The Hindu Business Line : Know the secrets of top consultants

CONSULTANTS come to sit by your side when you have a problem and when you can afford them. As in the case of going to specialist surgeons, a measure of how serious you are in sorting out your problems is the fee you pay and the reputation of the consultant you hire.

McKinsey is known as one of the top consultancy organisations, and is acclaimed variously — as `a breeding ground for gurus', or `McKinsey is to management as Cartier is to jewels'. Ethan M. Rasiel presents the `secrets' of the firm in The McKinsey Way — such as the 80/20 rule, the elevator test, why the problem isn't always the problem, seven tips for successful information-gathering interviews and so on. Read on:

Problems could come in extremely vague formulations. A mission could be to help an investment bank `increase profitability' — the business equivalent of a patient telling the doctor `I don't feel'. In one case, a McKinsey team went in to evaluate expansion opportunities for a division of a manufacturing company. After a few weeks of gathering and analysing data, the team realised that what the division needed was not expansion; it was closure or sell-off.

Engineers learn something called the Square Law of Computation. It states that for every component of a system — for every additional equation in a problem — the amount of computation required to solve the system increases at least as fast as the square of the number of equations.

If the complexity of your problem doubles, the time it takes to solve it quadruples — unless you make some simplifications. Focussing on the key drivers means drilling down to the core of the problem, rather than picking the whole problem apart piece by piece, layer by layer.

When clients come to McKinsey with a problem, they want it fixed yesterday and for nothing. Fortunately, most clients realise that this desire is just slightly unrealistic. Still, when structuring an engagement, McKinsey faces a lot of pressure to deliver the maximum results in the minimum time. McKinsey bills by the hour, and those hours do not come cheap.

An interview should start with general questions and move on to specific ones. Don't dive right into a sensitive area like "What are your responsibilities?" or "How long have you been with the company?" Start with anodyne questions about, say, the industry overall. This will help the interviewee `warm up' and allow you to develop rapport.

If you come up with a brilliant solution, structure it logically, and present it to your client with clarity and precision, then your job is done and you can go home, right? Wrong! If you want to create real change that has lasting impact, you must get acceptance for your solution from everyone in the organisation that it affects.

If you're reading the book, don't show it to your consultant.

Frogs to princes

IT IS NOT enough to be good, you need to be great. Again, it is not enough to be a manager; you need to evolve into a leader. So, how do we turn good managers into great leaders? John H. Zenger and Joseph Folkman have the answer in The Extraordinary Leader — a "no-nonsense battle-tested program for developing exceptional leadership skills". Take a peek:

People frequently confuse personality traits for leadership. They assume that assertiveness, or the ability to make a compelling speech or giving people crisp orders, is leadership. It is not.

A common myth in many organisations is that effective executives are prompt and punctual. They arrive at meetings on time and don't keep others waiting. Our data show, however, that the lowest-rated executives were as apt to be punctual for meetings as the best.

When there is an intersection of competence and passion with an organisational need, this creates an opportunity for an individual to show extraordinary leadership. Displaying exceptional skill on a competency where there is no organisational need fails to provide much clout in terms of leveraging leadership effectiveness.

We live in a time in which during the day a typical manager receives 34 phone calls, 42 e-mails, six faxes, and spends two to three hours in meetings. It is a time of data overload. We have access to seeming warehouses of information on everything imaginable, including most business issues. Rather than being forced to choose between one good alternative and one bad one, most leaders find themselves in the situation of having to choose among at least a handful of good alternatives.

Leaders who are effective at focussing on results are also effective at giving others feedback and providing coaching. Leaders who only push people to perform better typically focus on the outcome but don't help people much with the journey. Giving people feedback is time consuming and difficult, and frequently is not done well in most organisations. One employee, commenting on his lack of feedback, said, "I don't know if I am in line to be the janitor or the chairman of the board. Please give me some feedback."

A book that can help you give feedback to your leader.

Leader Eleven

THE wicked leader is one whom the people despise. The good leader is one whom the people revere. The great leader is one of whom the people say, "We did it ourselves." That is a quote from Lao Tsu with which the foreword begins of the book The Eleven Keys to Leadership by Dayle M. Smith. Here's more:

Vision statements must depart significantly from the status quo (or else they will not be perceived as visionary) while not going beyond the general limits of possibility, as perceived by followers. A vision statement must be far enough `out' to attract attention, but not so far as to appear crazy or wrongheaded.

Corporate leaders have a chance to have their say, whether through prophecy, explanation, or apology, most obviously in company annual reports. In the `letter to stockholders' or similar page, CEOs issue prophecies that stop well short of promises. Phrases such as `bodes well for future quarters', `appears likely to increase total revenues', and `gives reason for optimism for the coming fiscal year' are essentially prophetic in nature. Followers expect such statements from the leader.

Some leaders make the mistake, consciously or unconsciously, of surrounding themselves with men and women who can be counted on to agree with the leader's position. According to Irving Janis, when a group of individuals lose their individual evaluative abilities, they are in the grip of `GroupThink'.

Information that can't reach its intended audience efficiently soon becomes misinformation or, worse, disinformation.

If projects are running late or over budget, if employee morale is low, if market conditions are changing, or if customers are dissatisfied, the leader must often act quickly to prevent significant business losses. A leader who fails to take the pulse of the organisation with care may often fail to reward the true performers in the company and unfairly reward those who have not contributed.

Check if your leader scores a perfect 11.

(Books courtesy: Tata McGraw-Hill www. tatamcgrawhill.com)

Tailpiece

"Surgeons prefer accountants as patients because they say everything is numbered inside."

"How do they operate upon businessmen who conceal everything?"

"The docs keep an auditor by their side to help find the way."

ReadingRoom@TheHindu.co.in

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Know the secrets of top consultants