The Consulting Chronicles

20090219 First Steerco V234.21

2009-02-18T22:40:00.002Z

The Consultant woke up to her new-fangled alarm clock. This one didn't buzz her awake- all it did was slowly increase the light in the room simulating the natural patterns of daylight. It was what the office had gifted her in lieu of a big fat bonus at the end of the year, (We are sorry the economy is not good enough for you to get a big bonus, but hey with this alarm clock, you can come to office earlier than ever!)
"Well, I know how to handle that." She hit the snooze button , tucked her head under the pillow and went back to sleep.

One hour later, she blinked again and tried hitting the snooze button, but it was just the pesky daylight streaming in through her curtains.
"Note to self. Draw drapes before going to sleep. Sigh."

After her ablutions, during which time she was adding little mental post-its that she prefaced with Note to Self (When had she become so J?), she went back to her bed, booted her computer and logged on to the mail server to commence working from home!

A new day in the life of a consultant. Ah. They thrive on challenges.

The whole day, indeed, was a challenge. Her eyes kept going back to the paperback thriller she had picked up. At the end of the day, the deck was almost done and yes, the novel had been done and dusted.

The phone rang, and she picked it up. "So, are you done yet?". It was her Boss on the line.

"Uhm, well, apart from the numbers that are yet to come..."

"Could you do the graph in 3 colours?"

"Wha...?"

"The Big Man asked for it." She could almost hear her Boss shrugging on the other side.

"Uhm, okay."

"Also, Consultant, while you are at it, could you also copy what was on the excel and put it on the doc file of the report and then put it in the slide with some pretty pictures on the side?"

"Okay. You do know I will be going and having an extremely expensive dinner just to feel better about this work, right?"

She logged off the phone and sat looking up at the little spotlights set up in the high ceiling in her room. Sighing, she logged on to the Instant Messenger.

Answer First wants to pack.

She pinged him. Without a smiley. It was an online sacrilege!

TC: Pack what?

AF: This. :(

TC: Me too. On the happy side, I am working from home.

AF: Work is a monotonically decreasing function of time spent at home.

She considered the statement thoroughly.

TC: Maybe so.
But when I am in the office for 20 hours, I work for 10.

AF: :D

TC: :D

And, that was the insight of this deck.

A tribute

2008-07-19T16:26:00.002+01:00

A pallid hue prevailed in the conference room during dusk. The pillars cast spectral shadows across the hall in the fading light. The prevailing gloom reflected my mood, and it wasn’t helped by the weather outside. The heat. The oppressive, unrelenting heat, coupled with the depressing humidity, sapped my strength and made me sweat. Shiny beads of sweat ran down my forehead and spine. It usually took all my attention to avoid it dripping down on my keyboard. But not today. A task was at hand right now, and it couldn’t wait for the air-conditioner to come on again.

As the numbers flashed in front of my eyes for the millionth time, I realized that I had been staring. Staring at the same worksheet for what seemed like an eternity without actually looking. These numbers had the potential to kill. They could spell impending doom for a poor hapless employee sitting halfway across the world, sipping his morning coffee and unaware that his world will come crashing down in the next review cycle. These numbers could wake up, swallow a company whole, and then hibernate like a satiated boa until it was time to feed again. Numbers were ruthless, unforgiving and obscene in their portrayal of the truth. In a world in shades of grey, numbers were black and white.

And these numbers were mine to play with. I was a magician, manipulating them, tweaking them upwards, downwards and sideways. I juggled with them, conjuring up dark interpretations to suit my own fancy, attempting to mix up the blacks and whites to create my shade of grey.

Step back a bit.

My seemingly innocuous actions could have a butterfly effect on the sheltered prey I was pointing towards. There were lots of predators out there, hungry, ravenous, waiting for my signal to pounce. I was two degrees removed from the victims I was exposing. Did that absolve me of my guilt? Could I live on with these deaths on my conscience? What was I committing myself to, as I groped about in this daily miasma of data?

What could I do? I was but a pawn. An unwitting pawn in this dirty, bloody game, a game that ran high above the ceilings I could ever aspire to reach. Being an accomplice was the only way I could climb the wall that, I believed, reached these ceilings. Did they actually reach up that high? I didn’t know. But did I care? Maybe I won't. Eventually, I won’t.

The world wished for a bright new day tomorrow, but first I looked forward to a dark night.

New Ventures

2008-05-18T19:20:00.004+01:00

So, Answer First and The Consultant are musing on future career prospects while checking out the world wide web on the beach*.

*Being a euphemistic name for being jobless. Such are the glorious uncertainties of The Consulting Life

One year later...

2008-04-03T14:28:00.003+01:00

Answer First, Zero Defect & The Consultant are happily sitting in their semi-retirement home in a small village off the road to a National Park in India's Silicon Valley. It has been an uneventful sabbatical from the murky world of consulting. But how did this happen?

Cue Music... (Pink Panther Theme. Pardon the obviousness of the choice). The background cuts to montages of 'decks', conference calls where the three consultants find something better do to (in one famous example, sleep), bad laptops, debriefing sessions and intercontinental flights. Close up shot of airline food that fades to black & white.

And... CUT. Present.

Answer First morosely chews on an unlit fag, "Do you chaps ever consider getting back to the ol' life?"

Zero Defect remembered himself between comparing paint swatches and sofa fabric for the hearth, "Uh? Kind of..." He remembers the portentious words he typed on his slides with the entire life of companies hanging in the balance.

The Consultant pipes up, "Of course. I am not sure I have any skills to survive in the real world anyway."

All three ex-consultants look at each other and shudder at the thought of the real world.

The Consultant adds shrilly, "I know that the TV series was bad and all, but..."

By now, Zero Defect has collected his thoughts and uttered the final say, "Of course, we're going back to save the world... "

Cue Music- Mission: Impossible Theme.

We never said that we were creative, did we?

Hookahs and playahs

2007-05-24T16:47:00.000+01:00

So Answer First and Zero Defect walk into a bar.

It’s a shisha bar, so they order a hookah. Melon flavour.

AF: How does this thingamajig work?
ZD: The whatchamacallit on top is the fake tobacco that filters through the water column. You suck on the tube as if your life depended on it and exhale the fumes worth 50p each.

ZD smiles inwardly, smug in the knowledge that he is the know-it-all of the hookah world.

AF: Whatchamacallit? Huh? Is that what it's called?
ZD (insecure because his knowledge is being challenged by an ignoramus): Yeah. It's also called the.. arbit.. melon-flavoured tablet!
AF: (the light of knowledge bursts through the dark clouds of ignorance) Ah, the arbit melon-flavoured tablet!

And ZD bows to the silent applause in the stands, having saved the day once again, rising from the ashes to deliver a crushing blow to the challengers.

AF: Dude, look! I can do a Confucius!

Consulting Noir

2007-05-16T14:03:00.000+01:00

The room. Our hero takes a quick look around. He glances at his watch. Grimaces. The dial grimaces back. They're late.

The desk. Shadows filter in from the blinds to make a pale chiaroscuro in shades of sepia.

The phone. Lying harmless on the desk. Quiet. He waits for the shrill ring to cleave through the heavy silence.

The phone obliges. It screeches like a banshee. He lets it. Three rings go by. He strangles the fourth.

"AF here. What's the market?"
"I don't really know", comes the response.

"Where's the money going?"
"I don't really know", comes the response.

"Where's the leak? Where'd we screw it up?"
"We aren't sure", comes the response.

AF's grip on the receiver tightens ever so slightly. The room seems smaller. His tie is too tight.

"I'll get back to you". He disconnects. The flat dial tone hangs in the air as if in suspended animation. He turns and walks out in disgust. Another case with no leads. He's on his own again.

"Clients", he mutters, thinking to himself. A black mood descends like a moonless night.

A concerned co-worker stops him. "Need a hand with something?"

He looks incredulous. His face freezes into a macabre grin as he rasps the order.

"Fetch me my shotgun"

To be continued

Realization

2007-05-14T11:08:00.000+01:00

Scene: A lonely stretch on Regent Street.

Dramatis Personae: Zero Defect, Answer First, four pretty girls in now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t clothes and a Porsche.

ZD and AF amble slowly down the street. Yellow, flickering streetlights cast long, swaying, somewhat melancholy shadows on the cement.

“I am a disco dancer”, proclaims AF to no-one in particular.

The Porsche appears, loaded with eight X chromosomes and slows down at the kerb. The owner of the prettiest pair (of X chromosomes, obviously, you perverts) turns to our heroes. AF is nearest.

“Hi! Do you know where the Park Inn is?”, says a voice dripping with honey and at the same time, sharp as a rapier’s edge (No. 42 on the list of phrases I’ve always wanted to use somewhere).

AF had no idea. Not that he would’ve been capable of articulating much if he’d had one. “Glurk” is all that he manages. An admirable effort, given the circumstances.

ZD, in the meantime, finally turns his considerable girth around and, the revolution completed, decides to inspect.

“Parking?”, he says, flashing his best two and thirty tooth smile at them. To the girl, the thick accent sounds as alien as AF’s dismal stab at coherence, but nobody resists the power of the two and thirty smile. Nobody. She smiles back hopefully. A trifle vacantly, if truth be told.

AF considers a warning, but quickly decides to step back and let ZD work his charm while watching the unfolding drama instead. Briefly considering the problem for a moment ZD lets loose. “You need to go a block further, turn left and keep on straight till you hit it. It’s quite big, actually. You can't miss it!” Impressed, the ladies treat ZD to one hundred and twenty eight perfectly formed teeth and eight lusciously bare legs.

Fifty meters and a few pleasant thoughts later, ZD finally snaps out of his reverie. “They were hot, weren’t they? Wish they’d invited me in. I’d have parked their car myself.”

AF spends an entire minute recovering from hysterical bouts of laughter before finally saying, “Dude. They wanted the Park Inn. Not parking.”

ZD is shaken for a moment. But not stirred. With the calm of a Zen master, he looks forward inscrutably and with considerable dignity, says, “Well then they should have said so.”

As they walk into the night, AF wonders to himself, “This is how we make money.” A moment and a wry grin later, “Cheers to consulting.”

Bienvenidos!

2007-05-03T16:02:00.000+01:00

Flashback
Having survived seven rounds of case interviews and four hours of leveraging core competencies, our heroes, Answer First and Zero Defect finally break into the mysterious world of management consulting. The world of business will never be the same again.

A few months later
The doors to 40 Strand open. Answer First and Zero Defect take it all in. The concierge smiles at them and hands them their entry cards. They pass through the electronic gates and up through the elevator to the seventh floor. The London eye watches over the city a few miles away.

A few hours later
A female co-intern approaches them with excitement writ large on her face. She gushes about the laptops, the wi-fi, the wonderful apartment, Oxford street, the 'global hardware major' she's working for, the London eye and even the cornflakes and skimmed milk in the pantry.

Answer First looks at Zero Defect. His eyes are shining. He leans forward.

"Dude. An electronic ID card. Are."

Zero Defect smirks back.

"I love consulting."

PE jargons!

2007-05-02T00:39:00.000+01:00

"Incomprehensible jargon is the hallmark of a profession.” - Kingman Brewster

As a consultant, the bread and butter of your job lies in using the right words at the right time. The strategically positioned verbalization of an utterly ludicrous riposte designed to discombobulate the listener is usually the key to remain employed. See what I mean?

Here are a couple of useful terminologies to deal with consultants just in case you have to listen to one (sigh!), work with one (ouch!) or worse, hire one (how did you screw up that bad?!).

Private equity is the “in” thing these days. Some jargons to survive in the tough world of PE:

Target: Usually has a red dot in the center (see pic 1), with concentric circles (optional, see pic 2). Commonly associated with a retail chain in the US (see pic 3).
Also (in PE jargon), a company that wants to sell itself because its management has risen to its level of incompetence and has run out of intelligent ideas to make it better.

Picture 1: Red dot target

Picture 2: Target with concentric circles

Picture 3: Target retail

Bidder: The pseudo variety is usually seen at Christie’s or Sotheby’s. The shady kind hangs around in Ladbrokes and race courses.
In PE, its another company whose management is so incompetent, that it actually has intelligent ideas to make the target better! Usually flush with funds, with no idea what to do with the money. A spoilt rich kid who wants to teach manners to a brat. You get the idea.

Turnaround: Jargon used by the bidder to describe his idea for a target which is fresh out of any hope of getting back to normal. Bidders, consultants and degenerate gamblers are eternal optimists, you see!

Ringfence: The hedge that Bilbo Baggins built around his garden to safeguard his precious.
In PE consulting, it’s a group of people who work like junkies for 2 weeks on a PE case, and then sit around waiting for a month in rehab for the next PE case fix.