Manage Scope Effectively to Stay Productive
Consulting work is ambiguous. It's hard to say when enough is enough. Consultants work crazy hours. Project scope tends to inflate over time, making their lives even harder.
But what if you could manage scope effectively?
Then, you could stay productive and protect your work-life balance.
You can be more successful working less.
It seems counterintuitive but achievable.
AUDIO NARRATIVE - Listen to this post on Speechify
One common mistake
Often, junior consultants show signs of distress when they have a large scope.
They get overwhelmed. They panic. They worry about how they can deliver that huge scope.
Then, they start bothering leadership, asking to clarify everything.
It annoys leaders. Most likely, they don't know how to do it either.
But their experience tells them they will figure it out over time.
As a result, consultants create these 'junior' or 'inexperienced' vibes. Eventually, consultants will receive development feedback: 'ramp up faster,' 'become standalone,' and 'structure problems well.'
Consultants are clueless about where this feedback is coming from. Then they go on a wild goose chase, fixing symptoms rather than root causes.
Instead, it's helpful to think of yourself as a resource with limited capacity. Your capacity is constrained by time and your skills.
Then, think of your project scope as a backlog.
You use your capacity to focus on the most important things. Over time, you work through the backlog from top to bottom.
If a new scope appears, you re-prioritize and do your best work, focusing on the most important tasks.
Pace yourself while doing that. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
You have much more work than you can do in one sitting. You must protect your mental capacity to stay productive in the long run.
If you don't finish everything in the backlog, that's ok. Nobody will blame you if you have focused on the most important things and delivered substantial outputs.
Pushbacks are counterproductive
Another common mistake is pushing back on new scope additions.
Consultants get stressed when a new scope is added. There is a myth in the consulting community that you must learn to push back.
I myself used to think that the ability to push back was a badass skill.
When I became a high-performing manager, I often pushed back partners and disagreed with them. It felt pretty good.
It took me many years to realize that pushing back is counterproductive.
For example, I can't remember a single issue I disagreed about with my partners. But I remember every relationship that went sour.
Partners are humans. Nobody likes to be pushed back.
They can tolerate it and pretend it is okay, but they don't like it. And building strong relationships is hard when people don't like how you treat them.
Don't get me wrong. I don't say you need to brown-nose leadership and agree with everything they say. I only ask you to consider human nature. And how you do it is also important.
Priorities and negotiations
Effective scope management requires creating transparency on priorities and negotiating them constantly.
Then, when a new random task appears, ask where it falls in the current priority list. If the new one has the highest priority, what other tasks must be deprioritized?
It should sound like this: "I can do anything but can't do everything. I can do only 1-2 things today with high quality. What should I drop or postpone from my priority list?".
Make sure it doesn't sound too defensive. Be curious and collaborative. Show that you want to solve problems effectively.
Explore different options. See if you can postpone something or not do it at all. It's rare that all things are equally important and must be done immediately.
But working crazy hours and pulling all-nighters should not be your default options. Unfortunately, consultants make these decisions lightly.
If done well, this approach works in most situations. Reasonable leadership will understand that fragmentation will only reduce effectiveness.
They wouldn't want to jeopardize the delivery of truly important priorities. So they have to make these tough prioritization choices together with you.
Consultants hesitate to have these conversations with leadership. They are afraid to look too junior or needy. But actually, that indicates the opposite.
Unfortunately, sometimes, this technique might not work with unreasonable people.
They demand everything immediately. They might say: 'Don't kill yourself, but these slides should be ready by tomorrow morning.'
In this case, you can push back and say you can't do it. Most likely, it is not a realistic scenario for you. It depends on your confidence level and how much goodwill you have created.
Or suck it up and do it. In this case, you will likely lose in the long term. It's ok to do it once or twice, but it's not sustainable to do it all the time.
Unfortunately, I don't have silver bullets for these scenarios. The only reliable approach is to learn to work exceptionally well.
A cycle of scope management
To be a high-performing consultant, it is crucial to understand these key relationships.
Manage Scope > Focus > Wins > Confidence > Manage Scope
Managing scope effectively will allow you to focus your work on impactful things.
Focusing will allow you to do your best and achieve your next wins.
These wins will give you more confidence and leadership trust.
More confidence will allow you to manage scope even more effectively.
It can become either a vicious or virtuous cycle for you. The choice is yours.
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.