Why I Became a Consultant—and Why I Stayed One

I never intended to become a consultant. I studied history and geography to become a secondary-school teacher, and I was a teacher out of conviction.

However, I realised fairly quickly that I would spend late nights preparing and refining my lessons, trying to make them as good as possible. At the same time, I saw that others were investing no effort at all. That frustrated me. Schools are not meritocracies. What matters is not who puts in the most effort, but how many years someone has been in the profession—and at the time, that did not seem fair to me.

So I applied for consulting jobs. Looking back, it was actually quite absurd. I applied to management consulting firms because I thought: performance matters there. At the time, I had no idea what management consultants actually did all day.

I quickly realised that getting started would be difficult. I knew nothing about the subject, was handed a textbook, and started reading. In the beginning, I found it challenging because I was not given any proper onboarding. Instead, I had to take over the task directly from an experienced professional who was leaving the company. I persevered and subsequently applied what I had learned more and more in the way I considered right and logical.

There is one observation that sounds almost banal: having read a book and—supposedly—understood it does not make you an expert by any means. One of my first project managers used to say: “Practice is the best whetstone.” He will certainly feel addressed at this point. Today, I understand that sentence better than ever and repeatedly find that it is not just specialist knowledge that matters, but also the way in which it is communicated and integrated into the organisation in question.

The idea of a meritocracy attracted me at the time, and today I can confirm it. At its core, it is always about the quality of the work produced and the pursuit of the best possible result for the project and the client—even if the optimum remains an illusion.

But I have also come to understand that this meritocracy is people-centred. Expertise and success in projects always depend on the individual. The most important asset a consultant has is their reputation. Only those who are people others want to work with, and whose expertise is recognised by the client, have a chance of delivering a successful project.

Here is an example. During the first few weeks of a KRITIS project, we repeatedly sat down together after the actual meetings to discuss how things should be done. At some point, I asked the subject-matter expert on the project: “To be completely honest—why am I actually here?” From a technical perspective, he was perfectly capable of handling everything himself.

He told me that he was not being heard by the divisional management. He also said that this made it impossible to maintain a positive working relationship with the other departments, because too many personal conflicts had arisen. In the past, people had shouted at one another, failed to reach agreement, and had different ideas about what the division should look like.

The situation could no longer be resolved internally because the employees simply no longer wanted to work together. That was why they needed someone from outside.

This is one of the ways in which a consultant adds value. In some organisations, an external voice is given more attention. The reasoning behind this seems logical to me: consultants have seen more projects and organisations and have implemented topics in a variety of contexts and from different perspectives. However, as this example shows, specialist knowledge is not always what organisations need support with.

For me, consulting is therefore about much more than specialist knowledge. It is equally about whether people want to listen to you, whether they trust you, and whether you can turn knowledge into something the client can actually work with.

You are measured by the quality of your professional concepts and content. Nevertheless, management consulting is always also about connecting with one or more people. That is what I enjoy so much about it.

The educational perspective I developed during my time as a teacher—the desire to help people—is exactly what has remained. The KRITIS project was one such case. As a consultant, I can often resolve organisational differences effectively, especially as a neutral third party.

That is why we do not just help organisations develop from a professional and technical perspective. We also help people enjoy their jobs again—or at least feel less frustrated. That is how I see it, anyway.

On top of that, consulting is always something new. There is no comfort zone, no settling into a familiar routine—just new topics and new developments. I always have to stay at least a little ahead of my surroundings. For me, that is a powerful and positive driving force that keeps me motivated.

Perhaps that is ultimately the simplest explanation: In a way, I have remained an educator—just in a completely different form.