Consulting Essentials: The Art and Science of People, Facts, and Frameworks by Kavanaugh Jeff

Author:Kavanaugh, Jeff [Kavanaugh, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Published: 2018-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

5. Frameworks and Estimation

“You don’t have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream.”

—Michael Dell

Like most consulting firms, we strive to hire smart, accomplished people from university campuses. Quite often those people arrive with an abundance of self-confidence. By the time we see them, they already have a track record of success. They have earned strong grades and received a lot of positive reinforcement. They graduate from their universities with the belief they can conquer the world. We recruit from universities who tend to prepare them well for the workforce.

However, nearly half of college students who graduate, do so without the complex reasoning skills to manage knowledge work, according to a prominent survey released in 2016 by the Council for Aid to Education, formerly part of think tank Rand Corp. This Competency Learning Assessment (CLA+) relates to base level reasoning competencies. On average, students do make progress in their ability to reason, but because so many start at a large deficit, many still graduate without the ability to read a scatterplot, construct a cohesive argument or identify a logical fallacy. That is the bad news. The good news is that these skills can be learned through awareness and practice. This chapter builds on the critical thinking and communication chapters, with a focus on skills that are core to business consulting.

Tony was a recent campus hire on our consulting team. He was an economics major, highly intelligent, and did well in interviews, but he struggled once assigned to client work. Although he was properly prepped for his initial engagement, he was ineffective compared to his colleagues on the project. As partner for the client, I saw that he was struggling and worked with him myself. Despite his background in statistics and econometric modeling, he had trouble applying analytical frameworks and estimation. This deficiency was holding him back, as many consulting assignments depend on the use of these tools to frame problems for deeper analysis.

We discussed the fundamentals of frameworks and how to apply them, and he realized that presenting his work effectively relied on more than just data and rote formulas. It required him to understand how a framework (model) that highlights an important but abstract concept can be applied to real world business situations to solve problems. For example, a simple operating model can be understood to have a service delivery layer, an operations layer, an applications layer, and an infrastructure layer. This framework organizes people, processes, data, and technologies into a set of capabilities that can be measured and then improved. As Tony understood this, he focused on learning business frameworks, then used them to structure his thoughts and actions.

This gave him the benefit of additional relevant experience, despite being new to the firm. The frameworks we used were based on the results of many earlier projects, and the best thinking available. They formed the mental scaffolding that allowed him to start with and build upon the thinking of others.

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