Consultative Processes - Intro to Consulting Business

Today I had the first class in my elective course – Consultative Processes. From the syllabus and the first class it became obvious that the class is going to be very writing-intensive and group work oriented. We will have to submit three individually prepared cases from Harvard Business Publications. And there will be two group projects, each consisting of a write-up and an in-class presentation: Consulting Proposal and Consulting Report. On top of that a lot of reading assignments too.

From the Professor’s comments in the class it appears that, just as I expected based on the syllabus, it is going to be relatively general, high level introductory course to Consulting. However, the cases and especially the two group projects are going to give me enough exercise and taste, for me to decide if I want to take more advanced classes geared to Consulting later on in my MBA program.

In class we did some exercises, namely the students were giving their answers to three questions about Consultant’s professional attributes. Here is the result of our collective brain-storming. I think it gives some interesting insights for those who are not very familiar with what Consultants work is like. The bullets are in no hierarchial order, but rather in the order they were suggested by the students. Every suggested bullet was supported by specific example, but I have no time for those details here, and you would have to interpret some of the more vague points on your own. So here are the lists.

What Consultants DO:

Diagnose the problem and figure out how to address it
Provide expertise/capacity to the client
Identify opportunities
External revies of the client’s processes
Benchmarking
Changem management
Soft skills
Conflict management
Avoid conflict of interests

What Consultants Should NOT DO:

Undertake projects outside their expertise
Cover up illegal activities of the client
Bad customer service
Sell up unnecessary services
Make decisions for the client
Breach confidentiality

Skills (and attributes) of Consultant:

Communication
Listening
Absorb a lot of new information quickly
Analytical skills
Project management
People skills
Ethics
Negotiation
Humility (I guess this is not very popular notion among consultants, but apparently clients are expecting this)
Dealing with ambiguity
Continuous learning
Creativity
Receptive to client’s feedback
Research skills
Interviewing skills

The list is not exhaustive, but a good start nevertheless. I hope it would be helpful for those who are interested to learn more about consulting, but do not have very clear understanding about what Consulting is yet.

The required text for this class is The McKinsey Mind by Ethan Rasiel and Paul Friga.. The book itself was not very expensive, because it is not a formal textbook. Which was nice, especially in comparison to the one I had to buy for Financial Markets. But unfortunately this price advantage was all but eliminated by the cost of other materials that need to be purchased for the class: the pack of Harvard Business cases and the course pack. Well, it’s not something new. (MBA) Education is pricey. I have kind of got used to it