Challenging Project Nearly Got Me Fired

When I met Sarah, my manager, her disappointed look at me shattered my confidence. That was the most difficult project of my life. If someone had told me that I'd turn it around, I couldn't believe it

I did not know my confidence was so fragile and could be destroyed that easily.

When I joined this project, I felt pretty good about myself. Before, I almost single-handedly turned around a massive transformation and delivered a significant financial impact.

But, this project was different, fast-paced, and content-heavy. It required different skills and capabilities, and I was not ready.

The project setup was very bad.

The clients didn’t have skin in the game and weren’t interested in helping us. The manager, Sarah, was just transitioning to a Manager role. The team was junior and understaffed, and the leadership team seemed distracted.

Basically, we were a bunch of junior consultants trying to move this massive project on our own.

To say that I underperformed would be an understatement.

I felt like I was drowning.

Every slide I created would generate dozens of comments, multiplying my work exponentially. Getting any data from clients was impossible, and they did not spend any time with us.

I couldn’t speak for more than a minute in internal meetings without being interrupted. I lacked confidence and solid output to present.

Sarah was always frustrated with me.

She would ask me to write down my daily deliverables with an hour-by-hour breakdown.

Then, later, she'd check on me every few hours to see what I had accomplished. This level of oversight might be suitable for an intern but can’t be good for a second-year associate.

I had to prepare slides every 1-2 hours. I was feeling so overwhelmed, so I'd either produce crappy slides or completely fail to deliver anything at all.

You can imagine Sarah's reaction: it was always that same look of utter disappointment. It was so humiliating.

I wonder why she didn't roll me off early for performance issues.

Sarah was a superstar consultant - highly productive, hard-working, and sharp.

She was a slide-creating machine.

But, transitioning into a Manager role was not easy for her.

Often, she would take our crappy slides and work on them overnight. The next day, she would present beautifully crafted decks to clients. On top of this, she would also create random proposals for leadership.

As a result, she deprived herself of sleep. She became snappy, and her decision-making deteriorated. She simply couldn't make up for the work of a three-person team.

My relationship with Sarah was complicated.

We would have feedback sessions every two weeks. She would point out gaps in my consulting toolkit, and I would highlight gaps in her leadership skills in return.

My main frustration with Sarah was that she did not coach me. She just demanded deliverables without explaining what was wrong with my outputs. Of course, that was not very effective learning. I kept making the same mistakes, not understanding how I could improve things.

In retrospect, I see how I was a pain in the ass for her, perhaps too much for my current taste.

I reflected greatly on what I could have done better on that project.

I think I was not experienced enough to have empathy and only saw her as someone with responsibilities, but not a real person grappling with her own challenges.

So, my life was pretty miserable, and I was desperate.

I knew where it was going.

I was on track to receive a downtick in my next performance review - a Concerns rating. The next step is a "Council-To-Leave" (CTL) rating—effectively, game over.

I needed a significant win—a silver bullet to turn things around. It had to be a big problem with a massive impact.

Fortunately, I quickly identified an opportunity. It was such a big pain point for me and the whole team.

Their sales reporting was super complex.

The client has operated in 15 countries. Each country would have an enormous Excel file for a sales report size of 1 GB each. They would also differ in format. It took us hours just to run a simple pivot table and prepare basic analyses per country.

I remember launching a pivot table report and then doing something else for a few hours until it finished. If I made any wrong move or setting, these few hours were wasted.

I merged these 15 files into one dataset to analyze and compare all countries.

However, Excel couldn’t handle heavy files, so I used tools like Alteryx and Tableau. My software development background gave me a head start in writing scripts for data processing pipelines.

I spent the whole weekend learning these tools, building data processing pipelines, and tweaking the data visualization. I vividly remember myself on a hotel bed with the laptop in my hands, learning these tools by trial and error.

The result exceeded my wildest expectations.

During our internal meeting, the partner asked how the gross margin in Country X compared to that in Country Y. Knowing it would take us a few hours to answer, he moved on to another topic.

But, I answered his question immediately, as I ran this report in real-time.

He couldn’t believe it was possible. For the rest of the meeting, I demonstrated to the entire team how the tool worked and answered their ad hoc questions.

While we were talking, I glanced at Sarah sitting across the table. And that was the first time she looked at me with a smile and no sign of any disappointment in her eyes. I even like to think that maybe she was a little bit proud of me.

Then, we showed this tool to clients. They were so impressed, like kids getting Christmas presents in July. They asked if we could leave this tool with them once we finished.

This single breakthrough helped the whole team.

It allowed us to accelerate the metabolism of our problem-solving, generate unique insights, and deliver tangible improvements in clients’ work.

But, the most important outcome was that clients started to respect us. This helped us to gain some good traction in critical areas of our project.

I was a hero in the eyes of the leadership.

I became a king of insights; everyone approached me and asked various questions, and I had all the answers. Of course, my confidence recovered fast. In the end, I got the average feedback and rating. The last-minute save netted my negative performance.

At that time, I gained one profound insight that changed how I operated.

I realized the importance of achieving one breakthrough, one critical win, very early in the project.

It can create positive momentum and boost confidence. Since that, I have become a breakthrough junkie, addicted to early wins, always looking for early wins to create positive momentum for myself and my teams.

I met Sarah at the firm event a few years later.

We exchanged some good memories from that project. I didn’t have any hard feelings or grudges. Now, I clearly understand what she was going through at that time. Transitioning to a Manager role is not a walk in the park. Now, I understand her struggles and am grateful for the time that we worked together. After all, I learned a lot on that project.

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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
Book a 1-1 Discovery Session.

Learn more about the Hero Journey coaching program.

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