3 ways to impress your MBB partners
If you want to become successful in MBB consulting, you must learn how to impress your partners. Here are 3 ways you can do that. And the 3rd one is the best for you.
Unfortunately, as a consultant, I didn't know one important unspoken truth.
You can’t be successful if you do only what you were asked to do.
If you want to be a high performer, you must impress and overdeliver.
I was a good soldier. I believed my job was to execute everything my managers and partners told me to do. I thought they knew better. And I didn’t ask any questions or challenge their thinking.
Why? As an experienced hire, I had been trained to work this way for many years. In the industry, my job was to execute, and my bosses made all the decisions.
But MBB consulting is completely different. It’s an extremely competitive environment with many smart people fighting for limited career opportunities.
To stand out, you must impress and overdeliver.
You will always be behind if you just produce what your partners ask you to do. When your partners give you tasks, they already imagine the outputs in their minds. Then, whatever you produce won’t be better than their imagination. So, you structurally don’t give yourself any chances to win.
To impress, you must produce something they don’t expect you to. It must be relevant and important to help progress the problem and solution forward.
But how do you impress and overdeliver if you can’t keep up with the current work pace? You’re just surviving or staying afloat.
Here are 3 ways you can impress and overdeliver.
1. Deliver more volume
If you were asked to deliver 3 pages, do 10 instead. Some partners might be impressed by that.
But this approach isn’t good for you.
It will require you to work crazy hours. Some younger folks can do that. But in my 30s, it wasn’t a viable solution.
2. Produce high-quality outputs
It's a much better approach. Producing higher-quality outputs will help reduce rework, eliminate unnecessary iterations, and improve productivity.
It's already a good improvement, but you can do better.
3. Create unique, game-changing insights
This is the best way to stand out.
That’s what every partner truly craves. They need insights to impress clients. If you can do that, you become invaluable to your partners.
Creating unique insights doesn’t require you to work harder; it requires you to think harder. Actually, one good insight can reduce your workload.
But I have to admit, doing it is not easy.
You must radically improve your problem-solving. And it’s not easy to learn this, especially if you’re doing it alone. But with the right coaching, you can learn it much faster.
Ideally, your managers and partners should coach you, but they have no time or patience. They are preoccupied with their own survival.
That is why I developed a coaching program for MBB consultants, designed to help them improve their problem-solving and achieve high performance.
Book a Free 1-1 Consultation to discuss whether I can help you through my coaching program. There is no commitment, and you can ask any burning questions in a risk-free environment.
Read this post to learn more about the Hero’s Journey coaching program.
Watch my YouTube video on how to improve your problem-solving.