Today as a Management Consultant

I started this post to talk about another topic completely, but found it would be helpful first to post a quick run-down and commentary of my day today:
730-900
Build an Excel workbook to convert operational indicators (e.g. cases per hour) to financial results (e.g. saved $20k or lost $5k)
900-930
Set expectations of my team for the day – they all need to be wrapping up their portion of the project before we leave next week
930-1000
Pre-present the ops / finance excel workbook to a client project manager for first impressions
1000-1030
Sit in on a daily department planning meeting and offer advice on how to make a more exact plan for the day – this is a fire-fighting effort as the consultant in this department failed to instill the necessary changes
1030-1200
Chair meeting with a consultant on my team and a client director to understand their needs in performance metric tracking – challenge here is to convince the manager that they are not the victim of, but rather the maker of all that goes on – good or bad – in their department. This is very common rampant.
1200-1230
Enjoy lunch – eat at my computer and read emails – Today: Salmon Crayfish Salad from Pret a Manger (delicious)
1230-1400
Observe and coach client manager (same department as meeting at 10 this morning) in tracking daily progress and setting clear expectations with his employees and making the most effective use of their time. It was obvious that personal interaction between this manager and their direct reports is not a common occurrence. That changed today.
1400-1500
Check on progress of my team, verify that any deliverables will be completed when required. 5/5 say we’re on track but the pessimist in me thinks probably more like 3/5 are on track and I’ll have to be the bad guy tomorrow and make a long Friday for the other two tomorrow – too bad.
1500-1515
Client president showed up unexpectedly looking for my director who is not on site today, discuss progress of project with her and tell her how she can push a few key buttons to keep the project moving. It’s amazing how much can get done in 15 minutes with the right people.
1515-1600
Take a video from a presentation from earlier in my project up to the office of the other project going on here and get pulled into a meeting to convince the client managers that their counterparts in my project suffered through the same process and came out better for it. (Sunny – you owe me)
1600-1700
Review today’s work with junior consultant and give some tips on how to summarize and present. This coaching was my favorite part of the day.
1700-1800
Read / respond to a few emails. Reschedule a key project meeting from next Friday to the following Monday… Client President was unavailable at the scheduled time – whoops.
1800-1840
Make to-do list and plan of attack for tomorrow… why does it always seem like there is 10x more work to do then time to actually do it?
1840-1855
Write this post and make some quick notes for the post I actually planned to write – about the time I spent today coaching especially the period from 1600-1700.
1855-??
Out for noodles with the team… Christopher gets to go home tomorrow… lucky…

Tagged as: day-in-the-life, management-consultant, typical-day, work