Owning a workstream means you are responsible for making sure the work gets done.
Doing all of it yourself is a different obligation entirely, and high performers reliably confuse the two.
An Engagement Manager at McKinsey put it better than I can:
“What I didn’t understand in the beginning
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
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
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
Entry roles are more competitive than ever and AI is rewriting the job description. The answer is to get the fundamentals right, fast. Here is what this blog is, what it is not, and how to use it.
On a warm April morning in 2017, I got my offer from