‘Cats and Donuts’ or How My First Manager was Teaching me Consulting Toolkit

Consultants say that you never forget your first project manager. That was certainly true for me. My first project manager was a Danish guy. His name was Thomas.

Thomas looked like a modern Viking. His towering stature and decisive demeanor resembled ancient Nordic warriors. Calm and audacious when speaking with leadership and senior clients. He always had the answer to any question and knew what to do.

I met Thomas first time at the breakfast place of our hotel, just before heading to the client site. The first thing he told me was, "Take that off," pointing to my tie. "We don't wear ties on this client; they're quite casual."

And this is how two months of constant awkwardness and stress have started for me.

For me, it was my very first project. So it felt like a make-it-or-break-it opportunity. So, I was really nervous but very determined to work hard and learn.

Clearly, I was out of my league there. The team consisted of several high-performing consultants, and here I was the newbie who couldn’t do much and knew little. At times, I even struggled to keep up with the team's conversations.

To my surprise, Thomas dedicated significant time to teaching me basic consulting stuff. He was a superstar manager, and that's why he could afford to spend time coaching me, despite the project being high-intensity and a priority for the firm. That was a 001 study, the first project with this client. Typically these projects are brutal. I think by his behavior he wanted to defy what is accustomed and do things on his own terms.

Now, with my years of experience, I admire him even more. I've come to understand how unique his approach was; seldom Engagement managers can invest so much time in coaching a new hire.

Here are just a few memorable moments of my learning journey.

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I remember one of our first problem-solving sessions. I approached Thomas to discuss my plans for the workstream and the data I intended to request from clients.

He interrupted me quickly. The first thing he asked was what outputs I planned to create.

"What outputs?” I responded confused. “I haven’t even seen the data yet. Once I see all the data, then I'll think of outputs.”

He smiled and explained that this is not how we work. Without pre-defined outputs and hypotheses, I would get lost in data analysis without ever reaching a meaningful answer.

His advice was counterintuitive to everything I knew. I admit it took me a few more months to truly grasp and implement that approach. But I religiously tried to do it, even though my attempts were goofy and awkward.

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Then, it was one moment when he asked me to draft a few pages. He quickly sketched out his ideas. After a few iterations, I realized that it wasn't the most effective way for me to learn.

I approached him and asked if he could not draft pages for me, but explained what he wanted me to do. And then let me attempt to draft them on my own. I explained that this would allow me to accelerate my learning; internalize the problem, make mistakes, and then see the gap between my approach and his.

I detected a hint of respect in his eyes. Admittedly, my initial attempts were far from perfect, but I persisted, eager to learn. He patiently reviewed my drafts and allowed me to create my childish slides.

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To give you an idea of how humbling my experiences were, once, I created a draft slide and showed it to him. I usually printed slides for review, as he preferred printed pages which made commenting and reshuffling of pages easier.

Upon reviewing my slides, he amusingly wrote “Cats and Donuts” in the top right corner.

Puzzled, I looked at him with a big question mark all over my face.

He said that squares on my graph were 'Cats' and circles were 'Donuts'. I was still confused. My analysis was related to customer service operations and channels, not cats and donuts.

Well, he said, if you don’t put your Legend detail on the page, then your graph can be anything, it can be ‘Cats and Donuts’ as anything else.

His comment was so unexpected that I burst into laughter, and soon the entire team joined in. That whimsical moment, with his doodles of a cat face and donut circles, remains etched in my memory.

Since that day, I've never omitted a legend detail from my slides, not even a single time. And whenever I encounter a missing legend on a slide, I tell this story to my teams.

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Well, in the end, it wasn’t a success story for me. I was rolled off from the project one month earlier than expected. The leadership team misjudged the budget estimation and needed to cut costs. And I was the weakest link with an expensive price tag. It wasn’t a pleasant experience to leave earlier and feel like a complete loser.

However, Thomas has made a lasting impact on my learning and setting up the right fundamentals. And I'm still grateful for his time and patience in teaching me the basics of consulting.

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P.S.

I feel your pain.

As a consultant, I struggled to perform and faced an impossible situation with extremely high expectations and minimal support.

My life turned into relentless stress, pain, and anxiety. But I always suspected that there should be a better way.

All that pain was not necessary with the right support.

Nine years later, I designed the coaching program I desperately needed back then. Its sole focus is helping you excel and achieve high performance.

Only then can you build strong sponsorships, find great projects, and become confident.

If you are an MBB consultant and want to achieve high performance, please
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