Throughout one’s career in management consulting, it’s highly unlikely that a management consultant will be faced with executing the exact same project twice. This is due to the fact that different industries will have different value propositions, executive clients will have different styles of management and governance, alignment between business and IT will be different, and criteria for success will be different among various stakeholders (this is a polite way of saying that internal politics and culture in each client will be different), let alone the dynamics of the industry and technology. How the management consultant and the consulting team guides the client through an engagement to get to a consensus-based solution is the subject of this course.
While the process of management consulting projects is often deceptively similar from engagement to engagement – e.g., the “Consulting Life Cycle” - the tools and techniques leveraged by experienced management consultants need to reflect the context of the sponsors’ and stakeholders’ points of view on:
- The business and/or issues they face (sometimes there can be strong disagreement between business stakeholders on the ‘shape’ of the problem, let alone the potential solutions)
- The vision of what the future should look like (and how to reconcile competing visions)
- This strategy and programs needed to reach an agreed-upon future (this is where value statements come in to play)
- How they measure success
Outstanding management consultants are those who can successfully leverage previous client experiences and the knowledge-based tools they’ve built and applied to facilitate engagements. All while creatively adapting to the different circumstances they are faced with in each new engagement and set of stakeholders.
This course will expose the candidate to practical and field-tested management consulting techniques and tools that are essential as part of the practical ‘toolbox’ of capabilities needed by management consultants and their teams to successfully execute a transformational engagement.
Course Topics include:
- Creating Effective Teams
- “Coopetition” and Partnerships
- Techniques for Solution and Services Selling
- Employing Consulting Frameworks in Sales and Marketing
- Capturing Client Mindshare in Proposals
- Proposal Development and Guidelines for Delivering Oral Defenses
- Applying Consulting Frameworks and Methods for Issue Analysis, Visioning and Program Plans
- Staffing Transformational Consulting Projects
- Managing and Communicating Engagement Risks
- Frameworks for Consulting Project Delivery
- Agile’s Role in Project Delivery
- Program and Project Communications and Change Management – Do’s and Don’ts
- Aligning and Measuring Performance to Transformation Objectives
- Alignment as a Management Issue
- Developing and Measuring IT Satisfaction Questions
- Managing Engagement Involving Emerging Technologies
