Two (2) Years as a Management Consultant at Deloitte: Lessons Learnt

It has been a delightful time working as a management consultant at Deloitte Nigeria. My first entry into the workforce landed me in the heart of professionalism (pardon me, I hold the consulting profession in high esteem).

In a little over two (2) years, I have grown from a rookie to team lead in several capacity. I moved from keeping my thoughts to myself, to speaking to clients and sharing ideas with Managing Directors of prominent organisations.

Moving from Deloitte, I decided to share some of the lessons I have learnt in the past two (2) years as a management consultant. I hope aspiring consultants will draw helpful tips from my life experiences. Let’s dive right into the gist…

1.?????The major task of a management consultant is GOOD RESEARCH

Consultants thrive on information – information on how the economy works, the interplays across industries, success drivers of businesses, etc. My first task on the job was to conduct one research or another and that continued till my very last day. However, I quickly realized that good research is not just the ability to get relevant data (for some data analysis) or information, but also to provide useful insight for my client. My partner would always ask me after a research work “what is the so what? What exactly should the client do with the information?” ?I learnt that my ability to draw insight from available and unavailable information is the value my client is seeking, not my ability to research (the client can do this by themselves).

2.?????It is not just about the consulting techniques, tools, and frameworks, it is about THE APPLICATION

Starting in consulting, I tried to equip myself with several consulting tools, including issue tree, MECE framework, hypothesis framework, BCG matrix, to mention a few. While these are very helpful because they provide guidance, they easily become irrelevant when you are unable to identify when and how they should be applied. For example, I knew about issue trees but only recently started using it effectively, especially at the start of a new project. I realized that instead of struggling in the middle of my project because I had not considered other causes and effects of my assumed client’s problem, I could use this tool to do a broad analysis that keeps every important consideration in sight.

3.?????Do not reinvent the wheel but do not blindly ADOPT TEMPLATES

There is a consulting mantra that says, “If it isn’t damaged, don’t fix it”. We believe that it is inefficient to invest time and resources (which are obviously limited) in creating new templates when there are existing ones. One thing global consulting firms pride themselves in is that they have done all types of consulting projects in one form or the other. Therefore, there are templates for everything you want to work on. This makes our work faster and easier, especially for new consultants in the firm. But it becomes very dangerous when we just lift templates and adopt them for our clients. I learnt that leveraging templates is not the same as doing ‘copy and paste’. I became more conscious of the originality of my work, personalized the solution for my client and even improved on the template, which was most likely created many years ago (before the pandemic changed our lives).

4.?????The information required to give maximum value to my client CANNOT BE ACQUIRED WITHIN THE PROJECT TIMELINE

Consulting project timelines can be as short as two (2) weeks (I recently worked on a business case development for just 2 weeks), while some take multiple years. Regardless of the timelines, I realized that it is never enough to gain as much knowledge as I thought I needed to do my best on the job. But my managers, oh…these guys did something I wasn’t doing because they were able to tell me how a new governmental policy opened doors of opportunities for my clients or posed threats that could wipe their revenue line. After a couple of months, I found the secret – something I used to dread (I still don’t really enjoy). It is keeping myself updated with the news. I was never a news person. The information I got on social media was just enough. But it became important that I followed national and global news, analysed the impact of several happenings on different industries, considered innovative actions of players in the market and asked questions on how they impact the future of my client. This broader view made it easier to provide value to my client regardless of the industry they belonged to.

5.?????One of the biggest responsibilities of a consultant is to CONSULT

I know you are wondering what I mean. The meat of consulting is the ability to understand problems, analyse them and create the most efficient and profitable path to a solution. As explained in the first lesson of this article, consultants cannot do this without having the right information. While there is information overload on the internet, we all know that some of these data are unreliable, inconsistent, and never up-to-date, especially Africa-related data. After my first year, it became evident that Google could not tell me everything I needed to know. I started leveraging my network within several industries, in several geographies. So, I had to consult legitimate sources to give value to my clients.

6.?????TEAMWORK is the consulting language

In every consulting environment, it is typical to work in cross-functional teams. You could be the team lead on a project and a team member on another. This working style opened me up to several complex relationships. I had to learn to manage expectations, pay attention to details, prioritize, and communicate effectively. Most importantly, I began to understand that people behave differently even in similar situations…people management 101. Regardless, it was very fulfilling because I was able to deepen my social skills.

7.?????THERE ARE BAD DAYS ?just as there are good days

People close to me already know that I have an excellence mindset. I believe in giving my best and doing an excellent job. Little wonder why I’ll beat myself up when I make mistakes or do less than what I believe should be done (even when the circumstances were obviously beyond my control). I had to quickly accept that the goal was not perfection but growth. If I indeed could do everything perfectly well without mistakes, I wouldn’t have been hired at an Associate level (although everyone makes mistakes regardless of their job grade). I began to focus more on becoming better, leveraging positive and negative feedback to retrain myself, and taking up more responsibilities. Also, there were good days when I got comments from my partner, such as “I am proud of you”, “I enjoy working with you”, etc. These days compensated for the bad ones.

8.?????Finally, take ownership of not just your work, but your LIFE

Yes! In consulting, you learn to take responsibility for your tasks no matter how little. You must defend whatever you are telling the client; you better have thought it through. More so, I learnt to take responsibility for my life in general. Every day, I consciously decide where I can make the best impact.?

It was a wonderful ride and I appreciate Deloitte for the opportunity. It’s however time to onboard a different flight.

Thanks for reading. I hope this has been helpful to someone out there. Let me know your thoughts!