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.