Why Management Consulting as a career

Why Business Consulting ?

Business consulting helps in the following respects

1. It helps you find out about a number of companies and sectors in a much
shorter period of time compared to somebody in the industry
2. You would be able to understand and adopt best practices and hence over some years have the ability to retro-fit solutions from one industry to the other.
3. As you are mostly interacting with the CXO’s you have a birds eye view of the problems companies face and hence are closer to the strategic decision making of
the company.
4. It fairly exciting as no day is like the previous day in consulting. Every
new day poses a different challenge.

The cons…

1. Consultants are the CXOs ears. Which means that he has the power to choose your idea or not. It can be frustrating that you idea is not implemented.
2. Its a huge challenge advising a person who has been in the industry for more number of years than you are. Here the only quality that helps is confidence.

And to conclude this gyan here is the very phamous consulting joke

“A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of the dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Broni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the shepherd… “If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?” The shepherd looked at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looked at his peacefully grazing flock and calmly answered “sure”.

The yuppie parked his car, whipped out his IBM ThinkPad and connected it to a cell phone, then he surfed to a NASA page on the internet where he called up a GPS satellite navigation system, scanned the area, and then opened up a database and an Excel spreadsheet with complex formulas. He sent an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, received a response. Finally, he prints out a 130-page report on his miniaturized printer then turns to the shepherd and says, “You have exactly 1586 sheep. “That is correct; take one of the sheep.” said the shepherd. He watches the young man select one of the animals and bundle it into his car.

Then the shepherd says: “If I can tell you exactly what your business is, will
you give me back my animal?”, “OK, why not.” answered the young man. “Clearly,you are a consultant.” said the shepherd. “That’s correct.” says the yuppie,”but how did you guess that?” “No guessing required.” answers the shepherd. “You turned up here although nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked, and you don’t know crap about my business…… Now give me back my dog.”

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