Musings of a consultant
Having donned both the consultant and the execution hats in my career,here I would like to note some typical situations that a consultant comes across in their everyday work-life and some of the golden truths of a consultant’s life :
Life is in the fast lane
It is flights and more flights.It is constant travel from one client place to another. It is weekdays with the client and weekends with your folks! Many a waking hours are spent in travel and with your fellow consultants, so be ready to be best buddies when with them.
Documents are a way of life
Documents become literally all your work. You review documents, you prepare documents, you read several documents, you are asked to present your views based on deal room documents and so documents abound..!
Time warp becomes a reality
Waking hours and non-waking hours merge as deadlines and data crunching makes the time seem endless. It means hours and hours of continuous data review, analysis, crunching, creating documents and materials with little attention to the break of dawn or the twilight in sight.
Number crunching is the ground truth of life
Numbers and data become your soulful friends as all the recommendations that a consultant’s analysis springs up from is from these data sources. So constant working with numbers and data is what looms large over many days. Finding the relevant data, analyzing the data, providing recommendations based on the data, creating graphs and pictorial charts are the ground truths of a consultants life.
Decks, Decks and more Decks
Don’t imagine any of the surf decks , or the sun bathing decks . What is in store here are the boardroom decks or the ceremonial presentations that are the output of days and days of data and number crunching and analysis, insights and recommendations.Sometimes the decks run to hundreds of slides with an appendix to support all of the data and is the valiant presentation of all the days and nights of work gone into making recommendation to the clients.
Time zone changes are a thing to reckon with
Client meetings and all the travel make the time zone changes a constant part of your everyday life. Tracking the different time zones and adjusting your wristwatch and biological clock becomes a constant as you traverse through the different time zones from one client meeting to another.
In short the life as a consultant is nothing short of drama and action and it is that it is definitely not for the faint-hearted. It is one hell of a ride and you would enjoy it if you enjoy the thrills and spills that comes tagged with it, so go for it if you can afford the nerves. Happy consulting or being consulted!
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.