs counter to that.

Never present data that haven’t been validated or at least shared with those in the organization accountable for acting upon it.

At Gemini Consulting, we used to call those “pre-presents,” which is a silly term that means you present before you present. Where I have worked with extensive client teams, I have built the final presentation with the key members who will act upon it. Sometimes they presented the data, not me.

Isn’t there a danger that members of the client system will rush off to fix problems you uncovered? Yes. If it is a simple fix, that isn’t a problem, just get agreement that you can document the change, giving credit to the one who makes it. If it part of a systemic change you must gain agreement to wait until all the parts of the system are visible. That may require a longer conversation, validating the finding, discussion implications and possible negative effects of acting prematurely.

Practice, Practice, Practice

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell highlighted and amplified he research of K. Anders Eriksson, that anyone who is world class, has logged at least 10,000 hours of practice. One might think that consultants who quote this research wouldn’t resist practice or say,

“Practice? Nah. I got this. I like to keep it fresh.”

As consultants we pride ourselves as being “good on our feet,” confident sounding presenters.  I have found that practice helps and the “freshness” of a first run-through is quickly derailed by an inconvenient client question.

The Big Day – Presenting with competence and confidence.

There are multiday courses on presentation skills. I have learned a great deal from them including where to stand, when to use a microphone, and what kind, how to dress, move, gesture, and use the full range of my voice. I’m not going to try to replicate those courses in a few paragraphs.

I will impart a few principles:

• Know your audience. If you have done your work on the project and the appropriate validation steps you have a good start. I have seen partners who don’t have this advantage arrive just early enough to meet and greet a few of the executives. This also means watch your examples. I had a colleague who told me that some movies I referenced were made before she was born. We laughed when later she mentioned some musical artists that left clients my age scratching their heads.
• Think Engagement – not data dump. Remember that your goal is action, not absorbing every miniscule esoteric piece of analysis you have done. This will lead you to dress and act like the client, maybe a little better. This will lead you to stop periodically and ask questions of the group. It will lead you to move to different positions to be closer to different people. It will encourage eye contact and not turning your back reading off the screen.
• Capture reactions and questions. I am a fan of the parking lot, a flipchart or whiteboard on which I can capture questions or reactions in real time. That way I can keep the flow and come back to them later. On mult-consultant teams, whomever wasn’t speaking manned the parking lot.
• Be cautious about technology. Both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had the same rule: “No Live Demos!” I’m a bit of a technophobe, so I assume Murphy’s Law will apply, (Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong). So I check batteries in laser pointers and slide changers, make sure I have an extra bulb for the projector and am exceedingly leery of on-screen Internet links and videos. There are effects I never used as a consultant and those I did I checked and rechecked.
• Follow up The presentation is not the end; it’s the beginning. You want action, change, so even if you are a content consultant and everyone applauded your recommendations, things go awry. Get back with the client, answer questions, offer suggestions on roadblocks. I’ve also seen what was widely viewed as a disastrous presentation saved by follow-up.

Plan—- Validate — Practice —— Present —– Follow-up

Confidence born of competence. Content before style. Be authentic, helpful where you are asked to be, and focus on action and results.

And remember, present only as much as you need to. Nothing is happening when you are talking.

“Can you believe how stupid?”

A group of young consultants were standing in our office. I was a part of that group though I was considerably more senior. The “kids” were complaining about people who worked for our client and I am ashamed to say I was joining in.

“Can you believe how stupid. It looks like they didn’t check on the market at all.” At this point one of the firm’s founding partners arrived. Marc was considerably younger than me, but he didn’t join in. He just said quietly,

“Permission not to client-bash.”

We all stopped. I certainly had learned this lesson before. Client’s hire consultants to help not to judge them. If you spend all your time judging them, the judgement will come through in all your interactions and you are unlikely to be perceived as helpful.

The client may not know your methodology. You may have discovered something they missed, but if you question their intelligence, perhaps their biggest mistake was to hire you.

Carl Rogers, the American psychologist and a founder of the Human Potential Movement, wrote a paper called “The Helping Relationship.” It was written for therapists, but he made several points that resonated in my consulting work:

• Help is defined by the recipient, not the helper. So what you think is helpful is irrelevant.
• Help must be asked for. Help that isn’t asked for is rarely seen as help; it is usually seen as interference at least and destructive at worst. We know this intuitively. People in large corporations often joke “I’m from Corporate and I’m here to help,” Ronald Regan used to say “The nine most frightening words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
• It is impossible to help someone who you don’t like. Rogers advised therapists to adopt “unconditional positive regard” towards their clients. That is to say, not only think of them positively, but place them on the same level as you and always give them the benefit of the doubt. I found when I adopted this attitude towards my clients, I listened more. I was better able to understand how they were asking me to help.

When I trained new consultants or internal client change teams in consulting skills. I always told them about Rogers views of help. I (mostly) practiced what I preached. Clearly not always, but I found when I slipped and joined in the client-bashing or in some way was “judgey,” I was less effective as a consultant.

Managing the client system.

Let’s be clear, there is only one client in a consulting engagement. That is the person who made the decision to hire you, the one individual who can say “Yes” when all others say  “No.” There may be several “influencers,” or people who “recommend.” Leadership teams often have a say; if you are being hired by a CEO the board may have voted on it. Everyone should be operating in the agreed best interests of the company. There is still one client.

That isn’t to say that all the other players are unimportant. Consulting engagements will not be successful if the only person who is satisfied is the one who signs the contract and the check. So we often talk about the “client system,” or the stakeholder network.

The client system is everyone who works at the company and sometimes outside people like suppliers, shareholders and the community. The stakeholder network is everyone upon whom your work will have a direct impact.

When I worked at Gemini Consulting I was part of the Analysis and Design team. These consultants were first on the ground and analyzed the clients problem and designed a project to resolve it. Most engagements began with “focus Interviews.”

The purpose of the focus interview was two-fold,

1. to identify areas for further analysis and
2. to build relationships that would help implement the project.

Several project leads I worked with, closed the focus interview briefing with the charge, “OK, go make some friends for Gemini.”

At Gemini, and other firms, and later when I was training innovation or improvement teams we did stakeholder analysis.

Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder analysis is a client system management tool. It is useful to track stakeholder’s point of view on the project and to progressively build support for action. We divide up the stakeholders and evaluate and manage the relationship. In that way we can understand who might be adversely affected and address concerns early.

There ae many evaluation tools with many different scales. One I have used successfully is the red-yellow-green stakeholder analysis chart.

Members of the client system are entered in the chart on the left and then evaluated as red to green. Everyone starts out as yellow, neutral or unknown. Evaluations happen over time and as the person’s views of and support for the goals of the project change they move towards green (strong support) or red (strong disagreement or resistance).

One person on the consulting team takes accountability for each individual, Others who interact with the individual may give input or take action, but the responsibility individual manages the plan to inform and improve the relationship.

The point of these evaluations is to prescribe action. The idea is to ensure that members of the client system are informed about the process, have input where appropriate, get credit if they make helpful suggestions or information. It is not to be “judgey.”

• I have seen some consultants get very cutesy with evaluation scales, emojis, 😊 ☹, or disparaging terms like lovers, idiots, and terrorists. This isn’t helpful, (re-read Carl Rogers) and imagine how destructive it is if someone leaves those stakeholder analyses in the photocopier.

Another tool some teams use is the stakeholder grid. This measures degree of influence versus support. (In the example at the left the initials are people’s names, actions are represented by the arrows.)

The plan for AD and FD was to inform and involve. The plan for CV  and TY was to maintain by showing outputs. PL was a junior person, whose ideas the team decided to showcase at senior levels.

Once again the emphasis is on action to improve support for the goals of the project, the change you were hired to make, and the results the client is trying to achieve. It isn’t about your opinion of members of the client system.

Some consulting firms talk about “consulting guard,” that is – be careful what you say, on site, in hotel lobbies, and elevators. You never know when you’ll be overheard. While that’s sound advice, I prefer Marc’s answer.

“Permission not to client-bash?”

I got promoted. Now what?

Imagine for a moment that your consulting career is progressing and you have been promoted.

First, congratulations! In order to get promoted in consulting you must deliver quality results on-time-on-budget. If you were an analyst confined to an office cubicle in a large firm and you have been invited to travel four or five days a week to the client site, then a project manager decided not only that you will deliver, but also that you will not embarrass them with the client.

If you are an associate in a smaller firm and have been promoted to the “next level” – called variously “senior associate” or “team manager” or “engagement manager” – senior people in the firm are describing you as “solid,” “a real Yeoman,” “ready to step up.” You will have left some of your friends behind, which can cause jealousy, but you are deemed to be growing.

I chose the word Yeomen to describe mid-career consultants largely because it is slang that is used for junior people who perform beyond expectations for their level. The word comes from medieval England.

In feudal times the Lord owned most of the land and livestock. He employed serfs to work his land, Serfs could graduate to share croppers, where they farmed and shepherded, but retained a position for themselves. A Yeoman was the first level who owned his own land. He might supplement his production by hunting and he might share  some of his game and produce with the Lord, but he was independent, He might participate in government of the town or have other responsibilities.

In wartime, his yew wood longbow and his short sword were the backbone of the English army. The yeomen-bowmen won many battles.

The typical consulting project manager may not know this history, but if they call you a Yeoman, it’s a compliment, the backbone of the project.

Consulting Job Structure

Apprenticeship is the consulting mental model for how people learn and grow, learning by doing. Apprentice, journeyman master is Newbie, Yeoman, partner.

It is not as clear as it was in the medieval guilds or today’s trades (carpenter, electrician, auto mechanic, etc.), but people in consulting think in these terms:

• Apprentice (analyst, associate),
• Journeyman (senior associate, engagement manager, principal/project manager), and
• Master (partner).

From my experience, it seemed that most firms did not have the rigorous development, qualification, and certification of the trades, but rather left qualification to a discussion among partners that was often subjective and political. People in the firm were often expected to find their own teachers (mentors) and manager their own learning.

What is often not explained well is that the job changes substantially as you rise:

• Analysts crunch numbers and create slides
• Engagement managers crunch numbers, create slides, make sure that associates get quality work done on-time, on-budget, manage some client relationships
• Project manager/ Principals crunch numbers, create slides, evaluate associates work, manage more clients, sell extensions and expansions and/or develop service offerings
• Partners bring in new clients -and oh yes, do some work, evaluate work, manage client relationships.

You will notice that everyone does some of the real work of consulting. Everyone knows Excel and PowerPoint . That’s because in theory at least everyone has come up through the ranks.

Some firms bring in people in mid-career who have worked in industry. Some, like Gemini Consulting put those people through the same boot camp and carefully evaluated their apprentice level skills before launching them into management. Some involve them in projects, educating Newbies about an industry.  No doubt some firms are better at managing the career path for mid-career people than the ones I joined, but it is a challenge to marry both paths.

To get promoted again, learn to sell

Sales is a perpetual problem in consulting.  Newbies rise to yeomen, for their ability to manage. Yeomen rise to partner by bringing in business. Yeoman may start by extending existing work to another part of the organization or expanding to a different kind of work. To make partner in most firms you must bring in new clients. I saw many partners made by bringing in a single “whale,” which fed the firm for several years.

Some firms bring in partners from industry. Some hire big ticket computer salespeople, former industry executives, and investment bankers come into consulting as ‘rainmakers” They are hired for their contacts and/or ability to sell intangibles. The challenge was always making sure what they sold could be delivered as they sometimes “didn’t have a clue” about what consultants actually did.

Because the job changes as consultants rise, some do not perform well at the new responsibilities. In many large firms, there is an explicit promotion policy called “up or out,” which means that there is a predetermined period you can spend in a role before you are promoted to partner or asked to leave the firm.

This period varies, but typically it’s two years as an analyst, three years as an engagement manager, and four years as a principal/project manager. Some firms soften this by calling the policy “grow or go,” meaning that as long as you are learning you can stay in a role a bit longer. But let’s be clear: consulting, especially at the larger firms, is not a place for “late bloomers.” So mid-career consultants often face a choice: Do I even want to do the work of the next level? In some firms the change in the work is transparent; in others the new job requirements are less obvious. But who turns down a promotion with an increase in compensation and prestige?

Some firms are better than others at helping mid-career consultants make this choice. If the decision is to leave, an outplacement department and/or an active alumni network are very helpful. This isn’t only altruistic; those alumni networks also become a great source for new client business for the firm.

So if you have been called a yeoman, if you have been promoted,  or perhaps before that, you have some decisions to make. Think about those decisions carefully. Is the new role what you want or might you chose another path?

Why are we here?

If you are a consultant arriving on client site for the first time this is a good question to consider. This isn’t existential introspection, but rather seeking an understanding of why the client hired you to ensure you solve the problem you are asked to solve, but also to meet the emotional or political needs that the client and/or the project partner may or may not have mentioned.

To start let’s surface a counter-intuitive fact, companies don’t hire consultants; company executives hire consultants. That may seem like splitting hairs. After all, company executives work for their companies and are charged with acting in the interest of the companies, right? Right (mostly).

But if one starts with the concept that a client is an individual, even if that client is part of a collection of individuals or a client system, it makes serving clients more personal and the process of acquiring clients, or selling, less of a mystery.

Sometimes the client who called you isn’t the originator of the idea.  Sometimes the CEO told the division head or the board suggested to the CEO that hiring a consultant  “might be a good idea.” Sometimes that is a very specific suggestion, “call this senior director at McKinsey/” Knowing this in advance defines the “client system,” that group of people who must be pleased including the “decision maker, the one who can say ‘yes,’ when all others say ‘no.’”

Next, a client hires a consultant to solve a problem or to help make a change. Here some clients might push back because some people react negatively to either the word problem, or the word change. They may substitute “opportunity” for problem or words like “improvement” or “innovation” or descriptors like “leap-frogging” or “updating” for the dreaded c-word (change). But no board of directors ever approved a hundred thousand or million dollar expenditure to maintain the status quo.

So some of the problems, issues, and/or concerns that a company executive might hire a consultant to help with include:

Grow revenue, or

Grow profit, or

People stuff

Wait, that’s it? What about a new strategy? (We need more customers than our competition, or innovation, or new products and services to grow revenue.) What about digital transformation? (We need streamlined operations to reduce cost and grow profit; we need better customer information to speed our product to market time to grow revenue.)

Actually it’s all people stuff – culture, climate, employee benefits, organization design – and shouldn’t be a separate category. (Attracting and keeping people = profit growth and/or revenue growth.) But often clients who have a “people problem” aren’t thinking economically. They can’t hire enough, or the right ones, or people are leaving, or they’re unhappy and want a union, or we don’t know who to put in what role, or how to organize. So I’ve listed people stuff separately.

What about meeting regulatory requirements such as HR, safety, environmental, tax and financial reporting, [insert your favorite regulatory agency here]? These issues have both revenue and profit implications, but I don’t talk much about them in this book because I never worked in these areas. When a client has a regulatory problem they are grateful for the expertise of regulatory-savvy consultants.

Consultants can bring new ideas or they can legitimize an internal idea by proving a hypothesis. They can bring new processes, methodologies or systems, or they can help improve existing ones, all in the service of solving a revenue, profit or people problem.

So clients hire consultants as problem solvers. They may expect that these consultants have solved their problem before. They may expect a certain rigor to the problem-solving process that is data-based and akin to the scientific method. Mostly the client wants a specific result, i.e., more revenue, more profit, or both.

This is ideally a true statement. In the real world, however, sometimes a company executive hires a consultant because his or her boss insists on it, or to do an unpleasant task like reducing headcount, or to justify an idea over a rival’s. Sometimes a client hires a consultant to try the latest management fad just to “shake things up.” In my career I tried to avoid these kinds of projects, because I believe they are a waste of money. I wasn’t always successful.

So why were we hired?

First, there’s the work: i.e., what the client is hiring you for. The work is always about making a change the client can’t figure out on their own. The client always has a problem:

1. They need to grow revenue, which might mean a new strategy, new products, new customers, new ways to reach those customers (channels), etc.
2. They need to make more money, more profit, which might mean operational improvement, process improvement, new systems, supplier relationships, etc.
3. People stuff. They need to hire more people, or the right people, or people are leaving, or they’re unhappy and want a union, or we don’t know who to put in what role, or how to organize.  As mentioned, even if the problem is growing revenue or profit because guess who is involved? People. Customers, staff, workers, suppliers, even bankers and shareholders – they’re all people. (Hint: Be careful about saying this out loud. Some won’t take you seriously. Really. No kidding. Many executives talk about business as if people are an inconvenience to endure.)

Your firm may be known to specialize in such problems or there may be e referral source where you solved just such a problem in the past. They may not have the skills nor the bandwidth. There may be too much uncertainty or complexity. In short the client believes that hiring you to solve this problem will be faster or better than solving it themselves.

Why were we hired?

The answer to this is always relationship and trust.  Regardless of reputation or referral source, there was a meeting where the partner demonstrated trustworthiness. In that meeting perhaps the project lead explained your understanding of the problem and your approach. The client listened to that explanation and said to him or herself, “Sounds like this person can be helpful” (i.e., the consultant knows what he’s talking about) and “I can work with this person.”

That relationship with the client is what everyone on the team must protect. Yes, you must solve the problem, and achieve the promised result, but the client must perceive you to be as helpful and easy to work with at the end of the project as she did at the beginning. Consultants forgetting that is the genesis of all those jokes. (“They borrow your watch to tell you the time. Then they steal your watch.”)

I used to train new consultants. I used to tell them:

• Be authentic – never let the voice coming out of your mouth say something different than the voice in the back of your head.
• Be helpful – never forgetting that what is help is defined by the recipient, not the giver, and must be asked for. Otherwise it is likely interference or worse.
• Get results – this is hard in content consulting where your work ends with advice and results are the client’s responsibility. It might be easier in process consulting where you do more implementation, but you still have to teach the client to maintain results. But results matter. People will remember the results even if they take credit for them.

Consulting as opportunity for improvement

At a minimum, clients should be better able to solve this problem themselves next time. A consulting engagement can be an opportunity for growth, the consultant’s and the client’s. This doesn’t happen by itself, but only by focusing on it.

Consultants can be arrogant self-serving people only interested in bilking companies for whatever they can charge. Or they can be authentic, helpful and deliver results, a force for positive change in business.

Which kind of consultant will you be?

From the age of six?

“And what you want to be when you grow up,” said the lady with blue hair, pinching my cheek.

I don’t  know anyone who at six years old was asked this question and answered “Golly, gee, I want to be a management consultant!” Some people first think about a consulting career when they look at their student loan balance and panic. Some work in a company that hires consultants and observe young consultants being listened to by senior executives in a way that they are not and say “I can do that job!” Some know someone who is a consultant and the travel, money, and solving big problems seem exhilarating.

In ancient history, when I became a consultant it was harder to get a realistic picture of the career. Now, if you wipe the stardust from your eyes and look, articles like this one are a Google search away.

Consulting careers are a life cycle of roles and three distinctly different jobs:

1. Newbies: a person investigating the field, a new entrant, a starting analyst, someone who does a lot of the work. Newbies work hard, learn a lot and burn out or get promoted within a few years. There is some Newbie hazing that goes along with the role, and many consultants seemingly look down on Newbies after they have learned the ropes and graduated to a slightly more advanced role. But get a few experienced consultants together talking in a bar and they will speak wistfully about this period in their careers, when “everything was new” and they were “drinking from the fire house every day.” In the best firms there’s a Newbie cadre comradery that lasts a long time. “You never forget those you shared a foxhole with.”

2. Yeomen: these are mid-career consultants who manage the team and keep the client happy day-to-day. Yeomen still do work, sometimes more than is realistic, and they keep the wheels on the bus, solving team and client problems as they go. They may be called senior consultants, senior associates, team leads, engagement managers, project managers, account managers, or principals. I chose the term Yeomen, the name of the independent farmer, archer or infantryman in the medieval English army (think 1066 Battle of Hastings) because this role in consulting has a similar responsibility and danger. In several places I worked the ultimate compliment for someone single-handedly holding the entire project together was “she’s a real Yeoman.”

3. Old Hands: this role includes the been-around-the-block senior people, discipline or methodology experts and partners of every stripe. Old Hands don’t have to be old in years. Some are even in their late twenties or early thirties, but they bring a certain gravitas to every project. Clients listen to them. They also have a completely different job. It is their job to bring in business, new clients, new projects from existing clients, extensions on existing projects, in other words . . .sell.

Some consultants and some firms dislike the word sell because they think selling is beneath the profession. They may call it client development, business development, or “having client conversations,”  but personal selling is what generates revenue in consulting. It is the major criterion for promotion from Yeoman to partner. Old Hands sell directly by bringing in new clients, or indirectly by developing new service offerings and methodologies, writing books, speaking and attracting clients. Usually, not always, partners get a share of the revenue they bring in, or a share of the profits based upon the clients they bring, so direct sales pays better than service offering development.

Becoming a Newbie

As can be seen on the diagram above, there are several different paths that newbies enter consulting.

Some come into an analyst role directly from an undergraduate program. These folks may start as an intern in the summer after their junior year. Being an analyst is doing a lot of spreadsheet data analysis and PowerPoint slide drafting. Some intern analysts are hired upon graduation. Most of those work for two years, and if they want to stay in consulting, leave to go to graduate school, often to get a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) or sometimes a law degree. An infinitesimal percentage are sponsored by the consulting firm for their master’s degree provided they return to the firm for an agreed period.

Most Newbies join after their MBA or other graduate degree. A few are hired early from industry with four to eight years of experience. Consulting firms also hire people from industry who become industry or discipline specialists and they hire executives who have worked at senior levels as direct sales partners (rainmakers).

However a newbie enters, he or she is still a newbie. That may feel like all previous experience is being disregarded, that the newbie is treated as ignorant. Some firms are better at “on-boarding” newbies than others, but consulting is a unique industry and until newbies demonstrate that they can be consultants there is a steep learning curve.

Becoming a Yeoman

Yeomen may have the toughest job in consulting. They manage the team, keeping people on task and not burned out. They manage the deliverables of the project keeping on time and on budget. They manage the client, getting the inputs needed and keeping the client appropriately appraised of findings and progress. Finally, they manage the partner.

Partner management may seem inappropriate. The partner is generally much more experienced and sold the work based upon his or her relationship with the client. But partners are also frequently off-site selling other work or touching base with other projects and prospects. This means that the partner is often out of touch with the day-to-day work. The partner needs to be updated constantly and consistently and be on-site at just the right time. That takes management skill. Some partners work hand-in-glove with yeomen. Some are the proverbial “bull-in-a-china-shop.”

Promo or No-Go

On the diagram above, there are little red arrows after each role category. These show people leaving the firm both voluntarily and involuntarily. In olden times firms had a policy called “up-or out.” That meant there was a proscribed period young consultants were to spend at each stage of their career – one to two years as analyst, two years as associate, and so on. Anyone who wasn’t ready to be promoted was asked to leave.

Balancing staffing is one of the supreme management challenges in a consulting firm. Partners are constantly finding projects and they need staff. New service offerings need to be created and that requires staff. When a firm is humming everyone is operating at the level above where they are and there is a full pipeline of new hires flowing. There is little room for the “late bloomer.”

I’m told that the human resources mindset has reached  consulting and that “up-or-out” is much more staff focused and is called “grow-or-go” with staff being offered many more learning opportunities before being booted out the door. This is certainly true of The Big Three, McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and Bain, or MBB as recruiters say, and probably true of other large firms, (PwC, Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG, EY, etc.). Larger firms also soften the blow by having strong outplacement departments. This gives them an client development advantage as they are selling to alumni of the firm. Smaller firms may be slower or less rigid about deselection, but they rarely have outplacement.

Old Hands: Direct and Indirect Sellers

Let’s be clear, all levels do consulting work, even partners, especially those partners who have risen through the ranks. Those folks are likely to jump on Excel or PowerPoint anytime. But the system is set up so as a consultant rises the portion of the job spent selling increases.

Yeomen sell extensions (same client more of the same project work) and expansions (different client buying center, same or different project work. Old hands bring in new clients. There are two different paths for selling new work.

One group of yeomen and old hands build and maintain client relationships at their level and as those people rise to senior levels they sell new projects to them directly. A second group of yeomen and old hands focus on researching and developing new services offerings. These attract clients indirectly through published articles and books. Some firms, especially smaller firms expect senior people to follow both paths simultaneously, which doesn’t always work.

The secret to a long career as a direct selling Old Hand is to be able to pick the people who are rising at corporations, especially those younger than yourself. The secret to a long consulting career as an indirect selling Old Hand is to publish. Old Hands working into their eighties and nineties, W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, Peter Drucker, Jon Katzenbach, Tom Peters, invariably have multiple best selling books, and busy speaking schedules.

Trajectory Variations

This trajectory is drawn from the perspective of a consultant in a firm, surviving every level of “grow-or-go’ culling and becoming and Old Hand. Most consulting careers aren’t like that. Consultants change firms a lot. Consultants go back and forth between industry and consulting. Some consultants go into academia, do research, teach and supplement their salary with consulting. Consultants start new firms or become solo practitioners doing sub-contract work to larger firms or working alone. Some independent consultants work with a network of other independents. It is a very fluid industry, with many different ways to structure your work.

The one thing that all these variations have as a common success factor is consultants have clients. In the long term, that usually means that an individual or some group of clients who hire them, find the consultant helpful. The client find that the results that are achieved are greater than the client can achieve without the consultant’s help.

Early in my consulting career, a mentor told me, “Alan, you are the product.” At that time I took that as an admonition to “be professional.” Later I realized it was also career path trajectory advice, with implications for innovation, continuous improvement, and client relationship building. The trajectory of a consultant’s career is one of continuous self-development, increasing capability to be helpful and deliver results.

Who wants to be a consultant?

I don’t know of any six-year-olds who say, “I want to be a management consultant when I grow up.” Even the children of management consultants who watch their parent leave Sunday night only to come home in time to tuck them in Friday night probably don’t sing the line from Harry Chapin’s song Cat’s Cradle, “I’m gonna be like him”  (or her).

There are several times when people start to think about a job in consulting:

• Junior year undergraduate –“OMG -how am I gonna pay off these loans?” -Maybe an internship in consulting, and work for a couple of years.
• Pre or post MBA, Law degree, STEM MSc “I need to pay-off loans, and/or what is my ticket into senior management, or even consulting? (“I dunno, the money is good and the travel is exciting.”)
• After working at a company for four to eight years or more when the company hires consultants. (“Hey, they just took my ideas and packaged them in PowerPoint. Look at what they get paid and they get to travel and always do different stuff. I can do that job!”)

Okay, I am being a little cynical. I was a consultant for thirty-seven years, worked for five firms and was an independent for twenty-three of those years. It’s fair to say I enjoyed the field, and the work, but I was extraordinarily naïve when I decided to go to business school to become a consultant and at almost every stage of my career. This is an anti-naiveté primer on a consulting career.

The Money

Starting salaries are quite good, which is why consulting is often the choice for smart, but student-debt-ridden undergraduates. You will earn that money with excessive hours; don’t ever make the mistake of calculating what you earn per hour.

Mid-term, money is often better in corporate jobs, the hours more reasonable, and the travel less. Many undergraduates leave for corporate jobs after two years or they go back to graduate school. A very few get sponsored by the top firms to get MBAs with a promise that they will work for those firms for a defined period after graduation.

Long term, some senior partners make a very good living, if they bring in million dollar projects, through direct selling or thought leadership. For the rest, consultants can earn a solidly upper middle class income, but not tech entrepreneur or investment banker rich.

The Travel

Consulting projects are most often done on “client site.” You go where the clients are. The travel seems quite exciting to the uninitiated, but if that is what attracts you to the field it usually gets old quickly.

I worked at firms where I literally left on Sunday afternoon and came home Friday night every week. In these firms if you were not applied to a client and travelling, it was called being “on-the-beach,” but that wasn’t a good thing. Being on the beach meant you did research, or other unbilled work and being unapplied too long meant you were in danger of being let go.

When you are on client site, even in a very exciting location, you rarely have any opportunity for site-seeing. There might be a team dinner on Thursday night at a fancy restaurant where everyone overeats and overdrinks and still has to be on site at 7:00 Friday morning.

Some stay over a weekend to site-see, or tack on personal travel after a project, but if you are married or have other long term relationship commitments this requires some planning.

Other Downsides of a Consulting Career

The money is good, but not great. The travel isn’t what you thought. What else?

Tough on relationships

An outcome of the travel is the strain it puts on relationships. Many long term consultants are divorced. Also if you are the type of person who makes friends where they live, it is difficult to stay in touch with your neighbors if you are only home on weekend. It means no book clubs, weekday barbeques, no classes at the local high school or art center, no practicing with your neighborhood garage band.

Work friends are tough to find

Many projects are staffed from several offices, so even if you wanted to spend more time with people  you worked 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. with for five days they go home to a different city on the weekend. Further some projects are yea-long, but most  engagements are shorter, so if you work for a big firm your work mates are changing every two to three months.

Some firms staff groups of people together to combat this. There are smaller firms, or those with more local client bases, but that typically means a trade-off for less interesting work.

Upsides of Consulting

Why would anyone want this job?  I was a consultant for thirty-seven years, here are my answers to that question:

• The variety of the work – every few months I worked on a different problem, revenue growth, profit growth, people stuff -different problems, different companies, different industries. It was always changing.
• The challenge of the work – very few companies hire consultants for problem -solving of “dead-easy” problems. Even if they were simply hiring you as an ‘extra pair of hands,” there was some reason they weren’t just hiring a temp from Manpower. Most work you were hired for was something they had tried to figure out or do themselves and given up. They might have given up because they couldn’t figure it out. They might have quit because there was too much disagreement on causes or approach. They just needed help for a tough problem and it was worth the money.
• The perpetual learning curve – To be a consultant there is always something you need to learn and quickly. You will need to learn about the client’s company, success patterns. culture, and political system, (who makes what decision, who must be included, etc.) You might learn new industries for your established methodologies or a new methodology for an industry you’d worked in several times. Dull and boring it isn’t.
• The people – the best consultants are smart people, focused on solving the consultants problem, open to learning new things all the time. The best clients are very similar. Both consultants and clients work in teams. They have an agreed approach, a collective work product, mutual accountability and aid. They help each other out. Are there jerks? Sure, but I made it my business not to work for jerk clients or with jerk consultants more than once. I managed to (mostly) work with people who knew how to get stuff done and still have fun.
• The values – What made me stay in consulting for thirty-seven years was it gave me the opportunity to practice my values:
  • Authenticity – I got to be my own weird self. I was valued for my different perspective and my openness to different points of view.
  • Helpfulness – we were there to solve a client’s problem, help that was asked for. Were weren’t there to do the client’s job or interfere where we weren’t requested. We weren’t there to prove how smart we were, just to help where asked.
  • Results and Process – for me solving a problem, getting a result was always important. Just as important was how I did that. I always wanted to teach the client my process so that they could do it themselves the next time. I was a process consultant, but found clients who were willing to allow me to do more than provide an answer.

So you still wanna be a consultant?

If with eyes duly open, it is a great field that will feed you mind body and soul if you keep your head on straight and your heart open.