by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
The Financial Times wrote a short scathing article on the management consulting industry here. Some valid points, but clearly a quickly assembled article with a Warren Buffett quote and visual used as a wrapper. If you are going to argue that a $133 billion industry...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Everyone understands inventory It’s the stuff sitting on Walmart’s shelves. It’s the frozen pizzas in the freezer. The unsold house in the neighborhood. The empty hotel rooms and empty movie seats. Non-billable consultants are no different....
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Peter Drucker, the godfather of management Huge fan of Drucker, quite a few blog posts on this titan of thinking. Strategic decision making . . this is one of my favorite quotes of his “The question that faces the strategic decision maker is not ‘what his organization...
by Consultant's Mind | Fun
Great presentation It’s always good to look at consulting decks to see how they put together data in a coherent way to tell a story. It is a craft and an art form. Was reading through reddit, and they mentioned this odd presentation from 2016. BCG was giving the...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
What do McKinsey presentations looks like? Please find links to 30+ McKinsey presentations which are publicly available online. Many of these are from conferences, or governmental / non-profit organizations clients who have chosen to make them available online. Yes,...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
I wrote this post 6 years ago. It is still true today. Management consultants use the phrase “best practice” often. Perhaps too often. You will see that magical phrase mentioned numerous times in white papers and research on these websites: Boston Consulting...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Generally speaking, I am pretty good under pressure. This can take the form of final revisions the night before the presentation, or conference calls lined up back-to-back. The endorphin gets going and you can ignore the pain. The dopamine gets going and you feel the...
by Consultant's Mind | Graphics
Consultants are in the business of taking ambiguous problems, structuring them, and telling cogent, actionable stories. This often involves charts – yes – charts and graphs. The older crew – like me – is used to Excel, but you will also see...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Ray Dalio is a billionaire, a genius, a hedge-fund manager, and a “piece of work.” He is not your average guy in any sense. He is a super smart, opinionated “macro” investor who started Bridgewater Associates, one of the largest hedge funds at...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Clearly, eloquence has many parts – content, structure, conviction, tone, pacing, empathy, and word choice. Ah, words. Let’s not forget the words. Word inflation. Seems like we are bombarded with words constantly – most of them advertising or loose...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
I recently read the 2017 Gates Foundation annual letter. It starts with this alarming and kitschy picture. Whoa – this caught my attention. Huge fan of Warren Buffett – for his intellect, quirkiness, and generosity. In 2006, Buffett donated $31B to the...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Bain published its 2017 Global Private Equity Report here. For those interested in private equity (who isn’t?), this is a simple and easy read. The PE business continues to do well (fund-raising, exits, returns), with two big caveats: the NAV of funds is going...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Read the prospectus If you have never read a prospectus, you should. First, it’s useful. With an initial public offering (IPO), it is often times the first time outside investors are given a chance to understand how the company makes money and how sustainable...
by Consultant's Mind | Fun
Yes, love blogging Over the past few weeks, I have recommended blogging to several people. (Yes, I know how cliche it is to write a blog post about blogging). In a way, this has been my short-hand way of telling them to 1) invest in their craft, 2) develop a point of...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
McKinsey’s advice McKinsey, in a 2011 article entitled Have you Tested Your Strategy Lately here, makes the very valid point that executives and leaders too often treat strategy as a ” procedural exercise or set of frameworks”, rather than a way of...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Update: I’ve been using Calendly since 2017. So you can do the math $100 x years = great businesses for them. I was introduced to the Calendly website by a recruiter. After we emailed a few times, we agreed to have a 20 minutes live conversation by...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Sample size This is a phrase every consultant should know and (kinda) understand. Consultants are in the business of 80/20 rule, and smartly deducing insights from a sample of structured data (read: excel), qualitative interviews, observations, benchmarks and other...
by Consultant's Mind | Graphics
I made 1,000+ presentations in my life That’s completely possible. 20 years + PPT application is open on my computer every day. Executive summaries, teaching lessons, or sometimes even 1 pagers. Some were financial and operational reviews. Some were full-scale...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Geek out I have been using this slang a lot. Many of us who have heard this expression know that it means to become a little bit obsessive about something (usually a hobby). Applying this to business problems, my argument is that business consultants and students...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
Charles Aris Charles Aris is an executive recruiting firm based in N Carolina that specializes in placing top-tier consultants into industry. They are good at what they do. Take a look at their 2017 strategy consulting compensation study here. More recent studies...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
BCG recently published its 11th annual global survey of the most innovative companies here (PDF, 1.1Mb). It’s brief (20pg) and not controversial. It highlights a few case studies – J&J, Cisco, BASF and Under Armour. See the list of top 50 companies....
by Consultant's Mind | Fun
The Economist has a blog called Graphic Detail, which excels at showing complex ideas simply. Engaging, thoughtful, and often surprising. Some recent graphs: 1) High blood pressure globally, not just affluent countries Link here A recent study in Lancet largely...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Who is Peter Thiel? On Wikipedia you will quickly find that Peter Thiel is the founder of Paypal, the first investor in Facebook, and has a net worth is $2.5B+. Oddly, those three facts are the least interesting parts of his story, point of view, and personna....
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Career is a long time After 20+ years in corporate America and working at 5 different Fortune 500, I will say that it’s easy to burnout if you’re not careful. Microsoft analyzed a bunch of MS Office data and showed that we spend about 8 hours a week doing...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Today I was speaking with some friends about metacognition. Yes, I realize that is a $10 word, but the idea is fairly simple on the surface – being aware of your own thoughts. Essentially, thinking about your thinking. Whoa – deep, I know. Skills...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Starting a new job, my tips and tricks A lot of people I know are changing jobs in the new year. For good or bad, I have also worked at 5 Fortunate 500 companies over the last 25 years, so I know what it is like to have a new job. Some transitions were smoother than...
by Consultant's Mind | Fun
We tend to be future oriented The majority people who read this blog – and folks I know – are future oriented. That’s a great thing. The are willing to put in sacrifice now for a better future. This is GREAT and what we’ve trained ourselves to...
by Consultant's Mind | Fun
Share food and make friends Everyone has some free time during the holidays. Recently, I have not been traveling which has opened up my schedule to share food with friends from my past. Folks from my MBA, previous work, and neighbors (hat tip: DB, CC, CO, PB, KL, JK,...
by Consultant's Mind | Fun
Took a 7 day cruise through the Eastern Caribbean. Highly recommend. So healthy to experience the wide-open ocean for several days. Great perspective – how big the world is, and how thankful we should all be. Enjoy your holidays. Related posts: Consultant’s long...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
So this morning there was a fantastical headline in the Washington Post here: Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste What the hay? Isn’t this a Ben Affleck movie about a government cover-up? No, it’s an internal report created by...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
What consultants talk about Was at a table tonight with 5 ex-management consultants from the Big 4. When discussing some slides we had seen from recent MBAs, one person smartly commented on his PowerPoint sniff test: Every page should be judged to see if it passes. ....
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
www.Finviz.com is awesome Finviz.com is a great way to filter stocks and generally get smart on specific industries. While there are multiple tools on the website, will focus on something call the screener. As you can see here and below, there are 60+ filters...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
It is called “rolling off” a project, not jumping Client service (and definitely management consulting) is a relationship business. Your long-term success depends on your quality work and awesome reputation. Basically, you need to navigate smartly among...
by Consultant's Mind | Fun
After writing 3 non-stop blog posts on presentations, here is an funny one. Want to see Consulting + Comedy? Apparently, some folks at Bain & Company put together a presentation and recommendation on how to get the most out of Thanksgiving here. You can find the...
by Consultant's Mind | Graphics
This is the final section review of Duarte’s Slideology (affiliate link). I am going to pick and choose what to share with readers. Consulting presentations (for good or bad) are fairly conservative and a bit regimented. As a result, the parts of the books about...
by Consultant's Mind | Graphics
This is the second section review of Duarte’s Slideology (affiliate link). This agency has become a sensation after they did Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth presentation and also a famous TED talk here. Chapter 2 – Create ideas, not slides I will...
by Consultant's Mind | Graphics
Slideology This is a book from 2008 about PowerPoint. It is well-structured, thoughtful, and a massively influential book in the “presentation business”. It makes a whole lot of sense to me and is quite easy-to-read. Nancy Duarte has been doing this for...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
I love listening to successful people tell their stories – for their confidence, ingenuity, fears, failures, heroism, goofiness, and ultimately success. We see a little of ourselves in them and experience the art of good story-telling. Boston Beer Company...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
The global asset management business is huge There are lots of billionaires and lots of people like you and me who have our wealth with pensions, 401K, and in stock/bond mutual funds. With the incredibly loose monetary policy (read: printing money), it is no surprise...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
McKinsey & Co published a very authoritative 148 page study (404 error as of 01/23) arguing a fairly simple (perhaps obvious) fact; the number of people freelancing is larger than you might think (20%+) and growing quickly. For those who already do...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
This book is all about focus It is like the Pareto Principle to the extreme. The authors argue that by narrowing your focus to ONE thing in each area of your life, you will be happier, more successful, and find things easier. It turns out that pseudo multi-tasking,...
by Consultant's Mind | Graphics
Consultants see patterns It’s a core part of our job to analyze data, separate the signal from the noise, and interpret the patterns. Some are better than others and it’s a talent that takes time to turn into a skill. Find good presentations and study...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) Yes, we all have it sometimes. Social anxiety. It’s that nagging fear you that you might be better off – somewhere else, with someone else, doing something more fun. It’s that high-school sense of peer pressure to not be...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
This is from 4 years ago and covers the Minto’s pyramid principle – one of the most important concepts in executive communication and logical structuring of arguments. This is really big at all the big 4 and big 3. It is the scaffolding of management...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Trust, but verify. This is a Russian proverb that US President Ronald Reagan learned and used frequently when speaking about the Soviet Union and nuclear arms reduction verification in the 1980s. I use it quite a bit too – and when delivered with good comedic...
by Consultant's Mind | Team
Vince Lombardi For those who don’t know US football, Vince Lombardi is a legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers and one of the 4 horsemen of Notre Dame. Impressive guy. Old School. He had his flaws – all great people do – but when it comes to GRIT....
by Consultant's Mind | Learning
Grit Grit is a casual word which means “resolve” in English. Endurance with a mission. Doing something difficult and not giving up. It is the opposite of complacency or indecision. Clearly, people with grit are going to be more successful – because...
by Consultant's Mind | Team
Informational interview Of the many things I learned in MBA, the “informational interview” is one of those gems that remains relevant a decade later. Information interviews. They are simply low-expectation, business meetings with (relative) strangers to...
by Consultant's Mind | Learning, Real Estate
Note, this blog post was from 2016 in relates primarily to the Atlanta ex-burbs. This post is about rental properties – not about consulting. That said, all consultants and professionals making $$$, need to start putting money away to get yourself retired?...
by Consultant's Mind | Consulting
This is my favorite framework Yes, I know that is the geekiest thing I would ever say. This is a simple and elegant framework from Bain that describes how companies lose their way as they grow. The path from start-up to global juggernaut is not a straight line and...
