Career Tips for Aspiring Management Consultants and Accountants
You might get a kick out of this.
I just came across a post from 10pm est on April 15 (aka tax due date) of someone saying “for some reason H&R block is experiencing heavy call volume”, and then proceeding to ask a question about how to answer one of the tax prompts on work location. [Read more…]
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…]
I’ve had quite a few occasions to talk about times where I’ve had to do some major self-reflection on my career choice to go into consulting. There was that one time that my son imitated me by grabbing my carry-on suitcase and bee-lining for the front door (here’s the proof). Sidenote: isn’t great how you can always trust your kids to hold up a distortion-free mirror with a reflection of ALL of your behaviors.
And there was this other time when my daughter told me she was so glad I came over…when all I did was come home…from yet another work trip. It was almost enough to make me quit management consulting.
I got called out again the week before last. [Read more…]
I made a big mistake last week, one I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
It started when I jumped into a cab from the airport in Chicago. It was about 9 pm, and I had a call at 1 am with an overseas client. I was also hungry so had to make a quick decision – get food at the hotel or try to take in some of my favorite local fare before the call. [Read more…]
Last week, I shared 5 tips on how to delegate effectively and guarantee you get the results you want. While I haven’t gotten many comments, the shares on the original post mentioned seem to indicate this is an area that resonates with many people. For example, after sharing that post, I received an email with a question I suspect other people might also have. [Read more…]
You ever dream about a promotion for so long and then once you have it, you immediately have second thoughts? It happens to a lot of people, especially when that promotion now involves being responsible for other people’s work.
Suddenly you can’t just focus on the things you have to do, but instead you have to be concerned about the performance of a whole team. It’s stressful and can feel like you have multiple jobs at times, but there is one thing that can alleviate the pressure: delegation.
Delegating well effectively adds more time/output to your day, and who wouldn’t want that? It doesn’t come naturally for everyone, but if you apply these five tips from the post below (link to guest article I wrote for Brazen Careerist), you will see results in a hurry.
How to master the art of delegation
If you have other strategies you use when delegating, please share in the comments or by dropping me an email.
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On a slightly related note, I’ve been discussing with people on my email list about the possibility of a course on how to get into management consulting, but it’d be great to get a few more (positive or negative) before deciding whether or not to proceed. You can weigh in here – it’s a perfect opportunity to have a course tailored specifically with the content you want:
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| We call this internal outsourcing |
Having a power tripping manager is bad, but there’s a special kind of manager that deserves a separate post: the “Bobblehead” Manager. What makes this manager special is that it can come in many forms – power tripping, amiable, happy, sad – you name it. You can identify a Bobblehead Manager by his unrelenting habit of volunteering to take on additional tasks with no intention of ever completing them, which consequently creates additional work for the rest of the team. If you’re not careful in how you handle these situations of work cascading down to you, you will find yourself in over your head before you know it. There are two things you can do to make sure this doesn’t happen.
First, always clarify your priorities. If you already have nine things to do and the Bobblehead tells you that you need to do number ten, your response should be something along the lines of “Ok, I understand this is my top priority now, so these nine other things will be secondary. Are you ok with that?” Asking this simple question will help filter important activities from those that are just nice to have.
The second thing you need to do is set realistic expectations on timelines. The last thing you need in a situation where you have an unexpected increase in workload is to back yourself into a corner by committing to unreasonable deadlines. Be honest with yourself and your stakeholders, and you can jointly come up with an acceptable and achievable solution. Trust me – asking for help and/or feedback is not a sign of weakness, and it ALWAYS works out better than you not delivering on a commitment.
Both of these things require practice to hone and perfect but will pay off big in the long-run once you have a handle on how/when to use them.
If you have tried other effective approaches to address additional requests when you’re already at full capacity, please share in the comments!