Starting up as a consultant

“In matters of great importance, it is style and not sincerity that matters” – Oscar Wilde

One of the most important qualities of a consultant is to build credibility quickly – with the client, with their team and in their firm. Early impressions count heavily. The first two-three weeks of consulting are the most demanding for a fresh consultant looking to establish a good early impression. I would dedicate this post to sharing learnings from my experience that could help a fresh consultant ace this early challenge.

Always be on time. I cannot stress the importance of this enough. In the American workplace, punctuality is expected by your colleagues and clients. Set multiple alarms in the morning. Skip breakfast if you’re rushing, but be 5 minutes early at client site. In a couple of weeks you’ll smack of dependability, which will go a long way in your relationship with the client.

In meetings, listen well and contribute confidently. Never let the client feel that you are an intern. Firms won’t pronounce you as an intern in front of the client. You are expected to perform like a seasoned consultant. However, I would stress listening much more than speaking. Jot down your notes, form your ideas and speak impactfully at the right time. In a large meeting, I personally prefer to carefully rehearse talking points in my head, and then deliver them succinctly, clearly and confidently.

Consulting firms are looking for new ideas, frameworks and models to solve problems all the time. Develop new models, nurture new ideas when you have some time off your responsibilities. Then take these models to your buddies, the partners, and to your clients. These go a long way in convincing your firm that you bring fresh thinking to the table. If you do implement your model, make sure you highlight appropriately. Share the model, write a case study, put it on the knowledge base and present your work to partners.

Network well. Seek advice of experienced folks on how to shape your internship. Their inputs will not only be immensely useful to your project, but will also give you an insight into its culture and what it takes to be successful in the firm. Offer to work for your partner, project manager or buddy beyond the project. Help out in writing proposals, SOWs, project plans, etc. These are very tedious document that people are always looking for help on. You’ll be a super-valuable asset to them and they will back you for a full-time offer.

Finally, always be cognizant that the client is paying a huge hourly rate for your work. Always push yourself to deliver value that is greater than that rate.

Life at Harley-Davidson gains momentum

Having completed 3 weeks out of my 10 weeks of internship, I now feel that my project is taking shape. The LDP program here is quite an intense experience, and you are evaluated not only on your project deliverables, but also on how much you have networked within the organization, and on how many H-D events you have attended. This is true even for the internship, and so my days are packed with work and lunch & dinner events!

I had a fantastic trip to our Kansas City plant recently where I saw first-hand how the fuel tanks were fabricated, then were customized with H-D’s famous paint options, and then how the motorcycles were assembled. The Harley culture seems to be prevalent even in the plants where all employees there were very warm and helpful. And of course, I did not miss out on the famous barbeques of Kansas City at Smokehouse!

Summerfest saw millions of visitors flocking to Milwaukee as usual. As I had mentioned earlier, Harley-Davidson has its own stage, and I got VIP treatment as an employee – I got to watch the shows from the H-D deck. In the picture, you can see Counting Crows performing at the H-D stage.

Part of getting to know the American culture is getting to know the two most popular games in the country – American football and baseball. I got to know the first game at Ann Arbor itself, in the largest university stadium in the US. I watched my first baseball game ever in Milwaukee last week, with their local team ‘Brewers’ playing against the San Francisco ‘Giants’. The game’s quite slow, but people go mostly to hang out with friends and drink beer and eat hot dogs! I did all of that during the last game, and although the Brewers lost, it was a very memorable experience!

My next blog will have details about my ‘insider’ tour of the Miller Brewery, a company-hosted Bradford beach social, my dealer visits, and a volunteer opportunity I am participating in with the Harley-Davidson Foundation. Till then, keep riding as always!

Season 4: About Pharmaceutical Industry and Eli Lilly

(MBA, Eli Lilly) First of all, pharmaceutical industry is important to us because it creates new drugs to cure many kinds of diseases that damages people’s life quality. It is a great industry to work with if you are passionate on improving people’s life quality and prolong lives. Nowadays, this industry, especially for leading patent pharmaceutical companies are facing increasing competition from generic companies like Teva in Israel. In 2011, many blockbusters will go off patents and thus these big companies will face huge losses in their ever cash cows. This trend puts lots of pressures and urgency on patent pharmaceutical companies. Most of these companies’ response will be to emphases innovation and accelerate the pipeline to overcome the gap. Also you may read news on pharmaceutical companies’ restructuring to cope with this strategic move. Last, another thing you may be interested in is that pharmaceutical industry has very long cycle. From a molecule to a fully approved drug on the market, it normally takes around 12 years. If you really care about the fast outcome and fast innovation, pharmaceutical industry may be not the right one for you.

With respect to Lilly, it is a good company. People in the company are generally nice and willing to share their experiences and offer advice. The overall culture is all about excellence, respect for people and integrity. Today, Lilly is still in the progress of global restructuring and you may clearly feel how fast they want to develop new drugs to replace those old blockbusters that are going off patent in the next few years. Lilly, like many other big pharmaceutical companies, has two key focuses in the corporate, one is R&D, over $3 billion investment every year, and the other is sales and marketing. Other functions and administrations are revolving around these two centers. In addition, Lilly, like many other pharmaceutical companies, is starting to expand business in emerging markets such as China, Russia, Brazil, Turkey and etc. because of the fast increasing need on effective drugs.

All in all, pharmaceutical industry will be a good fit if you feel yourself are fascinated with healthcare. Lilly will be a good fit if you are in the spirit of teamwork and humbleness as well as agility of learning.

Reflection

The summer internship is finally coming to an end and it is now time to do the one thing we all love to do; reflect on these last months and identify what we have learnt and how much growth there has been, around the waist and intellectually!! To merely say that I have “grown” over these last months would be an understatement without qualifying that claim with all the things I managed to accomplish!

Starting off as an eager student of business, ready to soak up the knowledge and get my hands dirty with paint, I have now managed a decent size business and ran a team of 9 employees, handled angry customers, satisfied customers, met deadlines, payed off my debt and began to understand what I really want to achieve from my business degree. Did I value and like this experience? Definitely. Is entrepreneurship for me? Maybe. Maybe not. I realized that although I love to get out there and meet new people, talk to them, lead a dynamic work force, entrepreneurship is a tough job and one that maybe I should keep for later on in life, once I have had more experience on the financial and administrative side of business, am comfortable with that and willing to leave it to others to handle that task!

What I take back most is the amazing network of fellow colleagues I made who are from every walk of life and I truly learnt from them as I understood that although I may be international, I did grow up with a lot more than they did and that while I look at the internship as a resume builder, for them it was real work that would help them earn a decent amount of cash to get through another year of university. This put things into perspective for me and helps me realize that I need to better utilize the opportunities that come my way the following school year!

Just Like MAP!

Hi people, how are you guys doing?

Even though I finished almost the half of the summer internship, I think it is good time to go back when my internship begun. By the way, so far, my internship has been fun and challenging, but, luckily, MAP experience has saved me couple of times. Thank God that I am in Ross : )

1. Internship Subject
I got the internship opportunity in the strategy team in Samsung Electronics' semiconductor memory division. My internship subject is setting a market entry strategy for an upcoming product by studying current IT trends. I want to go deeper, but it is against NDA sorry..

2. Team members
I'm working with two other MBA students. 'J' is from MBA school in China and has been a great intermediate between me and 'P'. And 'P', who has pure engineering backgrounds before joining MBA in U.S, has giving us diverse perspectives. It took me first two weeks to figure out the personalities of my teammates. I found out that we have a perfect chemistry for the project!!

3. First impression on mentor
My first impression on my mentor is very good. Considering conservative Korean culture, he is the person who has very open mind and will to listen other opinions, which are against his opinion. He is also love to talk about classic guitar, body building, and soccer. Finally, he is the one who makes us go home as early as possible. I love it!!

4. Just like MAP
Every internship step reminds me MAP; the letter of the engagement, the way interacting with mentor and other teammates, the research methodology, and, of course, making attractive also persuasive power point slides. I did not realize MAP experience was going to help me to secure my fulltime position. Cross ma fingers!!

See you next blog!

Last Post!

(BBA, Fox Broadcasting)

Hey guys! It's Alyssa Fried. This past Wednesday was my last day at Fox. It was sad because obviously I don't want my internship to end and because two of my bosses were out of work, sick. However, we've been e-mailing and I know that we're going to keep in touch. This is one of the great things I am taking away from my internship at Fox. I have made so many connections in so many different departments in Fox Broadcasting.

I have learned so much at my internship with Fox, more than I ever could have hoped to have learned from a summer internship after my sophomore year. I learned about analysis of numbers, revenue analysis, planning sales, and what goes on before and after deals are made. Having my own projects to do, plus watching the other employees doing their projects helped me gain so much knowledge.

Another great thing that I am taking away from this internship is I am now extremely proficient in Excel. They taught me so many shortcuts, and after working on spreadsheets all day for six weeks, I feel like I know the ins and outs of Excel. I know this is going to be extremely useful for me in the future.

Something else that is going to be useful for me in the future is what they taught me about working with clients. They taught me that every client has their needs and requirements, and it is the company's job to fulfill them. One day I am going to use what they taught me to communicate with my clients and build client relations.

I think I showed my bosses my incredible work ethic and my desire to succeed. I think that I could have been a little less anxious about messing up and making mistakes, but looking back I think it was normal to be nervous in my first 'real' office job.

Now that my internship with Fox is over, I am going to be working for an accounting firm in New York City for three days a week. This accounting firm does the taxes for Broadway shows, so once again I will be working with the entertainment side of finance. I am very excited to see how this compares to my internship at Fox!

I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their internships and their summers!

The Media Industry

It's really an unbelievable time to be working in the media industry. News media has really struggled over the last decade with declining ad revenues and entirely new methods of media consumption. It's been survival of the fittest throughout the industry, as the companies that adapt the fastest win out with emerging trends. In my internship at Thomson Reuters, I feel fortunate to be thrown into the middle of media revolution.

Reuters media, although the most recognized and branded portion of Thomson Reuters' business, actually accounts for a very small portion of the company's overall revenues. However, Reuters media is still a huge brand builder and money-maker for Thomson Reuters. Reuters Media, like the rest of the company, relies mostly on business to business transactions. While there is a Reuters news website that generates significant traffic (although mostly outside the U.S.), Reuters does not compete with media distributors such as the New York Times, Yahoo, CNN, etc., but rather the Associated Press and other content providers. In essence, Reuters creates content through its global, unbiased, journalists stationed worldwide. They then distribute that content, whether it be video, text, pictures, graphics, etc. to the aforementioned consumer focused media companies (NY Times, Wall Street Journal, etc.). While this does allow Reuters to avoid many of the problems plaguing the industry such as declining ad revenue and new platforms, it provides its own set of challenges that I have been working on solving as a Strategy Intern.

Without getting into too much detail, it's an incredibly exciting time to meet these challenges at Reuters. Whether it be adjusting to new ways of consumption (think iPad and beyond), adapting to changing consumer tastes (think twitter, mobile, etc.) or simply just generating more revenue out of existing channels, there is a plethora of change going on in the industry and at Reuters itself.

I look forward to continuing to get my hands dirty and give my best effort to solve some of these issues, anticipate changes, and shape the future of Reuters media.

Alex Weiss (BBA Rising Senior)

Sun burnt

As an Israeli who has some roots in Iraq, I rarely – if ever, get sunburnt. Texas, however, has proven to be the Moriarty to my Sherlock Holmes of a skin. Or, if you will, the Darth Vader to my Obi-Wan Kenobi. I could go on. But I won’t.
For the past 4 weekends I have either been tubing, hiking, boating, or swimming. I’m as red as a lobster. I say this not to discuss my dermatological state – but rather to emphasize the social lifestyle that us interns have been living here. Every weekend is full of activity! This weekend for instance, I will probably go to the Texas Roller Derby; last weekend was a 4th of July excursion to Lake Travis, etc. etc.

I must also note that I am at the exact mid point of my internship.
So far what I’ve done is essentially talk to people, get the lay of the land, and scope out the project. We finally have a firm grip on the timeline, what we want to deliver, and how we want to deliver it. A lot of the past week has been spent on taking toll of what I’ve done so far and discussing the project with various parties and stakeholders.

I don’t think I can emphasize enough how long the process takes: Scoping out a project in a culture you are not familiar with and in a business line you never knew takes time. A lot of time is spent just understanding the acronyms. Dell has an overabundance of those. The rest of the time is about managing expectations, and getting the assistance, resources, and support you need to conclude the project successfully. I think the success of an internship project hinges more on the preparation than it does on the execution. We will see if I’m right soon enough.

A lot more of my time now is going towards analyzing data and work rather than learning the ropes. I feel that I have become significantly more productive in what is essentially an environment and culture I have never encountered until a few weeks ago. While the learning curve has been steep, I feel I have finally reached a plateau of productivity. I hope this keeps up.

Traditional industry… more dynamic than it looks

Hello everyone!

How's the summer going? Hope everyone is enjoying these days and making good use of them. In my case I'm more than half way through my summer internship at Cummins. It is time to start wrapping up my projects and put everything in order in order to prevent rushing in the last weeks here.

By now I feel like I've learn a lot about the diesel engine industry… well actually about more things because Cummins not only does diesel engines but also power generators, exhaust solutions, components and other things. But most of them gravitate around diesel engines. It is really interesting to see how all this businesses, although with the same core components, differ one from the rest. For example, the product characteristics requested for one type of power generator used at a hospital could be radically different from one (of the same size) to be used in a power generation plan.

One thing that surprises me the most is the fact that diesel engine-centric products have a lot of way to go in terms of growth. Probably you, as me in the beginning, could think that the oil-feed engines would have their days counted, but actually, that's apparently not true. In the short term there are no hybrids and other "greener products" that actually could cover, at reasonable cost, the space that diesel engines cover in trucks and industrial applications. Additionally, the new environmental regulations and continuous improvement of companies like Cummins are making the old Diesel Engine a way efficient and clean power source, even comparable to some of the most recent alternatives. And don't get me wrong, Cummins is working hard to provide alternative power sources and greener alternatives; actually they are one of the world leaders in emissions control equipment.

Additionally, there are still a lot of opportunities to grow geographically especially in emerging markets like the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) were an ever increasing economy demands more power and equipment. So we should not disregard the potential of companies working into the "traditional" industries. That would be one of my key learning from my internship. I feel that sometimes, as MBAs, we feel that the only way to work in a dynamic environment with high growth potential (personal and professional) would be in the high tech, green or CPG industries. Now, after my internship at Cummins, I think that some "traditional and established" industries could also offer exciting experiences and we need to be open to understand and consider them as a place to develop as professionals.

Learning, scoping, delivering!

MBA, Amazon

At this point, one third of the internship is done and with it comes an urge to see some work done. The first month is probably the most unproductive and hard (at least that’s what I have heard and what I expect), simply because you are flooding with new information. You have to learn the about the company’s culture and how to navigate it, the topic and industry you are working with, and the project objectives itself. Apart from it all you are still supposed to start delivering some results.

From the very beginning I have spent a considerable amount of time just scoping my project: what it will be and what it will not be. I believe this is probably the most important success factor of a good end product. Is by scoping, and discussing the scope with your manager, that you are able to set expectations and plan yourself to achieve a good result.

The first month would be the best phase of the internship if it wasn’t by one detail: you are supposed to start delivering something. Just by talking to other interns and former interns I have the feeling that pretty much everyone has some sort of frustration during this phase. The common sense is that either you don’t know exactly how or what you are supposed to deliver.

I guess that my consulting background helps me at this point. I feel much more confident simply because I have worked at many other 3-month-projects before. I’m also lucky to have a very concrete end product to produce: an excel model. And the success of my work will be easily accessed at the end by checking the website: the model is there or not. At this point I have a mock-up and I can start showing it around. That was my strategy to manage internal and external expectations.

The end is near

I am in week 8 of my 12 week internship. While it has been a great experience so far, now is the time to start putting things together so that I am able to deliver a valueable end deliverable. That implies going over your work with relevant folks, stakeholders and otherwise, to get their perspectives on the issues at hand and itearate on the final deliverable based on their feedback. This process does get stressful at times but is a necessary part of delivering a good end-product.

I am currently working on search advertising. Google owns the lions share of the market, and given that this business has strong network effects, competitors find it difficult to gain market share. The network effect in search looks like this: a larger share of search queries leads to advertisers prefering the search engine which gives them a broader audience exposure, which in turn means that users will get more relevant advertisements for their search queries creating a better user experience and thus they will stick to the larger search engine. However with the launch of Bing, and now with the Yahoo deal (scheduled to go live in October), Microsoft will have a fighting chance of gaining query share and advertising spend.

On a related note, Microsoft's communication head put up an interesting blog here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25/microsoft-by-the-numbers.aspx. It has been analysed by Techcrunch here: http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/26/microsoft-numbers/

Moving onto things which are more fun, the fourth of July weekend was great. Watching Netherlands move into the semis was a perfect start. Saturday was a trip to Mt St Helens, an active volcano about 120 miles south of Seattle. On Sunday, I went Kayaking on Lake Union. All of these trips were with friends from Ross. We closed the weekend with a Microsoft sponsored barbeque and a great fireworks show. Hopefully I will be able to have a few more trips before the close of my internship.

Still Good!

So a lot has happened since my last post. I’ve sort of undergone some metamorphosis to become something akin to an investment banker. It’s been an interesting two weeks with prime ringside seats to the unique spectacle that’s Wall Street. I’ll give you a sneak peek into my world: (1) practically anything that comes to my desk is urgent and the fate of American democracy… no, modern civilization rests on my ability to turn in that piece of work by “yesterday”. (2) The IB Summer associate program is also interesting in the sense that it’s an opportunity to be bossed around a bit by some of the analysts (who are lower in rank than you, but vastly more experienced). When reviewing some of their analyses, it’s typical to get long academic lectures in response to basic questions. There are a few more interesting sides to the summer program and I can only say that I’m loving it.

We were given our summer project at the end of the first week. This involves using the firm’s tools to analyze a potential deal and prepare a presentation for a company management. We are expected to this on our own time (difficult when you’re working from 9:00 AM to 3:00AM, weekends inclusive), turn it in by 1 August and be ready to give a presentation to a panel of Managing Directors. Needless to say the full time offer may be dependent on performance at this session.

Now, I’ll give some color on some of my specific experiences so far. I have a feeling I’m fast becoming the “King of Debt” as it seems I’m getting a bit more than my share of those types of deals. I also think I have the dubious distinction of having worked with practically every group except the ones I expressed specific preferences. While that gives some cause for concern, I’ve been assured that I’d still get the opportunity to work with my chosen groups in the course of the summer.

It’s not all been doom and gloom. Granted it’s a tough job, but the people here are so nice that it becomes quite palatable. The Associates, VPs and yes, the Analysts on my deals have been very supportive and engaging. There have also been a slew of events, speaker series, and a fun exercise to predict where major economic indicators would be by the end of the summer. We also had an ice-cream break and will be doing a volunteer day this Friday. So far I’m finding this more enjoyable than I’d dared to expect.

Networking in a consulting world

(MBA,Booz) Socializing and networking is an important issue for every intern, though I guess it’s a bigger issue for a consulting intern. The way consulting teams are built for a specific project are network derived and one’s ability to connect to the right people might determine whether he\she will be stuffed to a wanted project.

There are few circles in which a consultant networks, it starts with the home office in which a consultant spends Fridays and his\her time “on the beach” – a term that is used to describe time with no project assignment. Then comes the practice – in Booz we are all aligned to a certain practice and are stuffed accordingly, so knowing a principal from one’s practice that is in charge of a wanted project might turn out very helpful even if that principal is from another office. And there’s always the regular firm wide networking with everyone else.

It’s a big challenge to understand the way the system works and who are the right people to address once you want to be stuffed on an assignment – but on the other hand, judging by whom I met so far, this company has great people and culture and networking in Booz is a pleasure rather than a “task to accomplish”. At the end of the day, unlike most other jobs, consultants are stuck together for better or worse along every Monday to Thursday, and if they don’t find their peers fun to be with after work - when having dinner or when stuck in an airport – it’s not good for the whole team.

And now for a little update from the field! All the hard work I did in the past few weeks will come to realization this week when the piece of work I am responsible for will be used to help the customer to make a very important decision, A very exciting time for me!

That will be all for today, next post will be my last one and will close this blog as my internship ends in two weeks.

Consulting - three weeks in

I'm three weeks into my internship and Booz and honestly, so far I'm loving it. The work is challenging, and the people I work with are absolutely fantastic - extremely smart, yet down to earth. I can best describe the experience so far as an extension of the Ross MBA experience.

Let's put things into context - what exactly did I do the last couple of weeks? As I mentioned in my last post, I am working for a client in NJ and we are helping to design their organization structure (strategic objective, reporting structure, incentives, metrics, etc.) for the COO. So yes, this is one of those high touch engagements, and as a result, the attire is business formal. The first week was all about ramping up and setting the expectations for the rest of the summer. Booz & Co. gives its interns the undiluted consulting experience - this means that we are expected to contribute just like we were full-time Associates. So as you can imagine, the learning curve is extremely steep. I had a lot of reading up to do to develop an understanding of the industry. After I spent a day doing that, it was time to understand the client firm (one day). After that I had to get going, and any other background learning would have to come from the job itself. Given that 9 weeks is an extremely short period of time, I wanted to become productive as soon as I could and made a conscious effort those first few days to ramp up my knowledge. Once my manager noticed that I was relatively comfortable with the knowledge (at least I knew where to look for what!), I took over the workstream of developing the model of the current view of the organization. The team had already collected data from various client units. I had to collate the data, clean it up and integrate it into the model in a meaningful way.

We had a big client presentation scheduled the following week, and my manager said that my model would be driving a few slides on the deck. So I had to put in a lot of effort (yes, I even worked a couple of hours over the weekend) to build the pages. My biggest takeaway here is that great excel modeling skills is not just about being able to model close to real life scenarios while making good assumptions. It also involves being able to automate a lot of the repetitive tasks so that you can spend more time thinking about how best you can do the former. As my manager had mentioned, my pages did end up going into the deck. It was a pretty good feeling to see that my analysis was directly impacting the client. The presentation went well, and now my task is to extend this model so that we can use this to design the new organization.

The biggest surprise for me has been the people. There's no question that they are all extremely smart folks. But the best part is, despite how busy they were (there was quite a bit of pressure within the team before that first deliverable) they always took the time out to help me with my questions, and made sure I was comfortable. To summarize, the first two weeks on the project have been fantastic, and I am really enjoying myself so far. Stay tuned!

Just Say No!

One of the hardest things for me this summer has been managing my workload. We all know that an internship is nothing more than a summer long interview, so we all want to impress our bosses and do the best job possible. However, doing a good job and managing your workload do not have to conflict. It is always important to know exactly what you have on your plate at one time so you know what new projects you can take on.

Although it may be hard to tell a superior you can not work on something, sometimes it is necessary in order to do the best job possible. No boss will look at this as you being a slacker, but rather they will appreciate your honesty and they will expect you do your best work on whatever it is you are working on. Although it has been uncomfortable for me to do this, I have done it on multiple occassions this summer. I report to more than one person, and each of my bosses doesn't know my workload. Everytime I told one of them that I could not work on something they were completely fine with it and actually respected me for respectfully declining the work they had for me.

Despite what I just said you can easily mess this up. Once you are done with the large project you are working on make sure to approach the person again, tell them you are done with the other project, and then ask if they would still want you to work on their project or if they have anything else for you. This is not brown-nosing but rather showing that you are a diligent and respectful employee. Being able to manage up is a very hard skill to learn, but an internship with a heavy workload can help you learn to do it effectively.

So if you can't take on a new project because you are swamped remember, JUST SAY NO! (politely of course)