We use this framework before the head, the heart and the hand. And so now we're talking about the hands, right, how do you actually do the work? And what I would say is that successful consultants, like most anybody successful that you know, is that they want to get better. And so a lot of this really has to do with how do you spark that drive in yourself to continually find more difficult work and push yourself to be kind of a craftsman? Right, so when I thought about this, I feel like really high quality work, the idea of becoming a master at something or becoming a craftsman at something, it really comes from the idea. And I think that dr Halstead from john Hopkins, he created this framework, he created the first residency program, surgical residency program, where the idea Was that you see one and then you do one. And then after doing several, you could actually teach one and that's just a fancy way to say apprenticeship. Right, so you see somebody who has more experience who knows what they're doing, and you try to see the patterns. Right, and learn from that, and then a lot of practice yourself, of course and then your ability to share with others. Okay, I don't believe that consulting is much different from that, the idea that you want to see one do one and then teach one. So in a consulting setting, what does that look like? There are a lot of words here on the page, now, we'll just focus on the ones in red which is you need to be very observant. You definitely want to ask good questions and you want to be able to recognize the patterns. Right, so if you see if you have three or four different projects that you're on, what are the areas that were different? And what were the areas that were similar with the idea that a lot of business problems have kind of themes, they rhyme with each other? Right, so once again being very observant being a good student. Right, well what about doing the work? What I would say is that one of the nice things about consulting is that you don't have to be an expert on every project. You're with a team of people who have more experience and less experience and so it's a safe environment for you to learn. What I tell consultants all the time is on the first week of the project, it's perfectly okay if you don't know all the answers. Right, that's perfectly, okay, you're studying, you're learning, you're doing that's great. But of course by the 3rd or 4th week of a consulting project, you better be pretty crafty. Right, you're not asking silly questions anymore because you've really gotten up to speed. So here you can see the words, basically do the work constantly push yourself. But in the red I think that's the most important thing which is you're going to win a lot of the times because you're set up for success and you've scoped the project well I get it. But you're also going to fail a good bit and from that failure, you know, just have a little professional humility. You didn't die, it's going to be okay, you're getting smarter for next time. And so here in the title, I think this is very true that a real test of your professionalism is for you essentially to fall down to get back up and not lose enthusiasm. Okay, so have the idea that the middle section you're really going to be working hard and doing the work. And then finally here on the right hand side of the slide, you'll see that over time, it's not just enough to have done it once or done it twice. That's, I mean, that's basic, that's commodity, they're not going to pay you extra money for that, right? Your clients are hiring you because it's something that they themselves don't have the time or the resources, the expertise to do and on some level they expect for you to have a point of view, right? What is it about their situation that makes it particularly hard to implement? What about your previous experience that is very applicable to what they want to do? So once again, yes, you're definitely going to get lots of practice, we can agree on that the middle section. But in addition to that, you always want to come up with what makes you particularly unique in strategy. We talk a lot about economic moat MOAT, what's around you that's making you more profitable? What's making you really different? So see 1, do 1 and then teach 1, you can see from the bright blue bar that I made. There's a lot of doing right on the previous page, see one do one teach one. We're all the same length, that's not exactly true, being able to passively observe without adding value is a bit of a luxury that you don't get that often. So if you join consulting, be ready to be essentially thrown into the pool and learn how to swim while you're in the pool. Okay, so there's a lot of doing and I think that's shown very clearly here on the slide also and I mentioned this a couple times. Your ability to ask great questions will serve you well if you're in your first year of consulting or you're a consulting partner who's been doing it for 20 years. So critical, right? And the idea is when I say good questions are great questions, if you can google it. It's not a great question, if it's on the client's website, it's not a great question. If it's understanding the difference between cost of goods sold and SGNA. That's not a good question because you could quickly find a Youtube video and get smart on that. So a little bit around asking great questions is knowing what a great question is and making sure that you're answering your own questions very simply through google or looking through your notes or just getting smart on something. But once you've kind of satisfied kind of the lowest level questions, I think yeah, your ability to ask one or two really insightful questions of the client during a meeting pays for itself. And so that's something that's going to pay dividends to you throughout your career. So let's get to this part, okay john that's great, it's about professionalism understood. But what exactly are the skills that I'm going to be learning, right? And what I would emphasize here is that in consulting world a lot of times will call you a practitioner and so practitioner, that word, the base root of that word is practice the idea that you're going to be practicing a lot. And these are the skills that you get not just from reading a book but actually Doing right. See one do 1 teach 1, I divided these skills largely into three big buckets and of course it varies, right? If you're in health care, that's one thing, financial services, that's another if you're working here or in India or in England or in France different. So there's a lot of nuances, but I think these three buckets are are more right than wrong. So let's talk about content, consultants are are famous and some would even say notorious or infamous for the fact that they know a lot they know a little bit about a lot of things, right? But more importantly that overview and that strategic and that broad lateral view allows them to see patterns and make recommendations basically to make a big difference in business. So on the Content side 1, 2 and 3, the kind of things that you're going to see is one doing the research. Like how do you get smart on a topic that you don't know much about? And then once that happens, how do you take a complex problem frankly that even the client? Isn't exactly sure how to break down? And then once you break it down in a short amount of time, how do you know what parts of the problem to really attack? So on the left hand side of the slide you're really good at solving problems. Great consultants, just like the title says have great client relationships. We talked about earlier that consulting is a people to people business and as a function of that it's not just the problem but it's also the executives that you're working with and the environment that they're in, right? Because it doesn't matter how fancy your strategy is, if you can't execute it, if you can't implement, if you can't make it happen, it don't matter, right? So here in the middle you'll see, you know, adapting it to your client's situation. Finding ways to really collaborate, not just with your client, but also your client has different peers that they work with and your client has a boss that he works with. So being able to navigate that environment and set your client up for success right at the very bottom. It says it right here that you are in client service and you're really good at working with and through and influencing clients to be successful. And the final one is, how do you do that? How do you solve great, big problems and how do you work with clients? Right, because it's not a simple thing and the idea here is, it's not you by yourself. Right, a lot of times these problems and the kind of challenges that we tackle, there's no way one person could do it. So you need to find a smart way to work in teams of some people more senior than you. Some people more junior than you and have that team of people who work fast who trust each other who can collaborate and over time it's not just one project, right? Like over the course of a career, you're going to start cultivating and recruiting and mentoring different people who are going to follow you, not only from project to project, but sometimes if you change companies. Basically they're going to help follow you as well, this brings back an example in my own case where a good friend of mine that I met in consulting because of him, I got my next two jobs. So one question that I have for you is when you're thinking about your career, do you have people around you that are helping you to find your next job? Do you have people around you who are motivating you and nudging you to make sure that you're kind of reaching your full potential? The last thing here is really cultivating your own professionalism and point of view. We said earlier that clients don't want to have generic solutions, right? If the client can pay five $100 and download a report online, they don't need to pay $200,000 to you and your company to do it, right? So you need to look really deeply and find out how am I really unique and how is it that what I'm recommending is something unique to the client and unique to myself. Because you want to create those relationships that are really just yours. Okay, so being great at solving problems working with clients and also leading teams, key takeaways. One consulting is an apprentice, you really want to be able to learn from others, be very coachable with the idea that, you're going to see one do one and teach one. So even for those of you who may be our corporate managers, the blue ladders or those who are entrepreneurs and have a solo consulting shop, think about. Maybe how to do it, but how good are you at teaching others to do it later on in the specialization. We're going to talk about how if you're doing all the work yourself, I would probably argue that you're not being a very good consultant. Because you need to aggressively give work to other people and delegate things out that honestly is not worth your time. So for those people who are the blue ladders, I would also argue that you need to be a little bit more aggressive in finding mentors and executive sponsors. If you're in the finance department and you've been there for 10 years and you've always had the same boss. I would say that your professional network is probably weaker than those who are in consulting and have different project managers and they're bumping around in the market with different clients, different industries and different bosses. So if you're a blue ladder, think about how can I be a consultant mindset while working in this finance department? Meet new people network, push yourself out of your comfort zone to run bigger projects and get valuable skills at the end of the day for you. There's the money you get from your company or there's the different projects that you get. But what are the valuable skills that you're really getting both in terms of the content? Right, the client management and also running teams effectively, the last thing I would say would be asking great questions. Next time you watch Oprah Winfrey or you watch 60 minutes or you watch somebody who's a real masterful interviewer, what I'd like for you to really gauge is how are they paying attention to the interviewee? How do they pace their questions? How do they start with open ended questions then get more specific? These are all consulting skills that you need to have over the course of your career to really help you to learn and be that continuous learner.
