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June 19, 2019 by Eric Butts 5 Comments

How to Take Notes in Meetings Like The Rich and Powerful

 

How to take notes

Do you ever feel like your day has so many meetings they all start to blend together?

So many details to capture. And sometimes not even knowing anything about the meeting topic.

It’s a real struggle. And because of this, one of the most important things you can do in your career (especially management consulting) is make sure you know how to take notes in meetings.

Working on consulting engagements, it’s not uncommon to have multiple meetings to prepare for the “real” meeting with the client. If you’re lucky, the meetings will yield some useful information.

There’s a huge problem with all of these meetings though – people have short-term memories. By the time the participants leave the meeting and get back to their desks, they remember minimal pieces of the discussion.

And even worse, when you ask people later about their commitments made in the meeting, they act like you’re speaking in a language they’ve never heard before. (Maybe accountability could be considered a language and that’s why they’re not familiar with it.)

That’s exactly why you’ll find the rich and powerful to be avid note takers.

When it comes to meeting notes, you’ll want to email those out to all invitees and be sure to focus on capturing the 6 following pieces of information.

Don’t worry if you’re having trouble following along in meetings. I’ll show you what to do in that situation too.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Management Consulting Tagged With: client management, consulting, how to take notes, management consulting

December 27, 2018 by Eric Butts Leave a Comment

The fastest way to build strong business relationships that will endure the test of time

stronger relationships

I recently took a training on advanced networking and one of the things I talked about as my desired outcome was more techniques on forming stronger relationships faster. The training was with Performance of a Lifetime, a program which involved a lot of improvisational work as the primary method to work on those networking techniques. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Management Consulting Tagged With: consulting, professional networking, relationship management

October 9, 2016 by Eric Butts 2 Comments

What to do when you hate your project

Consulting Project Exit Plan

I can’t remember a time when I’ve seen so many colleagues leaving the firm. Some people are jumping because of a unique opportunity not available within the firm. Others quit go to a competitor (ouch!). I remember when I made a change to a competitor and there were a whole lot of questions about the why. Part of me just needed a change but I also knew that the firm’s timing wasn’t going to work for me, so I acted accordingly.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Management Consulting Tagged With: career, career advice, career management, consulting

April 24, 2016 by Eric Butts 15 Comments

10 Excel Formulas Every Consultant Should Know

Top 10 excel formulas

Excel is one of those things you can spend a lifetime trying to master everything it can possibly do. Luckily you don’t need to know everything Excel can do to get a lot out of it.

I work with a partner now who is known to make the claim that Excel is the world’s largest Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

Also, I can tell you when I started in business school at Kellogg, we used two fancy macro workbooks to run sophisticated statistical analysis until they shifted to having everyone use STATA.

STATA was/is infinitely better than Excel, but you’d be amazed at what you can do in Excel, with a little bit of coding know-how.

This post is about the Excel formulas, though – the little statements you type into a cell to make magical things happen.

Read on to dive into the ten Excel formulas you need to know and love to…excel as a consultant. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Excel, Management Consulting Tagged With: accounting, consulting, data analysis, excel

March 2, 2016 by Eric Butts Leave a Comment

Professional Boundaries: 4 Undisputable Reasons Why You Need to Set Them With Your Clients

Why you need to set professional boundaries with clients

On time and under budget has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

In order to do that, some clear professional boundaries and expectations have to be set before agreeing to a consulting engagement. Those boundaries will act as the guiding principles if any significant changes in information come up during the course of your work.

You might be thinking your business can’t afford to turn away money because of some stupid policy.

You’d be thinking wrong. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Management Consulting Tagged With: Boundaries, client management, client proposals, consulting, Professional Boundaries, Risk, Scope Creep

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