Transformation from Engineer to Consultant

After more than 5 weeks in IBM GBS, I have experienced and learned a lot in consulting and am getting used to my job role as a business consultant, which is no longer that mysterious to me as it was before since my previous background was a software engineer and I had zero experience in consulting or even client-facing job roles. To my satisfaction, I like my new role, since I had more mental challenges than before, and accordingly more impact with what I do.

As an engineer, all I was supposed to do is to implement the ‘Requirement’ written by Product Managers within ‘scheduled project deadline’ decided by Project Managers. I don’t need to be really creative or innovative to get my job done; it was actually straightforward and ‘easy’ if you master the technical side. However, as a consultant, I need to manage myself and be relatively independent on what I do. And my work becomes more diversified than before. Firstly, I need to collect business requirements from both team members and clients. Then, I need to come up with some proposal documents describing what the hypotheses and deliverables will be. Lastly, I have to come up with a work plan document regarding those deliverables which could be either strategy or implementation in nature. Although I mentioned the need to be independent as a consultant, don’t get me wrong, we can actually never achieve anything without effective team work no matter how senior or knowledgeable one becomes.

The other important learning from the past 5 weeks is that a good consultant needs to be comfortable and efficient in working with uncertainties and make educated assumptions or guesses whenever necessary. Nevertheless, because of my engineer background, I was really bad at working with uncertainties at first. I was afraid of making wrong or inappropriate assumptions if I don’t find ‘sound’ evidence to back them up, therefore, I turned out be slow and ineffective and felt lost of directions. Luckily, I got a wonderful project buddy who has always been patient in giving me instructions and transferring his experience to me since he was an engineer as well and had gone through what I am experiencing. Although I think I am getting better, Rome was not built in a day anyway.