816: Be a professional, don't be a business person (Case Interview & Management Consulting classics)

In this podcast, by the editor, we discuss the very counter-intuitive manner in which McKinsey and BCG partners manage engagements, teams and clients. We present 5 crucial differences which may seem nuanced, but have a powerful ripple effect in managing client relationships. Set in the Brazilian interior, this book follows an engagement team as they assist Goldy, a large Brazilian gold miner, in diagnosing and fixing deep and persistent organisational issues. This book will follow an engagement team over an 8 week assignment and explain how they successfully navigate a challenging client environment, develop hypotheses, build the analyses and provide the final recommendations. It is written so the reader may understand, follow and replicate the process. The book is 252 pages in length and written by former management consulting partners and case leaders. This is the only consulting guide taking readers on a day-by-day and step-by-step journey through a complete engagement. MBA students contemplating a career in management consulting will find this book to a useful companion introduction. Consultants can learn the techniques of the leading management consulting firms. This book contains the 252-page book and a single power point file of the material used in the book.

9 Maalis 201419min

This is a related podcast to our mining book.

3 Maalis 201412min

This detailed podcast, by the engagement partner, discusses a striking reality of most engagements: a problem is never what it appears to be at first. In this Succeeding as a Management Consulting book, the engagement begins as a broad study of the agricultural sector in Canada and the economics of various business models. The study quickly focuses on the physical retail operations as this appears to be the main opportunity to fix this organizations decline.

25 Helmi 201412min

This detailed podcast, by the engagement senior-partner, discusses the most challenging assignment Firmsconsulting took on to advise a client in preparing one of the Succeeding as a Management Consultant books. The client was a state-run electricity utility in Latin America which was undergoing a significant build program to add capacity for a burgeoning economy while dealing with an aging asset base causing power outages, impacting foreign-direct-investment and decimating national productivity.

19 Helmi 201410min

This detailed podcast, by the engagement partner, discusses the difficulties faced by many European State-Owned-Enterprises during the 2008-2011 recession when many simultaneously saw a drop in revenue and state subsidies. The engagement team in this book led the work to develop a strategy for the courier business of a heavily-indebted European Postal service.

13 Helmi 201411min

This detailed podcast, by the engagement senior-partner, discusses the challenges and complexities of running an engagement to advise on the economics and strategy of a large micro-finance enterprise.

7 Helmi 201419min

In this podcast we discuss the detailed effort which goes into preparing the multimedia/premium management consulting books. We discuss the engagements we run and the client issues faced, the development of hypotheses, data collection, analyses, model building, client management and preparation of the final recommendation. We thereafter discuss how all of this, including the extensive video footage, is brought together to produce each of the 4 multimedia books.

1 Helmi 201415min

In this podcast we isolate the 5 most important and counter-intuitive lessons from the popular book.

26 Tammi 201421min