Consulting business overview

Diversity and changes in consulting business make it difficult to distinguish consulting service types and to understand position of different companies in this business. Technological developments and their expansion through all processes in business is the main driving force of the change.

Types of consulting services

There are different types of consulting services which have similarities but also diversities. This makes it difficult to classify consulting services and to be understood by people out of this business. It is more likely that consultants come across the question "so what do you do in your job?". (Hopefully, I got used to this question thanks to being an industrial engineer :))

Some of the most common types are strategy consulting, management consulting, human resources consulting, IT consulting ... Instead of explaining all types of consulting services in detail, I want to give a grouping of services from an enterprise viewpoint which will also help us to understand the direction of change. 

What makes a firm to get consulting services?

Growth is the main reason why firms apply consulting services. Firms want to:

• define their targets and strategy, design their roadmaps
• plan and manage change activities to implement the strategy and to reach defined targets 
• finally operate functionally in compliance with the main strategy
• and manage risks and make assessments all over these steps

All these demands help us to classify and align different consulting services in four groups.

Types of Consulting Services

• Direction : The first group includes consulting services related to strategy and overall vision which will affect the position of the company in the market. Consultants work with C-level executives. Entering to a foreign market, starting to serve in another sector, start-ups, merger and acquisitions can be given as example activities. Therefore, strategy consulting, management (planning) consulting and transaction (M&A) consulting services can be grouped under this topic. 

• Change : The main focus is performance improvement and developing the overall business according to the result of gap analysis between as-is and target sytems. Consultants work in coordination with C-level executives and medium level managers. Design of new manufacturing processes based on lean principles, development of a new marketing plan, technology selection and designing implementation plan are example services. Types of consulting services under this group are management consulting (performance), marketing consulting, technology consulting, financial consulting and some services of HR consulting.

• Operation : Consulting services that requires specific skill set, knowledge on methodologies, tools, regulations and aims to implement designed solutions in the field. Consultants work with medium level managers. Implementation of a new software, process documentation, integration of a new accounting tool and tax services can be given as example services. 

• Governance-Risk-Assurance : The last group includes governance, risk and assurance services like risk mapping and mitigation plan, IT risk and assurance services, board performance assessment. Consultants can work with C-level executives, different level of managers or practitioners depending on the type of service.

Before moving on changes in consulting business, it is better to mention current understanding of management consulting. It was a term to express strategy and planning consulting services together but when the consulting services separated to lower branches (marketing, technology, HR, finance) and expand in these specific branches, it started to act as a broader term to cover services in direction and change group. Therefore, it is better to introduce a management consultant with his/her specific expertise. 

How consulting business changing?

Firms are looking for more than advices!!! When they come across with new technologies, regulations, difficult market conditions out of globalization and economic volatility; they want to have companion by their consultants throughout the roadmap. This cause big consulting companies to broaden their services while also causing establishment of more sector or skill focused consulting companies. 

Previously, when all functions of firms are managed by executives, consulting was about defining strategies, designing roadmaps and presenting to executive level. When firms start to grow, market conditions are changed and all processes are integrated with IT architectures; enterprise understanding is accepted and firms turned into more granular but integrated structures. Therefore, clients require broader perspectives to understand overall enterprise but also specific expertise for each unit to function better. 

Technology is the main aspect which drives the change and exists in strategy of firms. This makes consulting companies to follow technological developments and diversify their services to grow whole consulting market and get market share. While big consulting companies doing that, boutique type consulting firms are also being established to address specific type of requirements like social media marketing, data management, mobile application development etc.

Consulting companies do not state change in the market or their direction but it is obvious that they are broadening their services. You can come across the description below in one of the leading management and strategy consulting firm McKinsey&Company.

"From strategy to operations, we are committed to helping our clients build their functional skills and boost performance for the long term." http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service

The figure below does not depend on any output from related companies but just what I see about these companies as an example of the change in sector.

Change and direction of change in consulting

Independently of type of services, gray bars shows the level of focus of each firm in three groups of consulting services, while yellow arrows shows the direction and intensity of the change.

EY states its positioning in the market on its website. The dotted lines show the expansion and two way direction of change compared to previous positioning diagram.

   

EY change in focus

Another change is consulting services are turning into complete packages or discrete products. In addition to consulting services as processes, consulting products with defined scope, planning and type of deliverables (that do not change depending on the client) are being sold. 

Although I cannot see concrete evidence about it yet, I think program management and project management services will grow to cover management of all previous groups as the fifth group of consulting services.

to be a successful consultant / advisor

It is very important for a consultant to be an expert on her/his field, but is it enough?

Besides being an expert,

• be a person that can be consulted!!!
• be modest
• trust yourself and make people trust you!!
• take responsibility
• be a good listener!!
• follow what is going around
• be curious about subjects that you need to be but not more!
• be willing to learn
• know how to search and learn by yourself!!!
• create solutions instead of saying what is wrong!!
• ask good questions! 
• never say to your client they are doing wrong but make them aware what they are doing wrong and make them ask help from you!!
• be a good team player!
• be passionate about what you are doing
• be patient!
• be willing to serve your client but within the scope
• get all questions seriously and answer them clearly, even the most stupid ones!!
• make jokes but within the limits!
• learn to say "we" instead of "I & You"...

Advisory vs Consultancy

There are many consultancy firms in the world, some of them are global and some of them are local. And some global firms, especially the ones in assurance sector (the Big 4) have created/established advisory sub-units and I am working at one of them.

Before I take part in this environment, I wanted to be a consultant. I was thinking that (as almost everyone did) advisory and consultancy are interchangable terms in business. But after I became an advisor (not a good word : )), I claim that they are different terms.

There are varying  point of views about how they are different than each other. The most common understanding is "advisors give advise but not implement" while "consultants act as practitioners and implement solutions". What I see in practice is:

In advisory you have to be more analytical and be aware of the technologies, developments, standards, ... etc in the world. You have to know the sector itself that you are serving and have an idea about every tool, standard, methodology, process, structure, regulation ...etc in the sector and even the relations and dependencies with other sectors. Your role as an advisor, is to analyze the system of your client, define the aspects that needs to be improved, suggest possible solutions by a study of benchmarking and customize these solutions for the specific requirements of your client.

In consultancy you have to be more open-minded and innovative/creative. You have to know the world(!) and the market(!) itself. Your role as a consultant, is to draw general view of how the world is changing, help your client to define development goals and design a roadmap to reach these goals. Consultancy is much more about designing strategies, developing new or really modified processes and increasing the ability of making decisions. 

I do not include IT consultants working in IT companies while defining consultancy. If you are working in IBM and implementing DB2 to your client, it sounds more like selling rather than consulting...

Advisory force you to learn many tools and methodologies and makes you a perfect follower of developments in the world. The thing what makes you a successful advisor is improving your client's existing business understanding and processes more than the other users of these tools or methodologies.

I believe that, consecutive use of consultancy and advisory will reveal more exhaustive solutions which lead the client to success.

Is urgency enough for planning?

Everything is urgent but urgent is subjective so make it objective!

Planning is very important to have things done on time but it is not always easy to do and to maintain. You might plan your day or week and start to work based on your plan but there is always unexpected tasks that will cause you to change your plan. Unfortunately almost all new tasks come as "urgent". What should be the methodology if everything is urgent? Should you plan them in order as they arrived, according to the level of person who ask you to do or based on something else? 

All people subjectively consider their own jobs as urgent and important. If you are working together with more than one person, it is more likely that you will have urgent tasks on your desk being followed by many people. In such a case you need to find a way to prioritize them with an objective urgency level. Otherwise, you will end up having some tasks that are not finished on time and some are ready before they are required.

My methodology is making use of "due date" and "time required". If these are not enough to include everything in my plan to finish on time, I consider my "responsibility level" as the third criterion.

Always be aware about due dates of your tasks. If it is not told you in advance, do not hesitate to ask! Then calculate time required based on your previous experiences. If you are not experienced on this task you might ask further questions about required length of document and detail level or spend a few minutes to search through knowledge databases of your firm, through the Internet or by asking people who worked on this subject  to understand what exactly should be done.

Start placing the tasks on a time line base on their due dates. You might develop different strategies for that but if you do not have any strategy that fits you best or does not have any idea, "Urgency/Importance Matrix" is a useful tool. 

List all tasks on your to-do-list and first give them an importance level. You can use different scales as low-medium-high or give numbers from 1 to 5. Then draw four quadrants as left. In addition to importance, consider urgency level of your tasks and place them in related quadrants. Then you are ready to fill your timeline. Start placing the tasks in 1st quadrant, continue with 2 and 4 and finally place tasks in 3rd quadrant. If you are not able to include all tasks based on their due dates and time required, you are almost done to eliminate tasks with low importance and low urgency. However, you should be careful not to eliminate all tasks in 3rd quadrant for a long period because most probably these will be activities that you want to do to enjoy, gain energy, refresh which are also very important for your overall performance. If the tasks that you could not fit your timeline are required by someone else, do not lose time to inform people about you do not have time to do this task. It is obviously better to be honest than not to keep promises. This will also make people let you know about tasks earlier.

All these might seem so structural and time consuming but when you get used to, it will start to be automatically in your brain and will help you to use your time efficiently. I am absolutely sure that if you do not have any plan, you spend time on thinking what to do next! And if your immediate decision does not work well, you switch tasks and spend additional time to focus on each. When you are becoming expert on planning, you will develop your own strategies, tools, balancers etc.

As an example, I usually do not plan short tasks. 

If someone asks me for a small thing that will take less than 10 minutes, although it is not urgent, I do it immediately. Because I know that if I do not do it now, I will delay it till due date and maybe I will not have even 10 minutes at that time. It will also keep place in my mind and create additional stress. Moreover, when I do it directly after the person asks, s/he will be happy and have more tolerance towards me in future. 

Another thing that I do different than the tool suggests, I do not always do importance tasks first. If they fit in my timeline, I try to finish as more tasks as possible before starting the most important one. Of course leaving some more time than required for unexpected problems. By doing that, I do not let other tasks to disturb me while working on the important one and can focus better. Another thing is people work more efficiently when close to due. This method also helps me to ensure quality in less important tasks. When  I start from the most important, I always want to spend more time to make it perfect which cause less time to others. However, by this way, the waiting important task make me work efficient on the others and close due date make me work efficiently on the important one. 

Learn about planning tools that will help you to develop your own methods that will fit you most.

Is X ready to meet Y?

What makes a person a good manager? What makes a person a good employee? Why the answers conflict in X generation?

Currently people born in 60s-70s are in power in business life who are being followed by people born in 80s and being forced by people born in 90s. In such an environment with different generations, what makes a middle level manager a successful leader for her/his team while trying to get support from upper level management whose expectations are conservative? What best describes the post-modern era is speed and Y generation is applying this rule to all aspects of their life. We are more result oriented, impatient, dynamic and self confident about what we are doing and always ready to defend our ideas and rights. So the middle level manager should satisfy an open environment where different ideas can be discussed and agreed best ones can be applied. We cannot stand spending effort on an output that will never be delivered or will not create value. Unreachable speed around us makes us understand the value of time. We born into knowledge era and have a chance to access variety of resources to develop ourselves on different topics. This ability helps us to come up with our own ideas, own solutions, own proposals. Therefore, we want managers who ask "what do you think?" instead of hearing commands. We prefer "we" instead of "you". We care about equality, rights and humanity independently of age, title or power. We respect "experience" but impressed by knowledge level rather than level in hierarchy.

Compared to expectations of Y generation, X generation is expected to behave in a totally different way by upper management mainly held by the last members of baby boomers in business. Management style which they came across in the past and got as a role model is based on respect to older people and titles. Therefore X generation is forced in different directions by baby boomers and Y generation which have completely different characteristics and expectations. They have experience how to deal with baby boomers but newly met Y generation in business is a challenge for X generation. 

The most common complain about Y generation in business is having lack of loyalty. It is expected for a Y-gene to change job ten times on average (it does not seem so realistic to me). Therefore, companies worry about not having enough return on investment to young people. It is true that we are a bit demanding but companies should be aware that in order to be sustainable, they need to keep promising Y generation members in organization or build a clear corporate culture that can be easily understood and adopted. 

A few quick clues about Y generation from my point of view as a member;

• Y generation is not a generation that can be managed! Instead of managing them, you should lead them.
• Tree structure hierarchies should collapse and network structures should appear as organizational chart.
• The generation of sharing! So instead of behaving as just operators/practitioners to Y generation, you should also let them to take responsibilities as designers/decision makers to give them chance to share their ideas.
• They are self-confident but realistic! Do not forget to appreciate their efforts, but never overestimate the results! Nothing is a big deal ;)
• To reveal their potential, provide flexibility instead of setting rules.
• The generation of technology and rapid development! This is the era of speed and nothing is expected to be traditional anymore. Leave your traditions and be innovative to attract them.
• Listen! Listen! Listen! And hear what they are saying.

You bequeath to us knowledge accumulation of all human history, ability to develop new technologies, a world full of but finite resources and unfortunately a consumption culture! Providing all these and then complaining about us because of being demanding is not fair! :)

College for everyone

The world is changing... My favorite sentence.

Everyone accepts the rapid change in every fields in the world. Additionally, as the things are changing, characteristics of the life is also changing. I think, one of the more challenging one is "speed".

 To be able to catch up with the post modern life, self-learning should also speed up. I spent 17 years in traditional in-class educational system. I learned so many things but I could learn them in less time. Probably 10 years whould be enough. 7 additional years in my life, how amazing...  After I have noticed that I became addicted to "quick self-learning" and my favorite motto became "time is an asset that cannot be retrieved again". The other one is "quality in everything we do". My managers think that I am in a hurry to learn but the world is supporting me with vast of sources. Then why not to learn! ;)

The Internet is the most flexible, accessible and comprehensive college for everyone. You can choose your topic, you can arrange your schedule and be sure that you will find your class notes or videos. I still belive that learning some topics is more efficient in in-class training, but the ones that are related to improving skills like dance, sports, photography, soft business skills...etc. On the other hand, if you have, you should never miss the chance of "learning by living", like travelling or communicating/discussing with others. The best and the most enjoyful way of learning!

If you need to learn a topic to do your business (like learning a methodology, a tool, a programing language) then do not feel stressed! Go to your "free" college.

 There are websites which provide online courses where you can listen your lecturer, discuss with your peers, do exercises to improve yourself. And even you can take exam to get certificate. I do not have enough time to follow exams because my aim is just learning.



COURSERA, my favorite. You can find courses on various subjects both technical, cultural, arts, history ...etc. given by lecturers of the best universities in the world. Courses are structured based on weekly short video lectures and also supported by reading materials and exercises.

UDEMY, the other one which seems like real college courses which are longer but it also includes practical courses.

UNIVERSITY ONLINE COURSES, many university is providing the videos of their lectures or preparing specific lectures on specific topics. (eg Standford University )

FORUMS, subject matter forums will help you a lot after you have basic level of knowledge.

BLOGS, there are people around waiting for you to share their knowledge!

TOOL DOCUMENTATIONS, if you want to learn about a tool or system, their own documentation is the best start point. (eg. IBM RedBooks)

How to start learning? If you know what you want to learn, sources like above will help you. If you do not have any idea what the topic is about, then do not hesitate to start with writing  "what is ...?" to your browser. Probably this question will take you to Wikipedia. Then you will have a general idea and get correct key words to search which will lead you better and trustable sources. If you are learning a tool or sytem the secret question is "how to ....?". This question will take you subject matter forums and you will probably find someobe who asked the same question and get answer. If not, why do not you ask?

If you want to learn something and trust yourself that you can do that, there are vast of sources waiting for you outside.

Live the pleasure of self-learning ;)

Is your mask ready?

Professional life is not a place where you can express your feelings. Not the good ones, never the bad ones...


You might be  very happy about something in your personal life or you might be worrying about health of your family members. In any case, you should not be seem as your mind is somewhere else. Suppressing all personal feelings and being focused on the job is not always easy. However, you should be ready to smile or to look like serious all the time and never forget to control your anger.

But how?


The perfect mask in the world is 'smiling' which is like the opposite of all bad feelings. Smiling makes you and the people you are communicating feel comfortable. When you feel comfortable you will be more result oriented and more convincing.

On the other hand anger is the most harmful feeling that can break all relations. And the one which is difficult to control. You might get angry with your colleague, your client, management, the man in restaurant... When they notice your anger, everything start to go worse. So close your eyes just for a 2-3 seconds, focus on smiling, wear your precious mask and focus on your job!

Never forget your mask at home!

fresh advice to job seekers

Not to just get offer but to feel better...

 It is almost 1 year since I have started to my proffesional career and I want to share my 'new graduate job seek' experiences before I forgot. I also want to remember them in future :)

I do not know exactly how many applications I did, how many analytical exams I took, how much travel, how many interviews, how many failures, how many wins... and how many total hours spent on this process. But thankfully a correct decision ;)

I know that it is really hard for a new graduate or for a senior university student to know deeply about the outcomes of a job title. And if you are living in a country like Turkey, where the education system does not really comply with the job market, you are in an ocean without a compass other than your expectations and feelings.

I am talking about the 'outcomes' of a job title, not the accountable benefits of a job. You can measure and compare the benefits of jobs but what really matters is the 'outcome'. Your job affects your life style, your habits, your colleagues, future friends, where you eat, how you look like, what you talk about... And I can imagine that after a while your job defines 'who you are?'. Do you want to introduce yourself with how much you earn? Hopefully not... Then, it is much better to be an idealist.

First of all, if you really want to work and not extremely lazy, you will find a job so feel comfortable. Maybe it is not your dream job, maybe it is not so quick but at the end you are not unemployed! Do not forget to 'trust yourself'.

About the process

#1: Start as much as early because you will learn a lot about business life during interviews and even by watching people while you are waiting for the interview so go early to interviews. Do not wait untill graduation!

#2: If you do not have any idea about where to work, apply different sectors, different departments and try to find out which fits you more. After you decide on something (e.g. you want to work in a technological environment), narrow down your search criteria. If you continue to apply all kind of positionts till the end, you might be in trouble at decision stage.

#3: Never forget that this is a two-way evaluation process! You are not a guilty and interviewers are not judging you. They are trying to know you so you should also try to know them. If they fails in your interview, do not hesitate to reject the offer.

About the decision

#1: Think about what kind of life you want. You will spent most of your time at work. And how busy your work will have an affect on your remaining time. If you do not want to work more than 8 hours a day or do not want to travel, it is not so appropriate to be a consultant. If you want to be away from stress, it is not a good idea to work as procurement manager of a big factory. If you want to work in an office rather than outside, sales might not be your job. If you want to use your own creativity, accounting is not a good choice...

#2: Think about your 'likes' and ' hates'. If the tie is your enemy, what is the point to work in a bank! If you want to wear fancy clothes at work, being a civil engineer will not provide you. If you hate coffee, it will be a nightmare to work in a coffee shop...

#3: Think about what kind of people you want to work. People will have a huge affect on how much you like your job. I do not know any statistics for that but what I observed is people who are not happy at work, mostly complain about their managers.

You should have some criteria while deciding. You know yourself better than anyone. Do not value so much the entrance salary. You might think that it will increase more but if you do not like your job, you will not be able to perform well enough.

Never ignore your feelings, they will tell you more than you expect.

rhythm makes you more productive

The problem is not doing the same thing but missing the beat... 

All of us might get bored doing the same tasks everyday and this might cause decrease in our motivation and even lead us to change our job. Unfortunately, if you cannot hear the rhythm in every small task, any job will start to sing the same boring song after a while.

"Getting used to" is one of the most fascinating talents of human kind. When we get used to something, we do not need our brain anymore, our spinal cord can handle it. Don't worry, your brain will start-up again if you make a mistake.

Wawwww!!!

So we are ready for new and simultaneous tasks.

If you are not so good at catching the rhythm in your job, you can start with the basic rule: putting in order!

Multitasking is perceived as a skill by many people but if you cannot manage it efficiently, it turns into a chaos and becomes the main reason of your unproductivity. If you are seesawing between tasks, your brain needs some time in each shift. Like machine set-up time, which is unproductive. If you are not an expert at multitasking, do not take risk of having multiple pending tasks at the end of the day! Instead, schedule your tasks and enjoy checking out your to do list one by one (you already have one right?). Do not forget that people care about deliverables not just the effort.

Be aware that simple everyday tasks are also tasks!

You need to clean your inbox, reply mails remain since last week, have coffee :) (Really it is a task!)... Give place to these unseen tasks in your melody. Otherwise, they will act as dirty noises and disturb you whole day.

The main methodology is dividing your job into small repetitive tasks and even dividing the tasks into small pieces and let your neural system get used to. Be your own boss (!) but you can let your body to be your worker.

Role of people in industrial era is a huge topic to discuss. If you achieve being your own boss, why not to use productive methods of industrial era for yourself?

Modern Times, Charles Chaplin