The Associates Handbook (Page 2)

The Associates Handbook

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Effectiveness before efficiency, and the four traps that eat your week

Every productivity technique assumes you already know what you should be working on. That assumption is usually wrong. All productivity is useless unless it aims at the right goal. Speed without direction gets you lost faster, and consulting is very good at generating direction-free urgency. So the first job

Lock your screen

Windows key plus L. Every time you stand up. No exceptions. Two reasons, one serious and one funny. The serious one: you work with confidential client data, often in client offices, often in open spaces. An unlocked laptop is a compliance incident waiting for someone to walk past it. In

You cannot judge your own performance

The profile that gets hired into consulting is the profile least able to assess itself. Here is the instrument set that compensates, and how to install it. Most consultants are insecure overachievers. That is why we are here: smart, driven and highly self-critical. It is a productive combination, and

Version everything, and never write “final”

A naming convention takes one minute to adopt and saves you the afternoon three weeks from now. Agree a convention with your team and use it on every file without exception. Something like: YYYYMMDD_ModelName_vXX_initials.xlsx Then mark what actually left the building. A file that was sent

How to get better at your job fast

Most people improve on exactly what they are told and plateau anyway. Here is why that happens, and the complete method that replaces it. Watch how most people handle feedback. It looks responsible and it is almost useless. Feedback: “Your bullets need to be shorter.” Reaction: you add a proof-

Build in a one-minute send delay

The three levels of errors, and the three layers that catch them

A complete system for producing clean work. Three kinds of mistake, three lines of defence, and the habits that make both run without thinking about them. Errors creep into everything: PowerPoint, spreadsheets, meetings, the handover between case teams, a late-night version mix-up, or simply the hour when you

The five-folder Outlook structure

Be correct first, then be correct fast

It feels like a trade-off in your first months. It is a sequence, it only runs in one direction, and getting the order wrong will cost you a year. Clients pay somewhere between hundreds and thousands per consultant per day. A normal project runs into the millions. For that

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