In
this article on the life of a consultant I’ve looked at both metaphorically and
literally identifying several shades of colors with certain activities in the
life of a consultant. Though this is not an exhaustive account of the daily
life of a consultant I hope it provides, those who are interested in a career
in consulting, a glimpse on what to expect.
Flights
are an important part of a consultant’s calendar, especially on Monday
mornings. You wake up early in the mornings on Mondays to get ready to catch a
flight to your client’s city. You take a taxi to the airport witnessing the
orangish hues in the sky indicating the hour of the sun’s rise. While you try
to catch up on lost sleep in the flight, you are also offered the chance to
experience the warmth of the sun’s bright yellow rays that creep up through the
open window by your side. You see the white clouds swimming around you and silently
thank the Wright brothers. By the second month you would have an opinion on
whether you prefer the dark red of Air India or the bright maroon of spicejet,
the deep blue of Indigo or the demure greyish blue of Jet.
The
moment you reach the Client’s office, the blue of your Jet flight is replaced
by the yellow of Microsoft Outlook. You browse through your inbox to see if
there are any unread mails to make sure the world hasn’t moved on while you
were disconnected. The next five days will then be ruled by the orange of
PowerPoint and the green of Excel with the red of Adobe and blue of Word
fulfilling their occasional utilities.
PowerPoint
which dictates most part of your life during the week is an inverted chameleon.
While the orange on its outside doesn’t change, it is more often than not its
true color. Its insides change as mandated by its surroundings i.e. external
factors. These external factors can be in the form of the hue in your client’s
logo to the personal likes and dislikes of your partner. It is not uncommon to
hear a partner proclaim “Our table in this slide is red while the rest of our
presentation is blue. Make it uniform, will you?” Deck making skills are indeed
a must have for a successful career in consulting. And if one is careless,
formatting will take more time than it took to preparing the deck in the first
place.
The
green, a consultant will largely be associated with, is the green of Microsoft
Excel. Analyzing large sets of data and deriving insights from the same is
another key skill set expected from any consultant. Pivots in blue and charts
in different shades quite literally add the only colors to days when you see no
life beyond those chequered boxes filled with numbers.
The
art of communication is another important skill expected from a consultant as a
substantial amount of time is spent discussing business with your clients. You
generally meet three kinds of people much similar to the three colors on a
traffic signal. There are those who well and truly believe that you are there
for the betterment of the company. These are those who give you the green
signal for all your data requirement requests and even give you gyan as and
when required to help you understand their business better. Then, there are
those who stonewall all your requests and are openly resentful of your presence
as they believe you are a terrific waste of money and as an outsider will add
no value to the company. They are the red signals obstructing your path. Also
there are those who are initially unsure as to your efficacy and over the
course of time can be brought into confidence by delivering results. These are
your amber signals which you need to wait over until they turn green. While it
is important to identify and categorize client personnel into these groups, it
is also important to learn how to tackle each of these groups as they would be
equally important to successfully deliver the project outcomes. And that is
where your communication skills become necessary.
One
another key activity in the life of a consultant is the presentation of your
findings/ recommendations/ analysis to the client. The final presentation goes
through a principal and/or a partner before reaching the client. If the work
you have done is not up to the mark or falls short of what was promised to the
client you can be rest assured that you will see a deep shade of red not only
as anger in the eyes of the partner reviewing your document but also as blood
from all orifices in your body. Following which you might have to see the
blackest hours of the night until the final output meets expectations. But if
the final presentation goes successfully through the partner review and the
client is delighted with your work, one can see the sparkling white of the
teeth of clients and partners and the brown of the wines and scotches in the
party that will most certainly follow the presentation.
