Think Like a Consultant: Work Out What's Going Wrong and Say What to Do
Maps to: Management Consultant · Strategy Consultant · Operations Analyst · Data Analyst · Product Manager · Chief of Staff
A consultant gets sent into a place with a problem nobody there has been able to solve, and a few weeks later hands over one page saying what to do about it. Here you do that somewhere you can actually walk into: your school, a club or team you are in, a family business, a shop on your street. You take a question that is too big to answer whole, like why fewer people turn up than last year, and cut it into pieces you can actually check. Then you go and ask the people it happens to, instead of guessing from outside. You put a rough number on it, because nobody can tell whether a problem is worth fixing until somebody says how big it is. Then you pick one thing to do about it while you are still missing half the picture, which is the actual job. The page goes to the person who could really do it, and they tell you what they think of it.
You're done when: One page, handed to the real person who could act on it, saying what is going wrong, roughly how big it is, and the one thing you would do first. Your number has your working shown next to it, and the page says plainly what you never got to check. Not 'I looked into a problem,' but 'I said what I would do, I said how sure I am, and the person who could do it read it and answered me.'
How this shows up on a resume or college app
I was asked why problem was happening at place, cut that question into three I could actually check, interviewed the people it affected, and sized the cost at number with my working shown. I recommended one action and defended it against the strongest counter-argument, then handed the page to the decision maker and revised it on their pushback. I learned that the people inside a problem often cannot see it, and that a number with its arithmetic beside it gets acted on where an opinion does not.
When you finish you have the thing itself, plus a Common App activity description Sidequest drafts from what you actually built.
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The plan
- 1
Step 1
Pick the place, then cut the question into pieces you can check
Consultants get handed questions that are too big to answer: why are people leaving, why is this slower than it used to be. You cannot answer that whole. So the first move, and the one the whole rest depends on, is cutting the big question into three smaller ones you could actually go and check in a few hours. You also write down your first guess before you check anything, so that later you can catch yourself just agreeing with what you already believed. By the end of this hour you have one page started, and everything you do afterwards grows on it.
- 2
Steps 2-3
Go and ask the people it actually happens to
This is the move that separates the job from having opinions about it. The people inside a place usually cannot see what is wrong, because they are used to it, and somebody outside guessing from a distance is almost always wrong in an interesting-sounding way. So you go and ask, and you write down what people say in their own words rather than the tidier version you would have preferred. You also grab whatever gets counted already, a sign-in sheet, a roster, a till receipt, a group chat, because a number nobody had to make up is worth more than five opinions.
- 3
Step 4
Put a rough number on it, and show your working
Nobody can decide whether a problem is worth fixing until somebody says how big it is. A page that says people seem unhappy gets nodded at and forgotten. A page that says this is costing about six hours a week gets acted on. So you build a rough number out of things you can actually count, you write the arithmetic next to it so anyone can check it or argue with it, and you say straight out how sure you are. Getting it roughly right and showing your working beats a confident number nobody can check.
- 4
Steps 5-6
Pick one thing to do, write the page, and hand it to the person who could do it
Here is the judgment, and the whole point. You still do not have the full picture and you are not going to get it, so you pick ONE thing for them to do first and you stand behind it. There is no right answer here, and nobody is going to tell you afterwards whether you had it right, which is genuinely the hardest part of this work. What makes a call worth reading is not that it turned out correct. It is that it still holds up once you put the strongest argument against it right beside it, and that you said plainly what you never got to check. Then you hand it to the real person, who gets to push back.