Eric Monnoyer

Being able to be effective while being involved in several engagements is a critical skill to progress in a consulting career. When you have too much work, the critical dimension to watch for is maintaining quality work. How to do it ? By having a clear picture of the different milestones that you have to meet across projects. A consultant who raises his/her hands and says in advance "I need help because I will not be able to deliver on time" is a consultant who exhibits professionnal judgement, which is a very strong competency. Because after the fact, it is then too late to address and new, additional issues have been created.

Every work method has in principle its value, the question is "is it adapted" to the project/question at hand and how can I organize around several different working methods ? The most effective way to solve this is to start collectively from the project/question at hand and outline what are the different dimensions of the project/question and how to best solve each one. In doing so with the consultants team, the differences in working methods will emerge in a non agressive setting and will be worked out among the members of the team as a way to come out with a balanced general approach, which smooth out the differences in working styles and methods.

The feedback culture is a great continuous improvement tool for yourself and for the ones you are working with. It is paramount that it is implemented right as to not come across as criticism. It has to be fact based (ie relating to particular events ou circonstances), as much as possible depersonalised (ie focusing on the outcome of the improvement point, not on the cause source) and well timed (ie not in a stressfull moment but also not too far from the actual events. When receiving appraisal from your "boss", the most important factor is to understand what is the source cause of his/her perceptions of your performance. If it is positive, you can work on replicating it, if it is negative, you understand what you should improve.

If during an interview you are challenged by a question that unset you, the right attitude is to recognize that it is a challenging question (demonstrating honesty), then to rephrase it to ensure that you have understood what the interviewer meant (demonstrating emphaty) and be as thruthfull as possible in your type of answer. It is always better to recognize own's limits than to try to talk your way through a difficult question and come across as a bulshitter.

When I am coaching younger consultants on the management of their career, I often start by explaing that it is necessary to have a combination of a deterministic posture, ie what do you want to achieve with your consulting career, and opportunistic decisions given what are the options available at certain points of time. I often explain that I started my career with colleagues that only wanted to work on projects involving expert systems... they wasted many other project offers that would have been constructive for them regarding for instance project management skills and client relationships. As a result, they had a slower take up in their careers than I, who was more open in terms of project technologies involved.