Consulting Skills (senior management positions)

Introduction

It is interesting to note that many senior managers have a consulting background.

“...C-suite executives of the ASX 20 companies, 43 alumni of either the big four accountancy firms, or four of the big strategy firms: Mckinsey, BCG, Bain or Accenture…”

Heidrick & Struggles as quoted by Sally Patten, 2024d

Some consulting skills/experiences that are suitable for senior management positions:
- exposure to a very broad range of experiences (including senior executives, different leadership styles, etc)

“...attributes the career success of former professional services firm employees to the range of industries and companies they gain exposure to, the complexity of the problems they can be asked to solve, the communication and stakeholder management skills they develop and the scope to gain international experience.

When you get that incredible exposure, you know what good looks like. You know what headwinds are going to produce in terms of problems and bumps along the way…”

Graham Kittle as quoted by Sally Patten, 2024d

- on-going formal and informal professional and personal development training (includes training in how to communicate, ie communications skills, story-telling, succinct messaging, etc; listen and present yourself; analytical skills; emotional intelligence, etc)

- focus on basic principles such as

1. i) Are you getting the price for the product you need?
2. ii) Where are your challenges on costs?
3. iii)  What's happening on the supply chain? 
4. iv) What are the people challenges that need solving? 
5. v) How much do you need to invest?
6. vii) What is the return on your original investment?
7. viii) What are the current and future drivers of your business

- working in teams (leveraging on the strength of different team members to find optimum solutions; experience in multi -disciplinary/-cultural/-geographical teams

...It's aout coming together as a group of talented people and figuring out how to team together to solve a problem. if you look at the way we work increasingly across businesses today. II's bringing multi-disciplinary teams from different places together to solve a problem and leveraging each other's strengths…”

Jan Danziger as quoted by Sally Patten, 2024d

- feedback (both giving and receiving; includes debriefing; performance assessments; continually reviewing situations, eg monitoring and evaluating

“...There is constant feedback on how you perform, how you show up, and how you did things, how you behave…”

Michael Ackland as quoted by Sally Patten, 2024d

Learning how to handle difficult conversations with stakeholders, ie get your message across diplomatically and empathetically

This involves telling the truth in a respectful way

- be bold and curious

“...Look for ways to make big steps in thinking about latest innovation that might drive that, or pushing hard decisions that organizations haven't been able to make yet…”

Grant McCabe s quoted by Sally Patten, 2024d

- understand the cultural and sub-cultural organizational norms (know what norms to keep, encourage, downplay, etc)

- impact (generally a consultant has more of a focus on the short term, ie a particular assignment, while management need to think longer term on a multiple range of issues)