It’s not by magic neither by pure gift that experienced consultants give such positive thoughts about their work and delivery. If you think the opposite, stop reading this article, otherwise you can move forward.

Have you ever asked yourself such kind of questions:

• How can they structure relevant thoughts from such different and complex ideas from different sources?
• Why consultants’ slides are structured and good looking (most of the time :-))?
• What is their approach to provide structured analysis and delivery?
• How can they produce this amount of work so quickly?
• How did they become so skilled in the art of storytelling?

and the last one and funny one:

• Why do they look so solemn, serious, and appear to be inflexible?

I’m going to tell you a secret : it is the same process as any other technical and management skill to acquire – 1/ Learn, 2/ Practice and 3/ Renew.

But it is not complicated!

• These are basic skills and rules to acquire, like any other technical or management skill
• It relies on core principles, rules, and framework:
  • Delivery rules
  • Slide-making and storytelling rules
  • Mission management rules
  • Behavior rules
• Be efficient by reusing and/or adapting appropriate messages, methods, and strategies
• Rely on Methodologies determined by type of mission and business lines

Yes, you can acquire enough fundamental consulting skills to be more comfortable at your job or doing this job in a more efficient and enjoyable way.

And yes, becoming a top level consultant is hard work. It can even take an entire career – but is it your professional project?

At Penon Partners, we have taught these fundamental skills to our customers! That is part of our Core Value and our SAIL methodology.

And if you want my answer to the question “Why do they look so solemn, serious, and appear to be inflexible?”, please contact me or wait for my next article, where I will spend time on this one.

Written by Jean-Christophe Laurent, jclaurent@penonpartners.com, CEO at Penon Partners

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