“Tell me, what did you learn?”

It was the last team meeting of my first consulting project. The team was entirely composed of London Business School first year MBA students. We had just spent the summer studying the UK commercial vehicle market to determine the feasibility of two new truck lines. The client was ERF, a Cheshire assembler of heavy duty forty-four-ton articulated lorry cabs (called tractor-trailers or semis in the US). ERF asked us to study whether they should build a thirty-two-ton,  eight-wheel vehicle (think garbage truck or road construction dump truck) and a sixteen-ton box van (used for grocery distribution and U-Haul rentals). As the “data secretary” for the team, I felt that the question was directed at me.

I stumbled a bit over the words but launched into a summary of the findings. “In the market for the sixteen-ton distribution vehicle there is no premium end of the market. There is a substantial penalty for vehicle weight because margins are razor thin. . . .”

“No, what did you learn?”

The questioner, Basil, had been the team’s advisor while the project leader, Dick, went to the south of France for four weeks. Basil was a tall lanky man, a bit craggy of face, and a kind, almost professorial demeanor. In our weekly meetings with Basil, he would quietly listen as we reported findings, his long fingers steepled, touching his lips. He only lowered his hands slightly to make the occasional quiet suggestion; we students were pretty much on our own. I had no idea what he was looking for, but commenced again.

“By contrast, the thirty-two-ton market does offer a premium for durability, and the power of Gardiner drivetrain has a certain cache. . . .”

“No. . . what did you learn?” Someone else jumped in to describe how the British Leyland Chieftain was the clear price leader in the sixteen-ton market and no competitor seemed to be able to underprice them, nor establish a premium, for even six months without dramatically impacting their own sales.

“No, no, no. . . well. . .”  Basil intoned in a gently condescending way. “Let me tell you what you should have learned. Perhaps, you learned how, with very little prior industry experience or knowledge, to get yourselves to the point where you could have intelligent business conversations with people who had worked in this industry for their entire careers.”

I looked around the room. It was clear that all my fellow students were simultaneously coming to the same realization that we had in fact done that.

“If you did learn that,” said Basil quietly, “It will feed you for the rest of your lives.”

Thinking back on that first project, how did we learn enough about the UK truck market to be credible to industry insiders? We read a lot and talked to friendly industry people before we ever talked to a client.

For me, the excitement of starting a new project and the steepness of the learning curve are what kept me in consulting for thirty-seven years.

After so many years in the field, I’ve recognized that each phase of the consulting process has its own learning requirements:

From Discovery to Decision the learning requirements are technical and project-specific. Disengagement is hard. Many consultants want to pitch more work and forget that the client must implement.

But in Entry the learning curve is the steepest because the consultant must learn enough about the industry and company to earn the right to proceed.

I worked with some consulting firms and project managers who were really good at preparing the team to learn quickly.

I also worked with consulting firms and project managers who didn’t spend enough time preparing the team. They sent consultants to initial interviews with little prep and clients felt like the consultants were “borrowing their watch to tell them the time.”

Some consultants feel the need to demonstrate how smart they are, which gives all consultants the reputation for arrogance.

But the consulting firms and project managers who are good at preparing the team all provide some of the same things:

• An industry pre-read deck, which includes Information about:
  • Customers and buying criteria
  • Competitors and their products and services
  • Relevant previous industry project materials, if available
  • Articles about industry history and trends
  • Harvard Business Review industry notes (or similar)
• Company background
  • Annual report and analyst notes if a public company (client-supplied data if a private company)
  • Organization charts
  • Relevant previous company project materials, if available
  • Product/service brochures
• The project proposal or statement of work or the relevant portions of those documents
• An email and telephone list that includes all consultants and clients and rules (e.g., only the project manager is to talk to the CEO)
• An opening meeting to discuss questions from the pre-read and the project plan

Many times all this information isn’t available at the beginning of the project, but a good project manager creates a template and charges the team to help fill it in. Clarify what is confidential material and be careful to “not leave this stuff in the photocopier.”

These materials can’t cover everything, but it can lessen the magnitude of the learning curve, which provides a lot of the “fun” of consulting.

And learning quickly “will feed you for the rest of your lives.”