Consultancy: What do consultants do and How to be a consultant?

What the hell do strategy consultants do?

I was always intrigued about what strategy consultants actually do / how can they create a firm-wide strategy in 2-3 months.

Here is a 7-step process that should help aspirants understand the nuts and bolts behind strategy consulting

1. Scoping and understanding the problem

a. This part involves i> studying the client really well to ii> understand the problem statement and iii> what the client wants.

b. Clients know their business really well so iii> becomes extremely important as some clients might only want you to validate their hypotheses or bring in some external thinking

c. The final output is generally an aligned workplan / kickoff deck

2. Hypothesis / storylining

a. This part is the most fun and it involves making statements which you feel are correct. Example – the cost of goods sold can be decreased by changing the vendor for raw materials etc.

b. Your partners are heavily involved here given their i> deep expertise in the particular sector / function ii> understanding of the client and iii> experience in consulting

c. The final output is an issue tree / hypothesis tree / story line

3. Research

a. This phase involves you to prove / disprove your hypotheses in #2 through  collecting data. There are 2 types of data i> client data and ii> external data.

b. There are 2 ways to capture it – categorized as primary research and secondary research.

c. How do you actually do it – client internal data, focus group discussions, expert interviews etc.

d. The final output is a consolidated excel / word / powerpoint document

4. Analysis

a. Once you have gathered data, it’s time to analyze to support your hypotheses.

b. A plethora of techniques can be used ranging from financial modeling to forecasting to qualitative synthesis etc.

c. Mostly your hypotheses hold true but if they do not, then you need to come up with a new set

d. The final output is a new storyline or analysis against your hypothesis in a deck

5. Recommendation

a. Recommendation comes either as part of your storyline (in #2) or if you have analyzed the data to understand the key issues, this part would involve the “SO WHAT”

b. The final output is a deck or a long-form word document

6. Communication

a. Have kept this phase different than just the recommendation as communication can take many parts

b. It can range from a final meeting with the client or a workshop or a public-facing report/video. It’s mostly the former (final meeting)

7. Implementation

a. A lot of consulting firms are taking a step further where they actually implement the solution with the client

b. Here the role of the consulting firm is i> act as a PMO or ii> re-do your strategy/flesh out a new one if things are not going well and iii> build capacity in the organization by doing workshops etc.