Thinking Like a Consultant
Save time and money by structuring your business solutions (Part 1 of 2)
Business men and women stand to benefit from thinking like a consultant. Consultants use frameworks and business acumen to solve complex issues that aren’t readily apparent. Fortunately there are simple ways to follow their logic that can save you time and grant you business insights.
First, It is important to understand how a consultant thinks. Second, you should learn how to frame, analyze and communicate a business problem. Third, you need to structure your solutions in the big picture and synthesize your recommendations to align with who you are speaking to.
Understanding how a consultant thinks is rather easy but hard to actually do without practice. First, understand that the process of getting to the right business solution is more important than the actual answer. Consultants often have little time to make a recommendation so they practice frameworks. Consultants also think logically and use data to support and guide their solutions. Finally, after arriving to a solution, they synthesize information for their clients, show how they arrived to their conclusion, and make sure their recommendations are client friendly. For Example, I have pitched advanced analytics without success because my client had no background on statical models. Therefore I structured my solutions in terms that didn’t require my client to dive into data.
Just to reiterate, there are three parts to how a consultant thinks, one, they follow a process and use frameworks, two, they use data to drive their analysis, three, they structure their recommendations based on who they are speaking to.
Now that you have a basic idea how a consultant thinks, its time to learn how to begin solving an issue. First, verify your understanding of the facts......
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