A day in the life of a management consultant
For many newcomers to the profession or people unfamiliar with the field, the work of a management consultant is unknown and often characterized by prejudices and myths. To give outsiders an idea of the daily routine and the work that has to be done as a consultant, I have described a classic working day of mine.
Balancing act between company development and project work
Basically, at COMPLION we all have two areas of responsibility. The company development and of course also the project work at the client, on whose quality of course separate attention is.
For example, I look after two clients for whom I work every day - that means I divide up my work at the beginning of the week. I do it like this: I go through my to-dos that I pulled from the previous week and structure my week so that I meet all the obligations from the projects. Then I add the internal tasks, which I also enter in my calendar, which serves as a kind of organizer. I often do this by "chopping up" the deliverables I need to show using the Pomodoro technique and dividing them into small work packages. This works great for me and so at the beginning of the week I get a direct view of what I have to do and when, and nothing gets lost.
Daily schedule
A classic working day - I have chosen my Monday - runs as follows.
At the beginning, I have a project steering committee, on a project where I also act as project manager. In this committee, I highlight project successes and show the extent to which we have made progress in the defined milestone plan. In addition, I can also initiate clarifications in the organization in this committee where I myself am not making any progress. This becomes necessary, for example, when the areas with which I collaborate on a project do not deliver what I need or do not deliver things in such a way that I can work with them. An example where this was once necessary was when a project colleague, who was entrusted with an elaborate and economically disproportionate listing of thousands of software assets, had to be released from this task in project steering. I then brought this up to the project steering and was proven right. Through such coordination and feedback, a project manager can ensure that the expenses incurred in the project are supported and coordinated by the project sponsors.
Following this meeting, I have a coordination with the project team directly. I then often use this to pass on the information from the project steering so that there are no information deficits and everyone knows how the client looks at the project and its activities. At the same time, we discuss individual results from the project work, all of which are aligned with a defined milestone plan - in other words, no one is working on anything, but all activities are aligned with the goal or interim goal in order to implement the project as efficiently as possible.
Most of the time it's already lunchtime and I eat a snack at my desk and check my mails.
Afterwards, I still work for another client. This then often means that I set up the agenda for the jour fixe with the client together in cooperation with a colleague. Here we ask ourselves the question "What do we actually want to do today?" - this often answered by the topics of the previous week, which I have worked out and put into a structure. Our work results are then analyzed together with the client.
The jour fixe with the client then actually always proceeds in the same way: we present the agenda and discuss what we have worked out or prepared. In addition, we collect feedback from the client and either develop it further or hand it over for internal use - depending on the case. This meeting often runs for two hours, so after that the regular project work actually ends (unless I still have to do some follow-up work).
Following this, I usually take care of internal company tasks, such as writing invoices, or I take care of marketing tasks, which I cooperate on with a few colleagues. The tasks can be very diverse - from the creation of social media posts to the development of a company slogan, it can really be anything.
- and that's exactly what makes working in consulting so special. You never really know what you're going to be doing the next week and what tasks you'll face. That's a lot of fun because it never gets monotonous.
If you want to have a look - feel free to contact us here: https://complion.de/en/who-are-we-looking-for/current-entry-opportunities 😊
Author: Christian Grabner