Sermon 2: Lessons I learned from Management Consultancy

Week two of University most people are either drunk or hungover. I was teetotal and on a Tuesday night, heading to a careers presentation from Blackrock. (loser). As a first year I may have been optimistic but I was certain I wanted to secure a career long before leaving university. The consultancies were the only people offering an amazing second year internship, 10 weeks and it was PAID at a realistic salary, I couldn’t believe that they were going to train me in London for a week and then send me off on a real life grown up project (mine was up in Edinburgh). 

Many of the lessons I learned were about how to manage a hangover in work hours, and how to absolutely smash an expense form when you’re staying at the nicest hotel in the city and flying back home every weekend, but there are some that are more applicable to general work life:

1. People are not “good” at excel, they are “good” at googling the solution on excel. 

I went on two courses for excel during my time at the company. I memorised formulae, I learned conditional formatting. I wanted to be a spreadsheet badass. Not only does this not exist, it is an entirely fakeable skill. I remember being told to go and see Graham the “excel whizz” and he was very clear with me that he is no such thing, he just knows how to google the answer to what he’s trying to do and then copies and pastes the formula. It really is that easy. 

2. Miss Selfridge don’t make appropriate workwear. 

Never had I been more mortified than when a female boss from a different team pulled myself and the other intern into a room to tell us that our skirts were too short. Our male boss was too awkward to tell us, and the whole thing was incredibly embarrassing. Ten years later I think this would have been a very different conversation, but it was mortifying for days afterwards. 

3. The bigger the organisation, the bigger the shock when you find out they don’t have it all together. 

I was working on a transformation project for a big client who will remain nameless. One of my tasks was to get a list of phone numbers for all the outlets of this organisation (which ran into very high numbers). This list did not exist. I had to manually google them and put them in a sheet. I was SHOCKED that this huge organisation didn’t have a list of the phone numbers for its own outlets. 

This shock has now been numbed through years of working for giant organisations who people perceive would have basic stuff, I am no longer surprised that some of the worlds biggest organisations don’t keep copies of their TV ads from over the years, that supermarkets don’t know who makes their carrier bags and that technology companies don’t have printers that work. 

4. Meetings cost money. 

Every Monday there used to be an all team meeting for all of the consultants working on the project. It was at 4pm and there were probably 35 people in the room, certainly standing room only. I quite liked it as it was interesting to watch the internal politics and the like, but one week, my colleague Jake stood next to me as we whispered in the corner, and he said “just think how much money this meeting costs every week”. He looked around and pointed out how much each team member was likely to be billed out at, and then did some mental calculations about how much the meeting was costing the organisation- I won’t say how much but it was a LOT. 

I didn’t really mind this when I was an intern, but when I was an MD and paying for everyone’s salaries I REALLY cared about every person that attended a meeting and it had to be valuable for absolutely everyone, and indeed for every ten minutes. There is no shame in uninviting someone from a meeting, cutting it ten minutes shorter or doing it via the telephone to save time. I still look around in meetings and think about how much they cost, and it's not a bad thing to have in the back of one’s mind. 

5. Teenagers shouldn’t be given access to a company card. 

6. Facetime matters* To some people

There is still a generation, who like it or not, value face time. Whether it’s seeing your face in the right meetings, in the office all day or popping up in their inbox frequently. Never has that been more true for me than when I was 19 and working in Consultancy. They want your face there in the morning, there in the evening and all over the work they are doing, otherwise they won’t be recommending you for a job. 

Thankfully, post-COVID life I think this has improved, even in those industries where the white man in a suit is King. However, there are still ways that I think about this in 2021, to some bosses of a certain generation, faces matter. I certainly still readily hear the phrase “this will be good for your visibility internally” or “make sure X sees you there”. In reality it is all part of your own sales pitch and personal brand, but I suppose I’ve learned that you only need the kind of visibility that you actually want, and if you don’t perform in your job, no amount of “face time” is going to make up for that. 

7. When you are living in a hotel, always take breakfast in your room- it will save you loads of time and you can eat in your pants. 

Plenty of other lessons were learned from my summer of consulting, not least that I didn’t want to be a management consultant, because whilst I was living the life in Edinburgh, some of my intake were at the Travelodge in Slough, and I just didn’t quite fancy that. 

There’s also a more serious lesson about not getting romantically involved with people who are based in a city that’s different to yours, but along with the egg mayo sandwich- that’s a story for another time.