Management consulting is a coveted career for many fresh top-tier MBAs across the globe.
While the industry itself is perennially evolving, some long held perceptions about a career in consulting continue to be largely (if not completely) true: lure of rubbing shoulders with smart people, solving complex issues for large global corporations, early exposure to CxOs and their pressing problems, an opportunity to develop/implement cutting edge solutions and frameworks, and a reasonably good and well defined career trajectory.
On the face of it, one would be tempted to think that management consulting is all about talented people who ideate solutions to interesting problems and make magic. This one perception is as far from truth as it could be.
There are three key ingredients to the magic equation:
1. Talent: this is just the right to entry. You are better off leaving your fancy degrees and dean's medal at the door.
2. Hard work: this is the force that keeps the talent ball rolling. Talent is elastic. Stop stretching it through hard work and it shrinks to an ordinary size in no time.
3. Process: this is the secret ingredient that often escapes the eyes - the discipline and rigour around structuring the problem, defining the scope, assessing effort and timelines, and most importantly adhering to time-tested ways of problem solving, and even slide formatting!
I have been away from consulting for 5 years now. And the more I look at the industry from a distance, the more I admire the process part of it over the other two.
Process is the trade secret of consulting, if you ask me.
And if a seemingly 'top-talent' industry like consulting can rely so much on process and discipline, there is no reason why the rest of us can't imbibe it to make magic happen in the work we do.
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