Is this it?

Friday, I had a late lunch with a co-worker. During lunch, I was reminiscing about an event that occurred during an earlier work-lunch event. Half way through the lunch event, I thought suddenly, 10 or 20 years from now, I'm I going to be just like one of the senior executives in this room working for this company? Is that it? I'm going to be driving a nice car with some loft in SF? Has my life already been planned for me?

I told my co-worker about this and she put it perfectly into perspective. I was suddenly realizing that the prime years of my life are passing me by as we speak. Look at all the people that have really made it in their life, whether it be Nobel prize winners, famous writers, etc. The defining movement of their life all happens before the age of 30, usually before 25. What this means is that I have less than three years to make something out of my life or that's it.

This isn't to say I'm unhappy about the current state of affairs. I enjoy my work, I find myself very lucky to be where I am today. I'm more lucky than the usual breed, but I'll get into that on another day. What I'm "complaining" about is the sudden realization that time is tickling and I need to do something. But while I realize I need to do something, I don't see what I can do or which risks I can take to actually accomplish my goal. Which leads me to ask, what is me goal?

1 2 3 4 - Ipod Nano

Getting Feedback

While I have been pulled back into my old assignment, I went ahead and talked to a few people to get input regarding feedback.

One of the areas that I had questions was how managers wanted to keep a tab on the people below them. Like most questions, there wasn’t any one specific answer. I found the best advice was to read how your manager operates, but I did find some general helpful tips.

Before people know how you operate and your capabilities, it is best to keep the person in the loop as often as possible. This requires frequent updates and possible guidance.

1. As the manager gains more trust from observing your work and your deliveries, usually, they give you more independence and there is a less need to constantly keep the person in a direct report situation.
2. Over-communication is always better than under-communication. Most people know how to ignore the less important information. Also, by over-communicating, you give yourself some fall back space.
3. Be constant on how you communicate. Communicating doesn’t mean telling your supervisor every single detail of your project or problem. Like the work consultants perform, choose and synthesize the information you communicate.

The other important aspect in seeking feedback is having the feedback, especially good feedback, written down. Written feedbacks have two benefits.

1. During performance reviews, it provides concrete evidence necessary to give you the boost (assuming the feedback was good) that you need to move up.
2. People move on, retire, or quit. Written feedback keeps the information in your file for future review.
3. Written feedback forces the evaluator to spend some time actually thinking over the issue. It often results in more detail and specific feedback.
4. Make sure the feedback is both positive and negative. That way, you have areas you can work towards on your next project.

With those goals in mind, I’m going to send out a feedback request once I “officially” role of this project.

Good to be a Consultant

A recent survey co-sponsored by American Management Association (AMA) and The Institute of Management Consultants (IMC USA) and conducted by Consulting Intelligence (CI), showed that "82 percent, who retain consultants as part of their job rated the client-consultant experience as positive."

Furthermore, the "...survey results also reveal that the consulting profession is viewed as trustworthy. When respondents were asked to rank a list of 10 representative professions from most trustworthy to least trustworthy, they ranked consulting as the 5th most trustworthy profession, behind nurses, doctors, teachers and accountants. Rounding out the list of professions were sales representatives, corporate executives, attorneys, journalists and politicians."

Source

Now, what's interesting is that "The Consulting Survey^SM asked senior-level managers, CEOs and other business professionals to rate their overall experiences working with consultants" and they ranked consultants higher than corporate executives, aka, themselves. Hmmm...

Additionally, consultants are ranked higher than journalists in the trustworthy category which I found surprising. So the next time you are out on a plane, saying your a consultant isn't so bad.

The question remaining is, is it better than an investment banker? =)

In-N-Out

No, this post isn’t about great hamburgers. Rather, I’m being staffed back at the same project that I wrote last time. It seems roll-off isn’t always roll-off.

I got a call on Friday during Senior Executive scheduling meeting to say that I was to come back Monday. That one call sums up the life of a consultant. You never know exactly where or what you’ll go to.

So, it is Monday and I’m back on the client side doing some finishing touches. I’m told I’m being hold unless for a possible role on the East Coast if supply side logistics is resolved (i.e. they really need people and can’t find anyone on the East Coast who is cheaper to fly around).

In the mean time, I’ll try to keep my head up and do some work.

Dinner and a Conversation

My first project is official ending in a few days. It will be eight weeks when all this is over and it seems in a way that things are just beginning.

This project was a great introduction to the life and work of a consultant. I got to understand both a bit about the life of a consultant and the type of work I would be performing. The work wasn’t so challenging that I felt entirely lost, but just enough independence where I could build my wings.

The project consisted of two areas. The first area required me to update a deck of strategic ideas and formulation by looking at existing strategy documents. This was the easier part of the project because I was taking mostly directions from my boss on what I needed to do. While I was a little hesitant at first about the nature of the work, I quickly understood how valuable to get something easy to building your foundation in the beginning. Not only was doing client work, I was also learning how to be a consultant at the same time. The etiquette and techniques necessary to be in a client situation was entirely new to me. Having work that wasn’t too challenging gave me the necessary breathing room for me to get accommodated with my surrounding.

After that work, I moved on to more independent analysis. I believe consulting is different from most other areas of work because rather than being directed on what to do, much of the work is independently though. Your boss might have an idea of what s/he wants you to accomplish but how to get the work done is entirely up to you to figure out. This summarized how I completed this second project. I was given specific tasks and tasks that I thought would be valuable. Then, I had to come up with the necessary analysis. There wasn’t any steps given for me to say do X analysis and then look at Y data. I had to figure all that out myself, and it was a learning experience.

Many people, myself included, kept saying in college that we love to do challenging work. We don’t want to be the machine in the office, but the boss. But being the boss requires a level of work and thinking that is quite different than what I expected. Sure, at my level, there are still people I turn to for help and suggestions. But overall, on the project, I was the one calling the shoots, deciding what information to gather, how to get it, how to analyze it, and where the data leads. Like any good researcher, your hard thought hypothesis sometimes goes straight out the window after two weeks of work and you’ll have to start all over again. Only this time, you have two weeks less in time.

End of the day, I learned a lot:

• How to deal with clients
• How strategic is formulated at the higher levels
• How operational work aligns with the strategic thinking
• Processes to get information
• Phone conversations skills
• Consolidating multiple different pieces of conflicting information
• Formulating analysis for quantitative data that was previously qualitative

There are still areas that I would like to work on even after learning all of this. One of the biggest areas is gaining the confidence needed in a consulting environment. I always feel a constantly need to justify myself by bring value to my clients. How to do that when you have very limited knowledge is an area that I’m working on. Another area is just being comfortable in an environment where everyone is so much more senior than yourself. In the end, I’m looking forward to the next project hoping they are all as good as this one.

The Tonight Show: Mike Rowe Shitty Jobs