Consultant - Understanding the Job

What does the consultant do?

Solve Business Problem. But, it is very deep term.

Management Consultant is content ambassador.

They are the bridge between complex client context and massive knowledge with experts.

They are also responsible for the network stream.

In the case of cement plant - should the client close the plant? As a consultant from McKinsey, I need to find it.

As a consultant, you analyze a problem and break it into smaller parts.

So, for the above problem, we would try exploring ways to improve sales and cut costs.

Ex: To cut costs may be logistics is the biggest factor, so as a consultant we talk to logistic partners of the company.

Duties of a consultant as a content ambassador? (Very Important)

-          Gather content - research internal databases, research internet, study reports by independent parties, interview experts, interview clients, interview customers, mystery shopping, data analyzing, surveying.

-          To create Final product (Deliverables) - usually, this is a presentation. So the final product in the above case of the cement plant will be a report on the basis of shall client closes the plant or not? Making a presentation is half a story. The presentation is about content representation. As a consultant, we need to put complex content in a way that every person concerned with the report should be able to understand it with the first view or read. More about content than graphics.

A consultant needs to continuously go back and forth with the above task.

Consulting

In the case of the cement project: Brief tasks could be listed:

-          Assigned workstream in biggest SOE (Standard operating environment) project.

-          Mc Kinsey content library - pick up industry-specific key terms and context.

-          Go to client website and get information about their plants, location, technology, sales.

-          Make first notes with the client fact sheet.

-          Mark cement market report in the region, how the cement market is behaving in the region where the client market is located.

-          Create a new slide page: and put the market report in that.

-          Call engagement manager and get workstream feeling and overall project objective.

 Engagement managers (EM) - build positive client relationships during projects. They assess the clients' needs, identify customer requirements, and develop cohesive projects that improve the operations of business through more efficient procedures and systems.

What will I do as a consultant - if I need to find out that the client should continue with his cement plant or close it down?

-          Study documents with more depth.

-          Follow discussion with EM : find the cement plant not doing well.

-          Download more information: Cement turn around, lean cement production cost.

-          Met with the client and found: Client objective - if they should close the main plant or not.

-          Got introduced a key contact point at the client-side.

-          Establish a nice foundation with good relations with him.

-          And try to find out if McKinsey has done similar things in the past.

-          Went back to market report and see big players condition.

-          Adapt to market perspective.

-          Meet the EM to know what overall deliverable structure looks like.

-          Make the first preliminary document (called ghost deck).

-          Got to client-side for second engagement: ask his help for data collection.

-          Note down question which would be asked to the manager of the china team (McKinney Team guy who may have worked on a similar case before).

-          Draft data request to be submitted to the client.

-          Discuss team norms, working preference and BTI.

-          Call the market research team for some data on the cement industry.

-          Meet EM to discuss the question list.

-          Interpret the EM mind.

-          Prioritize the tasks according to working days.

-          Keep on editing the ghost deck.

-          At the moment running hypothesis is to close the plant but, it is still very early to say.

-          Check the data received and see it's reliability. To confirm the hypothesis, we still needed more.

-          Create a turnaround excel model on the basis of inside sources data.

-          The model should answer the key questions: under all sources of improvement can it make a profit?

-          Construct all levers in a structured manner: levers are - example sales and cost.

-          Each lever is distributed: such as cutting logistic costs in certain ways.

-          Tackle a lot of levers and see how they can be made clear.

-          Make the final presentation and hand it over.

-          Sanitize the document and Summarise all the unique knowledge in PD i.e. it will be used for future information.

-          PD should have a generic information and should have confidential information kept anonymous.