How to manage knowledge in a consulting firm
Whoever gets this question right, wins.
I am only slightly exaggerating. Of course, you need the best people. But your chances of being the best _firm_ are significantly dependent upon the way you manage their knowledge.
There is no way to sugarcoat this: managing knowledge in a consulting firm is fucking hard. See my first sentence.
Now let me share some insights with you:
Why work with presentation designers?
This argument came up on /r/consulting recently (reddit, you know!) when discussing the need for presentation designers:
by the time you write up what you want in the slides to hand off, and the time you spend reviewing and tweaking (or writing up what needs tweaked), you’ll have spent as much time, if not more, had you just done it yourselves (Original thread)
Here’s what I have to say about this:
How to add value in a client meeting as the junior in the room
This question came up on /r/consulting recently – let me paraphrase:
“As a young consultant, how do I manage to add value to a client meeting, even though my senior colleagues in the room are much more experienced?”
Here’s my answer:
This is not limited to the juniors – might as well happen to you after 5 years of experience when working with people more senior than you are. But there are things you can do that might help:
Three ways to get into consulting without a college degree
This post is based on the reply I gave to a question on Quora. The original question was: Is it possible to get a consulting job without a college degree?
There’s three ways to get a consulting job (I am looking at strategy/ management consulting here) without a college degree:
Consultants’ “hacks” on collecting, absorbing and articulating information
This post is based on a question I answered on Quora. The original question was: “Do Management consultants have any good hacks for collecting, absorbing and articulating information?“
Here goes my reply:
First of all: There are few “hacks” in the meaning of “shortcut”. Being a good management consultant ain’t easy. Every time you think you got it all down, you discover the next level of things to learn and master. I’m 10 years in, and this still happens regularly.
On collecting information:
- Before capturing/interviewing/collecting, you need to think all the way through to the result and the presentation of the result.