Scattered thoughts on two decades of consulting.

How do you learn consulting? You teach yourself.

You cannot really learn the consulting business in school.

In the real world, the process is more like serving back-to-back apprenticeships, under a rogues’ gallery of masters.

It happens in the office, in open spaces and in conference rooms. It happens in airports and hotels. It happens after too many coffees and it happens with one too many drinks.

You move to New York, Milan, London, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Singapore. True story.

You network.

You befriend analysts just like you, slaving away putting PowerPoints together at ungodly hours.

And you buddy up to the Senior Managers, and the Directors, and the Partners with their names always listed first on proposals. You put in face time, work for peanuts, take on grunt work nobody else wants.

You teach yourself.

You tackle projects working from 7am to 10pm, Monday to Sunday for 55 days in a row, with half of your team members speaking a language you can’t understand. You vow you will be leading engagements your way before you turn 30.

Day One as an analyst, some fast-talking senior consultant asks if you validated the KPIs to set a success baseline.

“Validated what?”

You teach yourself.

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You take a training course. Then 10 more. You get PMP certified. Then TOGAF, then something else. Maybe you literally go back to school and study your way to an MBA. Eventually, you’re glad you didn’t.

You pore over old decks and books on strategy and frameworks. You read manuals on how to write and how to think. You learn how to speak - I mean, you know how to speak but can you persuade and influence?

Partners and managers give you harsh feedback tearing apart all slides you submit. You’re thrown in the sh*t, dismissed as useless and exploited as cannon fodder.

Your bosses take your time, drain your mental stamina, run you ragged. You let them.

You let them, because you know that is the price to pay to grow.

You get forwarded an email with no context. The instructions are simple: “Can you get it done?”

You teach yourself.

And you get it done.

Your consulting buddies become your network. One gets hired somewhere else in a bigger role and pulls the whole group up. You are that one.

Your boss calls, asking you to finalize a response to an RFP for a big client. By tomorrow. “Can you make it?” Of course you can.

You teach yourself.

Alone at your laptop, struggling to answer the fundamental consulting question: “How the f*ck does this sh*t come together?”

Creative epiphanies and breakthroughs come slowly after banging your head for hours when that intricate set of Excel formulas finally stop giving #REF! errors. Each baby step forward matters when you tally small wins into big results.

Over months, years, and decades, the pieces come together into a puzzle so complex you have no idea how you managed to solve it (or, did you actually solve it?).

You can point to a governance framework you built for a presentation you gave 4 years earlier to a client that never bought anything.

An old partner remembers the late night brainstorming that gave birth to a new “as-a-Service” offering that he is still selling today.

You wake up at 3am because the Muse just whispered in your ears how to structure the exec summary for tomorrow’s pitch.

Your first mentor calls to remind you of that night at the Marriott when you came up with the slide that won $10M of work.

Your team members have you on speed dial because they need your guidance before today’s client session.

An old boss meets you after 15 years and reveals to you “You were always the smartest one of the lot”.

“Either you do it, or we disqualify this. Nobody else can pull it off”, your boss tells you.

You learned. And you will keep learning.

Dive straight into the action early, and you’ll swim ahead of 99% peering timidly from the safe shallows.

Face the fire or fizzle out.

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Happy New Year, folks!