Back off the Bench

Being staffed on my second project in the last two weeks of December was a little unexpected. While I was excited about getting off the bench and learning new things, I had hoped the new project wouldn’t start until January. But things happen as they do. So what’s the new project?

I’m working with three other consultants on a healthcare project in Los Angeles. We are looking at the IT side of the healthcare company to find opportunities to reduce cost/improve service. Unlike the last project, I joined this project from the get-go so technically, this is my truly first project.

One of the first things that I’m beginning to understand is how consulting is both an interesting and boring career. Take this project. It is scheduled for six weeks, from data collection to analysis to presentation. Given the short timeframe, we are utilizing an approach to solve the client’s problem that was developed during a previous project. Rather than reinventing the wheel, we are adapting previous outputs to make it custom tailored to this specific client. It’s like custom tailor suits versus bespoken. Sure, we make it fit, but we don’t go through the work of taking the full measurement.

As bad as I make that sound, the actual work in the project is customized for the client. While we have an approach developed based on a previous client’s work that is similar, even minuet changes on the client side forces us to re-adapt and change our approach.

But besides all this high-level stuff, I’m actually excited about learning something entirely different. For me, most everything is new so I’ve tried to concentrate on core consulting skills rather the specific business skills. Core consulting skill is best thought of as thinking analytically and structured thinking. I worked with a co-worker to recreate an issue-tree to help me understand the different work streams in this project and how they are interrelated to answer the key question of reducing cost for the client. This was the first time I’ve actually worked through an full issue-tree to frame the work and it was truly amazing how much it help explain what, how, and why we were doing the type of work required to answer the key question.

But learning to structure my thinking is only one thing new. I am learning how to manage expectations , especially creating the balance between worklife and non-worklife. I have realized now that managing expectations is almost as important as the work you actually product. Take the following example. You’re given some work that you’ve never done before. The manager allocates 3 hours to learn and produce some outcome. You go straight through and start tackling the work. After a few minutes, you find that you can actually finish the work in 15 minutes. You rush through; finish the work ahead of time. You’re manager is surprised and thus allocates you some more work expecting better outcomes and thus giving you a short timeframe. Eventually, you’re going to hit a wall where you’re going to miss an expectation.

In the above example, there are several steps you can take to manager the expectation the work produced. For one, you shouldn’t just dive into the work right away if it is given with some learning time. Create an approach and allocate time to different aspects just as you would create an approach to the large client project. This five minute prep-time can be as simple as thinking about the assignment, understanding what you need to do, etc. As they say, properly done prep-work can save you a lot of time later on so you don’t have to go through rework because you failed to understand some thing. After the approach, complete the work, but try to understand more than what you are doing. For example, if you are given the simple task of formatting something and you’ve finished the work in five minutes but were given 30 minutes, spend the remainder of the time reading the document. Try to understand why you were given the task of formatting the document and how the document ties to other documents. Learning to understand what you are doing or understanding the big picture is more important as you move up and get promoted so try to do it earlier. Besides, there is not always a positive reason to turn in work early. Now, if it is major work and you can turn it something early because it will save you/client/company money, then that is a calculated move. But turning in work early on simple tasks simply shows that you are an efficient worker bee and more work should be allocated to you given the same timeframe. Now, while it is great for the company to have you humming along at 100% efficiency at all times, we humans aren’t machines and that type of work simply is brutal. Rather, you should see when work should be turned in early and when it should be managed as on time. Finally, let people know how you work. Tell them if you think you’ll need more time early on and ask about it. It doesn’t help you or your boss to come back to him five minutes before it is due to say you need more time. If you set the expectation early, then others can work with you or around you. Obviously, this doesn’t mean asking for five hours to generate a single PowerPoint slide, but it does mean managing the time given to you.

Ask and you will/can be rewarded.