Management Consulting is the practice of offering
business executives third party advice, expertise, and support with the
aim of enhancing the business's performance resulting in an overall
increase in the value of the business for its shareholders - and other
stakeholders.
Management Consulting got its start in the late 1880's
when Frederick W. Taylor began to perform studies of the time required to
complete processes in manufacturing. The
practice developed over time and eventually, James O. McKinsey formed McKinsey
& Company with Tom Kearney -in the mist of the great depression, when
companies needed consultancies most.
McKinsey's group set out to help troubled businesses grow and recover from
economic crisis. Shortly after that, Management Consulting grew as a field and other firms began to take shape.
Today, there
are many management-consulting firms.
Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company, and Bain
& Company are all firms with which you may be familiar. Organisations typically hire management consultants for their problem-solving abilities, specialised industrial expertise and commercial acumen.
What Does Management
Consulting Entail?
Good
management consultants possess both strong creative problem solving ability and excellent people skills.
Skilled consultants possess the
ability to provide a careful analysis of a problem and suggest creative methods to find solutions to the problem. Management
consulting also requires excellent people skills.
Successful consultants can tune into their clients' needs and focus on
keeping their clients happy. Consultants
often will spend much of their time at a client's site observing and performing
research to find the best strategies to assist their client company in meeting
goals and solving problems.
Finally,
the work hours that a management consultant puts in may be long. Be aware that you may be putting in far more
work than those who work at the company - sometimes as much as ninety hours a
week. Management consultants are hard
working self-starters who don't mind going the extra mile in the name of
keeping their clients pleased.
What Are the Entry Routes
for Management Consulting?
Management
consulting is one of those fields where you find people from various academic
and professional backgrounds sharing one single attribute - a passion for solving business problems and driving business performance. While not every management consultant has a
Masters in Business Administration (MBA), many do hold this degree title. Most consultants have backgrounds in
business, economics, mathematics, engineering, or other scientific oriented
disciplines, though it is not unheard of for an English major or philosophy
major with business experience to hold such a position.
As well as grad hires and MBA hires, there is also an route to entry for experienced hires you have a strong industry-specific expertise. These opportunities are usually advertised on the consulting websites or sourced through executive search firms.
What Are the Typical
Activities of Management Consultants?
It is very difficult to generalise the typical
activities of a mangement consultant, as each project is unique and requires a tailorised approach and skill set. However, the following characteristics are common amongst most project-types:
Scoping client problems and conducting hypothesis of possible solutions
Researching
and collecting data to investigate and solve specific client problems
Synthesising analyses outputs to build an overall diagnosis
Running workshops to facilitate discussions for performance improvement
Managing client stakeholders to create "buy-in" to a change initiative
Constructing and delivering
business presentations, and interim progress reports
Because the face of business is always
changing, companies are always looking for better ways to do things. This means that as long as companies want to
be better, bigger, wealthier, and more productive, management consultants will find
they have much work.
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