Interested to learn more about creating consulting-style slide presentations? This is my slide writing course mentioned in the video: link.firmlearning.com/slides
I must say as an engineer whose job is to mostly communicate on software projects, I have been finding your videos valuable. The rephrasing of "What does it mean" -> "What do you mean by this?" is genius!
You have to be careful with this. It is a great technique until it is not. I am reminded about a similar technique when you can’t remember a person’s name. Just ask the person how they spell their name .... which is genius until it terms out that their last name is Smith or Jones. You need to read the room. If everyone else seems to know, google it.
A medical doctor, an engineer, and a management consultant were arguing about what was the oldest profession in the world. The doctor started… "Well, in the Bible, it says that God created Eve from a rib taken from Adam’s body. This must have required surgery, and so I can claim with a high degree of confidence that mine is the oldest profession in the world." The engineer responded, and said, "But earlier in the book of Genesis, it states that God created the order of the heavens and the earth from out of the chaos. This was the first and certainly the most impressive application of civil engineering. Therefore, dear doctor, you are wrong: mine is surely the oldest profession in the world." The management consultant leaned back in his chair, smiled, and then said confidently, "Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?"
Great video - thank you. Some additional advice I give juniors. Prepare before any meeting. No mater how scared you are, fake the confidence, not the knowledge. Make notes, lots of notes and ask the spelling of anything your uncertain of. Then, point to your notes and ask a question of clarification (try not to make it a naive question). (There is always a gap). The value you bring is being able to ask the right questions. Answers are easy, questions are difficult. Most consultants don’t ask enough tough questions. Then immediately following, discuss with a mentor - get a good mentor if you don’t have one - the older the better.
Your observations are spot-on from my experience as an ex-consultant. When you first start a new project, you will naturally feel "imposter syndrome" until a few weeks into the project when you genuinely start adding value.
The best way to describe a consultant: someone who asks you what time is it, repeats what you told him and goes away with your watch. In 20 years of my experience, it was never wrong.
This is the saying that I featured in the video as well ;) While there might be some truth to it, this is of course too simplified in my opinion. Best, Heinrich
Yeah- common critique. There's more to it: most businesses have about 100 watches, all with different times. Different execs have different hunches as to which one's correct. No doubt one of those watches is correct. Turns out there is a lot of value in reducing uncertainty and explaining why a certain course of action is justified.
I think the value added by consultants is mostly around structure and approach. You can look much better at something than you truly are just because you structure it well
Great tip with re-phrasing on "what do you mean by that". It touches on active listening and empathy techniques as well, both crucial to succeed in any setting. Consulting can be perceived as a con job often, but in my view, it's rather a problem of expectations. Consultants can offer advice and solutions, they can not lead daily execution - this is where it often fails.
I love this one. I have used the "leverage the knowledge you receive" and "how to frame questions." I also use what Chris Voss teaches in his book "Never Split the Difference" when I ask them something and then repeat it back to them via a summary starting with "It sounds like, it seems like, or it looks like." Great post!
Keep up the good work on these videos Heinrich! Having been both a consultant and a client, I evaluate three things to measure their ability to appear competent - the ability to listen, the ability to know when to shut up, and how organized they appear. When I hire consultants to perform work in my employer's organization, I'm also putting my reputation at risk, so it's just as important for me that they successfully complete their objectives.
As a permie, I am always in awe at how contractors look so competent to the bosses and yet are so incompetent in practice at the same time, in the process earning 4 times as much as me. Kudos.
Sometimes there is a revolving door between senior management and the consultancies, for example between internal and external auditors, in which case the consulting engagement is a related party transaction of sorts -- no-one is fooling anyone, except maybe the board of directors and its audit committee. On the other hand, the top bosses could simply be clueless per the Peter Principle. One thing's certain, never-never-never criticize the lack of tangible value delivered by consultants to your senior management -- in the first case they may be complicit and in the second case they are simply incompetent -- or you'll be looking for a new job before long.
I don't know what industry you are in (I am working in design/engineering) but my experience is not as clear cut, I have seen really competent and incompetent people on both side of the fence . I have also been on both side of myself, I am now working as a permie after a decade of contracting . Contracting definitely offer a financial advantage but also comes with all the drawback of running a business(accountancy, business insurance, variable incomes...), contractors also tend to get let go first in time of lesser workload and get no pension contribution or health plan (if you work for company offering any of these benefits). I often see permanent members of staff complaining about how much contractors are paid, to be fair I struggle to understand where it is coming from, it is easy to just resign and become a contractor .
I used all of these when I first started Consulting. I still use this. The important thing is - despite these, you can still value add. Great video and very honest. :)
Another way you can ask about an unknown term is: "What is the official definition of this term?" You may be surprised by how different companies define a simple term very differently, which could impact your analysis and recommendation.
Great topic. My 2 cents on this is: The more consultants prepare in advance the quicker they can provide value for their clients. Today there are so many tools out there to do market research, buyers persona analysis and industry benchmarks. Would be great if you can talk about those preparation process in further videos. Keep going with this high quality content 👍
Hey Paul! Can you elaborate further on these things? I have zero knowledge of consulting, but would like to know more about these. Any resources etc to recommend? I currently work in healthcare, and see massive potential to introduce these tools (and be perceived as "groundbreaking" by my boss).
Hi!I just wanted to note here that I just had a consultant company come into my workplace last week and knowing these tactics I was able to experience them at first hand. By knowing what you said in this video I knew to keep the great ideas I have for the company for myself, so that the consultant could not steal my ideas. Instead I took my ideas straight to the CEO and I was actually fast tracked for quite a big promotion. Thank you, Heinrich
This channel should be compulsory content for all junior managers. 1) because it teaches so many great techniques and ways to think and message and 2) when you become a manager you will be able to recognise which consultants your company employees have any actual value to offer or not
Hey Heinrich! Something that I think would be *extremely* helpful to your users is a clear video about identifying and managing stakeholders using a stakeholder map. That is a complete game changer in literally any profession or interaction, but it's especially so in consulting. Any project/initiative/engagement will have multiple people with completely different goals and attitudes (pro or against the initiative.) Making an effort to plot them out gives you an amazing sense of clarity for how you manage each of those people to get the best possible outcome from them.
Hi Christopher, thanks for your comment and video suggestion. Yes, agree that stakeholder maps can be quite important. Might pick this up in a future video! Best, Heinrich
Heinrich, first of all, congratulations on your channel. Your content is not only useful for young professionals, everyone can learn something from you no matter the age! Regarding the topic, juicy one indeed. In my opinion, unless the professional is really a specialist at a specific topic, every consultant is faced with situations like this. Some are really conmen and indeed take this too far. However, what makes a consultant good at her/his job is the ability to quickly learn and get a holistic perspective of the company, and communicate the insights effectively. The process is key: As you said, sometimes the output is not new to the client, but the way it was obtained and communicated ensure its robustness. Sometimes clients just hire consultants to get external validation on what they already know.
Hi Manuel, thanks for your comment and your reflections! Fully agree, consultants at some point need to catch up and be in a position to really deliver value in order for them to be successful in their job. Best! Heinrich
I was an internal auditor until recently so faced similar challenges with knowledge and credibility. Luckily I was internal so didn’t have the added pressure of clients paying a fortune for my time. During the learning phase the relationship can be a one-way street with one person giving and the other taking and this can be awkward and annoy people. I got a lot better at learning quickly and quickly being able to challenge people and add value.
Sharing a few thoughts - Most management consulting assignments instructed by clients carry an ulterior motive. Very few consulting mandates actually are ordered by Clients to seek advice. Most Client's use Consultants as agents to drive their own agendas and motives. That's why beyond a point Consultants are used as footballs 😀 by each department until everyone gets tired and agrees to something. The stress is more from people management than actual deliverables. That has been my experience mostly, although that's quite limited
Hi Anirban, thanks for sharing your experiences. Agree that there is some truth to it, though frankly I never experienced it as extreme as you are talking about it. Best, Heinrich
@@FirmLearning thank you for your videos as always, maybe you did not because Mck is a very high-level consulting firm. If you had worked your way up on consulting on, say, Deloitte, CI&T, Work&Co, EY!, you'd feel that every week, depending on the client/team, even everyday... On such consulting firms you have to deal with middle management from the client's company. They will always want to advance their career, get their bonus and look for someone to blame if stuff goes wrong. Consulting firms are optimal for blaming when it goes wrong and not ever mentioning when it goes right.
Coming from engineering, I think these tips are all quite valid communication tips. Like in the context of Tip #1, even if I wanted to share my experience and knowledge openly, if someone came up to me and asked "tell me everything you know", unless I had just recently been writing my memoirs, I'd be pretty stumped as to where to start. But if you give me some information as context, then ask me to provide input within that provided context, I can much more easily give an answer that is likely to also be more useful. Tip #4, even though you position it as potentially tricky, is often also a useful communication tool. Imagine I am presenting the output for some engineering analysis. A single slide might only have space to contain the inputs and the outputs of the calculation or analysis. The intermediate steps might be in backup slides, notes, or just in my head if I'm the one who ran through the analysis. When giving a presentation, it would be totally normal, and probably useful, to discuss the content depicted on the slide in the context of the calculations that were used, and for any sufficiently complex calculation, I would probably be both repeating parts of the calculation from memory, and recomputing parts of it in my head. I might even argue that in any presentation, taking the time to review and memorize intermediate or derived steps in a given set of slides to use in discussion or to answer questions, isn't deceptive at all, and is actually a best practice!
Hi Heinrich, really interesting video. In this context I would like to know how a consulting project is pitched to a client, i.e. what kind of expertise does the client expect? Additionally a general video on how consulting firms pitch projects to potential clients would be interesting. Keep up the good work! :D
Usually, you'll have a global expert on the topic contributing to the engagement + local partners with expertise on the sector and function (+ some more junior research or implementation experts). These are the faces that go on the "pitch deck"/proposal and are the ones that 'steer' the project with senior clients and provide the credibility that firms need to project in order be hired in the first place. Internally, experts/partners bring benchmarks (and this "corporate espionage" is mainly what they themselves learn from the engagements) and help make sense of the information more junior colleagues collect - - this is what the internal "problem-solving sessions" are all about. What Heinrich discusses in the video is more applicable up to the EM/project lead level, before the consultant commits to a sector or function.
Thanks for the suggestion Julian! Vicentte already contributed some great points, thanks for sharing! Indeed an interesting topic, might create a video on this in the future, stay tuned :) Best! Heinrich
I just graded in IT and was not sure to start my own small bussines because lack of experience but this video gave me more confidence.. in actually no consultant knows everything or is super expert in something.
Good video. Most of the tips I already used intuitively :-) What really helps to accelerate customer knowledge is gaining business insight about a specific industry. Of course, this is part of the experience you build in your career, but focusing on a specific industry really helps you feel confident and truly knowledgeable.
Fantastic tips. I don't think it's negative at all! Frankly, learning "how to sell" is part of every job, whether or not one likes to admit it and to different extents. Any "client-facing" job requires "salesman" tactics, and there is nothing wrong with that. That is part of the fee - the good feeling that they give you when you buy from them.
Thanks für the great hands-on insights. The topic on what value consultants create even if their advise is build up on this information of the employees sounds like a really awesome video. Many people underestimate - the blind spots employees have on their own system they act in on a daily basis, - the limitations to act different, if you are part of the system - the avoidance to state the hard truth to make hard decisions - the inability to get from an awareness of a situation to consequent maybe even hard decisions Really would love to hear you perspective on the value of consulting and where you see the limits what world class organizations could achieve here without external consultance. Looking forward to the next videos :-)
I think the important thing a consultant (and their firm) brings is objectivity and independent validation. If you spend to much time focusing on a problem you might be to blinded by working in the weeds or to 'attached' to a view point (that's human). Also you think you have a solution and need outside 'experts' to validate that solution or approach. Management consultants can bring that capability. To some it may seem like "Borrowing your watch to tell you the time!" but in the end companies are paying for independent analysis and academic rigor. To the last point about mental math, I disagree with you Heinrich. Just because someone cannot perform mental math does not mean they are not intelligent, it is just not a strength. The approach you outlined of running some figures out ahead of time is not deceptive, but I think is just good meeting preparation! Great and insightful video, Heinrich. This is a difficult topic but is not just limited to management consulting. This issue and the accompanying solutions apply everywhere. Thanks!
Thanks for your comment, good points! Regarding the mental math, I was rather talking about the PERCEPTION that - from my experience - people have. Agree that intelligence is much more complex than mental math. Thanks for watching!! Best, Heinrich
Just revisiting this video, as I saw that this article was being pushed again by the HBR on social media channels. All great work and solid insights, Heinrich. As always!
Powerful tips in this one! Thank you! This is one of my favourite videos of yours that I have watched so far. I will share this with my team of marketing technology consultants. Keep them videos coming, I enjoy them very much!
I second everything you say Heinrich. I have worked with external consultants from Big 4 in various projects and always felt that they are not competent and do not know what they are talking about :) this was my impression from client side, now I have changed my position in the company and am working as an in-house consultant. It is not similar to external consulting though, you have insider information, even though you do not know all functions within the company you know organization as a whole, this is a huge advantage
Hi Yasemin, thanks for your comment! Yes, trust that as an internal consultant you have an information advantage. My point is not that external consultants are incompetent in general though, they just need some time to get up to speed :) Best! Heinrich
They're not incompetent, my point was they do not have time to warm up to projects as clients always expect them to know everything about organization, tools, databases, functions... from the very beginning. It s so much work to gain respect & trust from the client in your early years of career. In-house consultants are more advantageous in these points
Love this video! I didn’t get good grades in the early part of school due to my own lack of effort so I’m not a consultant but always been fascinated by the work you guys do. We all fake it till we make it (at least a little haha) but I found the video very helpful, thanks for sharing!
I consider the first "tactic" very valuable even to the customer. Like you said, it's one of the main benefits an external person can bring to a company. To take an outside look on different levels and stuff. So it's not necessarily a "con-tactic". The second one is simply not necessary I think. I think you don't have to go into details as where you got the information but it's no problem to say "I've read about this" and then you can usually find applications in the real world or examples even if you didn't have the knowledge at the time. Like "I've read this and I saw that happening when in company xy...". So basicaly you show you can apply your knowledge which then is true as you just did it in front of them. If you have practical experience, off course it's more convincig to talk from that but from a scientific standpoint it's better to use credible data and not just your experience anyway. The third is simply necessary in many cases but you don't have to "fake" your way into it too much I think. Just go out of your way and ask the damn question. It's just honest if you ask about something you don't know. Just remain confident as you know many things very well and you're there to make the connections, not to be the "know it all". If someone calls you out on asking questions they just completely miss the point of having you there, no need to explain yourself to them. Just show them you still can contribute value to the project even without knowing everything in advance. Otherwise it's like a doctor that starts writing down the diagnose without having even asked the patient about his problems or why he's there. Doesn't look good if you ask me. The last one... it's called Hallo Bias and it's not just applicable with calculating math in your head. If you're good at one thing, people will assume you're good at all other things as well. Doing it on purpose with faked math woul be pretty manipulative. Why not just take a topic you feel comfortable about and tell them a few things out of experience and about some knowledge from this topic and stuff? It's going to have the same effect and it's related to the topic, so you don't have to fake anything.
Thank you Heinlich! notes: Learn quickly. Expected as super competent & knowledgeable from Day 1. a) leverage knowledge you receive. receive lots of info from many diff departments. "consultants borrow your watch to tell you the time." b) how you frame information as your experiences. you do research, talk to experts, read a book or article- framed as your experience seems & sounds better. "This is what other companies in this field do". c) Frame questions & new terms: "What do *you* mean with this term?" d) mental math to portray yourself as intelligent. or knowledge that lends some accreditation as intelligent.
Thank you for the in depth insight. I am a Management Consultant from Malaysia. I find your lectures very practical and relevant in consulting practice
Please write summary of your video as well. At times, I am so fast that I like to skim your video..a summary of your lecture with specific points, will help me remember them longer..thanks a lot for sharing ur knowledge
This was quite interesting. If I were a consultant within my field I could probably add some value but I would have to find a way to work where I can be both transparent and direct. I am really not someone that are good with exaggerating my value, knowledge or experiences and I prefer when people around me don't do that too.
Hi Mikael, thanks for your comment. Can very much see where you are coming from. Hope you find a field that very much resonates with your passions and interests! Best, Heinrich
Great corporate advice Heinrich, I'm a manager at a DAX corporation, roughly the same age as you, and I can attest that I have used similar tactics 😆 It is not just trickery though, those tips really help make a lot of work much smoother for everybody involved.
Tip #1 can be also applied to other contexts. For example, contract manufacturers routinely take knowledge gained from one project and apply it to another. If you are a project manager working for such organizations, this is a very natural thing to do.
Greetings from Chile, in my case, I'm an industrial civil engineer, and I work as a consultant in a public project that supplies technological solutions to to small and medium companies for free. The problem is that many of my clients demand extra services and they are willing to pay me. The point is that and dont have a clear way to charge my service because there is also software engineering involve and thus, more professionals. Thanks in advanced.
Very interesting topic... I did an internship at a very high level management consultancy (11 years ago & not MBB).. as far as I have seen: a partner with industry experience comes in. A PowerPoint ppt was copied from an old project, replace with the CI of new customer and that's it.... After the presentation the client had the idea the consultants had an idea what the core issue is... However there is one important point: most projects today are technical & there is a high chance you say something which is bullshit if you do not understand the used technology in depth! Otherwise I have seen your tactics in action (except the last one, as I was in finance so too risky to fake calculations as a CFO will ask you to change one thing and then it's embarrassing)
I want to point out - as someone that deals with consultants often - it is very easy for experienced professionals to see through this facade, and lose respect instantly. I would argue instead to ask questions if you don't know and take notes because it shows your willingness to learn and acknowledge the client's specific neeeds. Ask the right question and practice listening.
Hey Heinrich, I just wanted to say I really appreciate your videos and guidance. I'm in my senior year of high school, and I've been debating for years between going into management consulting or computer science. After watching a couple videos and interviews with you, I'm confident I love the field and want to pursue a career in that area :)
Hi, thanks so much for your comment and great to hear that I have also some high school people watching :) All the best for your future career - and lots of success and a GOOD TIME! in unversity! :) Best, Heinrich
1:15 learning credibility tension. disclaimer: to my knowledge but not officially endorsed. 2:50 practical, street-smart. 3:25 if you ask this type of direct questions, you'll get often not so nice answers from clients. 4:00 close quarter combat. 4:35 four of these sneaky tactics. 6:10 to the board, to the c level. 6:50 first tactics: talk to maybe later person with the first get info. second tactics: frame information as experience. 7:30 protray you as a big expert on a certain topic. .. from my experience, this is how we handle. 8:10 third tactics: how to frame question the right way... she always look confident and know her things. ask the client, what does it mean by you? ... 9:30 fourth tactics: signals you're smart by mental math. use at your own discretion. 11:50 this to bridge the learning credibility tension. from the article, from the very beginning, you need to be perceived credible, but still need time to build this knowledge.
Haha, just the title of this video made me laugh. I have been doing ERP and other large scale business application consulting for about 10 years now. It's so true that at the beginning of a project you may have absolutely no clue as to what the customer actually wants and therefor what you're actually going to do! Active listening, being good at digesting and reiterating back to the client what they said perhaps with additional insight or a good question, and understanding the framework of the company & what is important to them are the primary skills I use. Countless times I have excited executive management or other project member on the client's side by understanding their business and their needs very quickly. They always say "Wow, he gets us. It's going to be great to work with him, because he really understands our business and what we need."
I am starting to pursuit consulting as a career, making myself seem credible is the hardest challenge, especially when I looked like a high school kid people just do not trust me.
Awesome... I don't feel like anything is too sneaky to endorse,, or to actually do!! There is this learning-credibility tension as they say,, and so some sneakiness is somewhat forced upon you to do, or else you're just not doing as good a job.. So don't feel bad when you're forced!!! You shouldn't feel bad reaching for your gun, when there's another gun just about ready to shoot you! Hopefully in the future clients will have more of an understanding over the consultant's job and his capabilities and limitations... Doubt it though..
I think another learning -credibility hack is speedy analysis. If you are a person who can process large or varied amounts of data and distill it quickly into a comprehensive format - this is also perceived as quite impressive. Whilst you still have to work hard, you are merely ingesting and transforming data into a different format.
I've had an successful (technical) consulting career for over 20 years now. It would've been great to have had you back then before I had to learn many of these things on my own. Ha! :) One video that would be extremely helpful (not so much to me, but probably to your general audience) is a video on how to break down and share complex technical ideas to non-technical people who have the checkbook. That's the one area that tech consultants struggle with the most.
I'm also in tech consulting so 100% agree with you there. I think Heinrich's background is in strategy which in my opinion is very different. To put it bluntly, they BS more than we do because in tech we actually have to know how to implement from a technical standpoint. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we are more worthy or anything. To your point, we struggle with the consulting side of things because we're more engineers in nature than consultants until we grow with experiences on projects.
@@dailyrant4068 Yes, what you say is true. But the thing I realized early in my career is that for us to get buy in for our ideas, we have to be able to figure out how to provide *just enough* of the right information framed in the right way too get buy in from the non-technical people (with check books) that have the ability to make the decisions. That is a challenge, because we *love* figuring out and explaining how the sausage is made, and we tend to want to show them the slaughter house instead of the restaurant. In reality, that type of communication to that particular audience needs to be reversed: "We want to build you a grand restaurant, here's the benefits TO YOU of having it, and here's some high level pictures/concepts of the kitchen, and here's the effort/timeline/cost of what it will take to make this happen." Save the discussions of the slaughterhouse to the appropriate audience. (It's Minto's Pryamid Principle) The other *MOST IMPORTANT THING* I've learned in my career is to take the time to create a stakeholder map. Any project/initiative/engagement will have multiple people with completely different goals and attitudes. Making an effort to plot them out gives you an *amazing* sense of clarity for how you manage each of those people to get the best possible outcome from them. I'll make a separate suggest to Heinrich about making a video showing this, the ones on RU-vid are terrible.
Hey Heinrich ! Could you make a video on how visibility and communication matters in consulting firms? How to get more visibility on the work you do etc. ?
Hi Chris, thanks for your comment! Check my old videos, made one on visibility! And made several on communication! :) Might indeed create an updated one on visibility in the future. Best! Heinrich
Great advice, and quite funny with faking the math. I have another 2 tips from my experience: 1) when you state an opinion, it helps if you find a person from the organization that is perceived as very competent that also shares your view. You can use this to protect against critics before they even occur by saying soon that your conclusion hav been validated by this and THAT person. 2) If you are a foreigner working in a non English speaking country where English is used as well as the country's language, USE ENGLISH in critical situations if you can decide. If you are using the firms native language, some native people will perceive you as less intelligent because of your accent and mistakes. Even many people congratulate you for good your xxx is, you will be at risk. This is something subconscious and is not xenophobia, it just happens.
Question re a term that you do not understand: "So, how do you see that xxxxxx impacts on/fits in with your operations?" Then listen, very carefully, to extrapolate the meaning of xxxxxx. If you ask the same question in, say, three different departments, you should quickly learn what it means.
