369: How to manage like Amazon (with CEO Advisor Ram Charan)

Most aspiring management consultants will spend about 95% of their time focusing on the technical issues to fix their case performance. That is, they focus on hypotheses, frameworks, decision trees, structures and calculations. However, what if that is not the areas which will yield the greatest gains?

5 Sep 201412min

Entrepreneurs almost always fail to answer the most basic question: If you were so successful, why are you leaving behind all that success to apply for a ~$150K/annum package at McKinsey as an associate?

30 Aug 201411min

This podcast draws on the feedback of one of our principals, Michael Boricki who was a Big-3 principal and left the firm on the day after he was appointed director, to discuss the technique he used to not only fix a stuttering problem, but use the pain from fixing the problem to introduce broader, and much needed, flexibility in this communication techniques.

24 Aug 201414min

This podcast is built on a discussion we recently had with a Yale PhD. His friend, who made it to the final round of McKinsey, was told that the firm had no specific development areas for her. She just did not make the make cut and she was upset about this lack of feedback, especially having been denied a place at the firm.

18 Aug 201416min

It is quite common for Firmsconsulting to receive the following emails, questions or comments from clients and readers. When reading the comments below, try to think about why a reader would have these questions. In other words, what are their underlying assumptions?

12 Aug 201412min

Due to our longstanding relationships at Yale and Berkeley, since several Firmsconsulting mentors are Harvard alumni, our Harvard and Yale clients' involvement in the development of The Consulting Offer Season 1 and 2, students of these schools receive complimentary access. This podcast offers some unique suggestions for PhDs and MBAs from these schools to use the material. In particular, 32 Harvard MBAs were intimately involved in testing the program between December 2012 and June 2013. We discuss their experiences and advice for using the material.

6 Aug 201417min

Putting together the September 2013 Quarterly feature article, "Unemployed to the Big-3," was both an interesting and challenging article. It follows the new format of the Firmsconsulting Quarterly. This podcast discusses the lessons you should be taking from this article. The context for those lessons, however, is determined by the way this article was written.

31 Juli 201428min

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews.

19 Juli 201411min