Career Tips for Aspiring Management Consultants and Accountants
This idea randomly popped in my head today about the similarities between Dr Pepper, Baskin Robbins, and the world of management consulting.
The answer: flavors. I’ll explain.
Many will recognize Baskin Robbins as having 31 flavors of ice cream but fewer probably are aware that Dr Pepper supposedly has 23 flavors making up that sweet nectar.
Similarly, most people think of consulting as one thing. Those people would be woefully incorrect in that assessment. [Read more…]
Last week, I said I was going to do a Failure Friday feature. It seemed to resonate well with people and I did a little mini outreach to see if others might be willing to share some of their stories.
A lot of people want to share general failure advice.
Few of those want to share specific stories.
And even fewer of those want to share recent stories.
Perhaps they are thinking of the big failures that stick out in their minds (I definitely have some of those). Or maybe this is an example of the stigma I’d like to see cast into the fire, melting into nothingness like Gollum’s final moments in Lord of the Rings.
I’ll leave that to you to decide which?
In the meantime, I want to tell you about another failure I had.
Earlier this year, I was asked/nominated/voluntold to lead a reinvest initiative. It met EB’s criteria for donating time (yes, that was referring to myself in the 3rd person) and was professionally interesting.
The subject matter doesn’t matter so much as what I did to feel like a failure. And today is your lucky day because this is a two-for.
I assumed the partner didn’t want to do a detailed review. Wrong.
Because I was late doing that review, I missed the deadline I had committed to, which also isn’t great.
That’s not the part that gave me the most angst though. In the review meeting itself, the review comments were… free flowing. It was more in a collaborative sense than it was in a “you missed the point” sense but in the end, I was still kicking myself a little bit.
The number one thing doing laps in my head was why didn’t anticipate some of these questions?
I felt like a failure not because I did a sub-par job of leading this team but because there was so much more I could’ve done.
And that’s where I have to check myself.
We should always be looking for new ideas, regardless of the source. Sometimes that means a partner will have some ideas too. And if you think about it, that shouldn’t be surprising given the breadth of their experience, especially if they are staying close to what’s happening in the market, which kinda comes with the gig.
For me, I licked my wounds and am trying to get my emotions to align with what my pragmatic brains knows to be true:
Failure and feedback are a normal part of development even if you’re a high performer.
For other relevant career advice they don’t teach you in school (undergrad or MBA), check out my Corporate Ladder University e-book:
https://ericpbutts.com/clu-book
– EB
So I was walking to the client office from my hotel in San Francisco recently when it dawned on me how pedestrians mimic the behavior of some struggling careerists.
Here’s what happened… [Read more…]
Shout out to Jerry Maguire for one of the most memorable lines in movie history. I’ll fight anyone who disagrees.
There’s a lot of talk about people quitting managers not jobs and incapable and/or incompetent managers and coaches not being able to advocate for their people. And all of that is really important.
What we should spend a bit more time talking about is what coachees / staff can do to help people help them. You know, in the spirit of controlling what you can control.
Here are the three things this entails:
If you do these 3 things and meet resistance, then you should do what you can to find someone else to support you in addressing these 3 things. (Sidenote: a fun thing about the consulting world is you typically have a manager and a formal career coach, and can potentially change both if things aren’t going how they should.)
The flip side of this is when you’re coaching people you need to address the same bullets. I know people need to drive their own careers and all that but the truth is so a lot of people don’t know how, even when they have several years of experience. Or they’re afraid to have a conversation because of some backlash, which is a fair concern. (Another sidenote: this concern still applies in consulting despite the previous sidenote.)
I was talking about this with a friend about this last week and he brought up a point if how it’s in the best interest for the coach to be open to constructive feedback too. Because guess what happens when you’re not a good coach… word gets around, and that’s not good for your brand.
Back to being coachable… when initiating one of these conversations as a coachee, the nature of the result all comes down to packaging of the message and not the content. Framing your conversation as one of trust and respect goes a long way. Keep it as factual as possible (instead of emotional). If you’re worried, though, test your message on a friend or a trusted colleague/mentor.
And if that doesn’t work try HR. It may not be perfect but it’s definitely better than doing nothing.
Or hire someone who’s been there before to coach you through it.
I’ll tell you this – suffering silently is a sucker move and makes things linger way longer than they should.
It depends on how much it’s worth to you to resolve your situation.
Need more food thought? You can buy this e-book to learn more and put it on your kindle, ibooks, etc.
https://ericpbutts.com/clu-book
– EB
p.s. Some people have asked about a copy of a physical book, which I’m in the process of making available so stay tuned for that.
Every year at consulting firms there’s a time where you have a mad exodus of people. The messages are delivered in all types of fashions but it ultimately comes down to two words: I quit.
In truthfulness, some need to go and some come with a little pain and the question on what could’ve been differently to keep them.
The reason this phenomenon is different than working in industry is because all of the promotion decisions happen at the same time in consulting. When you work at a company, you definitely have performance reviews but rarely are you confronted with your shortcomings in the same way as you are in consulting.
For example, in industry there’s often a chance to see you did a great job but we don’t have any open spots at the next level right now. Going into it, you kinda know someone has to quit, get fired, or die for a promotion opportunity to become available.
There are three reasons people typically are leaving the business. 1. They don’t want to travel anymore. 2. They don’t like the people they’re working with (and see no end in sight) 3. They didn’t get the promotion they wanted.
Let’s talk about #3 and if you want to cover #1 and #2, let me know and I’ll get into that a different day.
Notice on #3 I said “wanted” and not “deserved”. A lot of people want to start out making their case for promo by talking about how long they’ve been around (aka managed to not get fired). There’s nothing inspiring about this. Results should be your focus. Then and only then should you consider talking about your years of experience.
Years of experience is more of a hedge against you not screwing up when you get dropped into a new situation. The more experience you have, the less “new” situations and therefore risk you’re likely to come across.
Speaking of risk, here’s another thing. Knowing you can do something and demonstrating / convincing other people of your capability are totally different, unrelated things.
If you want to get promoted, get your receipts in order and make a case nobody can deny.
That ended up a little more ranty than I was expecting but I felt like I needed to get that out.
Those are the types of things I work with people on in the Success Factory (if you didn’t apply, it’s too late for April), but you can get some inspiration from my book.
Some people inevitably will come back and say it doesn’t look like it’s for them. My advice to them… don’t buy it then.
For the smart ones who buy it, read it, and apply some of the ideas, I’m confident they will get more value than the cost of the e-book, regardless of where they are in their career. Fundamentals never go out of style.
Get the book here:
https://ericpbutts.com/clu-book/
– EB
I flew in from Austin late last night and was happy not to be on a redeye this time, especially because I had a call at 8:30a.
Earlier this week I (along with another partner) got a note asking me to do a meet / greet for some of the leadership team and help keep the audience engaged etc. Seemed like a no-brainer to make myself available to do that, very much in line with how I believe you should choose to reinvest your time.
The partner I was working with set up the call for us to do a quick intro and put his cell phone as the dial-in. Easy enough.
So I call and get his voicemail. I leave a message for him to call me back when he has a moment. Once I hung up I checked my calendar to see what else I had coming up and what I saw was an hr gap and then the call I had scheduled with this partner.
As it turns out, that 8:30a I had in my head was from when I was in Texas and my brain somehow bypassed looking at the time when I opened my calendar to get the phone number.
Fail.
This definitely isn’t the first impression I wanted to make but all I can do now is hope he doesn’t think I’m a moron, call him back at 9:30 as scheduled, acknowledge the mistake, and keep it moving.
Mistakes happen. That’s life.
– EB
p.s. today is the last day this month to apply if you want to join the Success Factory coaching program. Go here to learn more and pay your refundable application fee:
Success Factory Coaching Application
I already know some people are going to take offense to this, but that doesn’t make what I’m about to say any less true.
Let’s get right into it.
No matter where you work, you’re going to be asked to do some sort of charitable act. Maybe you call it give back, or community building, or reinvest.
At Pepsi, we had a relationship with the United Way. For Accenture, it was technology education at a number of local schools.
Those are great causes (in theory – I’ll get to why in a second) and if your interests align with those, then you’re set.
Now what if you are treasurer or board chair for a non-profit that doesn’t have a formal relationship with your company?
The answer? Don’t do this.
You only have so much time in the day and as a strategic careerist, you want to double dip as much as you can. I remember at Kellogg looking at courses and seeing which ones counted toward more than one of the majors I was pursuing.
If career advancement is priority for you, I suggest you look at your charitable activities the same way. Don’t just check the box with doing something. Do something impactful. Do something in a leadership capacity. That’s how you set yourself apart from you peers.
Am I a cold blooded capitalist? Perhaps.
Am I right about what I’m saying? No question.
In the end you’re your own person and can do whatever you want to do but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
If you’re hankering for more of EB’s corporate rules of engagement, you have 2 days left to apply for my Success Factory coaching program.
Yes, there is a refundable application fee to reserve your spot. Go to the link below to learn more:
https://ericpbutts.com/success-factory/
– EB
You ever wake up and you have that one thing on your calendar that has you feeling all kinds of nerves?
Too much angst to eat.
Heart pounding when you let your mind sit idly thinking about it for too long.
Or maybe you just get the sweaty palms as eloquently immortalized by Eminem in the movie 8 mile (such a good song).
Well that was me leading up to my first martial arts test tonight. I’m happy to report I survived despite being terrified I was going to freeze up in front of everyone including my wife.
If you know that feeling in your stomach that I’m talking about, then I have two words for you that are going to help you make moves in your career: don’t panic.
As it turns out, it’s really hard to focus when you’re panicking.
And as I’ve said before, if you can’t focus, you’ll make unnecessary mistakes. Those mistakes will cost you career progression, which equals money and the related recognition you know should be well within your grasp.
There’s another piece to this though.
The fact is getting outside of your comfort zone is a good thing. It’s one of those things you know is working when you feel it. It’s basically muscle confusion for your brain and all those sensations you feel are just your brain letting you know you’re transforming.
When there’s an opportunity to learn something new, embrace the chance. Acknowledge the fear and discomfort but don’t let yourself be paralyzed by it. Charge through it and see what happens when you’re on the other side.
As it turns out, I’ve gotten pretty good at helping people push themselves in this way. If you want to experience for yourself, you can apply for the success factory coaching program for another week. Who knows, if I get promoted from a white belt that might go to my head and I raise the price of coaching too. Head on over and apply now:
https://ericpbutts.com/success-factory/
Have a good weekend.
– EB
Let’s talk about focus.
It’s easy to get distracted by what’s happening around you. Maybe people are getting preferential treatment.
Aside from you only being able to control so much, you worrying about what somebody else is doing can have a real negative impact on your performance.
When we were in taekwondo this (the same session I wrote about a couple of days ago), something else interesting happened. [Read more…]
A while back my daughter came home with one of those inspirational quote type of sayings from one of her teachers.
It said “you have to be odd to be number 1.” I loved it as soon as a saw it. Maybe I really am a softy at heart.
Of course, as a numbers person, I love the pun but in that one line it reinforces two important messages. It’s ok to be different and it’s ok to want to be the best.
Fast forward to today. [Read more…]