My Speed to Output is Very Slow
Speed to output is the most common pain point for consultants. But the solution is counterintuitive. Let's discuss what you can do to improve your speed.
Slow speed to output is the most common problem for new consultants, especially lateral hires.
You work crazy hours. You produce dozens of slides per week. But it's still not fast enough for EMs.
Consultants get really puzzled about how they can work faster when they already work at an insane pace. There are simply not enough hours in a day.
Let me give you a typical example.
My client is a McKinsey consultant with 6 months of tenure. She was doing well for her tenure.
Then she joined a tough, fast-paced project.
After a few weeks, the EM said that her slides were okay, but her speed was too slow. He asked her to increase her speed. He even allowed her to reduce the quality of the slides.
She followed his advice. Unfortunately, at the time she didn’t consult with me.
Then, two weeks later, she called me in tears. The situation had become much worse.
She started to churn out slides at a much faster speed but lower quality. Then, just in a few days, the EM complained to her that he couldn’t understand her slides. This time the EM was visibly annoyed and frustrated.
This led to more comments, rework, and iterations. Her workload snowballed into a pile of unfinished work and new tasks.
It escalated so fast that she was rolled off the project for performance issues.
That one episode caused a major setback in her consulting journey and hurt her next performance review. Later, we had to work hard to recover from that negative experience.
Here's the counterintuitive truth.
The problem is not with speed. It's a symptom of a bigger issue.
Speed is just an output. It’s not an input.
That is why you can't work on it directly. Instead, you must find other bottlenecks in your working process and improve them to increase your speed.
Usually, it's a combination of complex sub-skills that must be sequenced and orchestrated properly. Any friction or mistakes will result in slower speed.
Let me offer you a better concept of how to think about speed.
For that, I need to tell you a short story.
When I was a consultant, I once worked on a project in Moscow. On weekends, I had nothing to do, so I went to a shooting range. Yes, in the center of Moscow you can easily find a shooting range.
It was a practical shooting discipline. You have to move from station to station and shoot targets. It’s a competitive sport. The fastest shooter wins.
The instructor was teaching me how to handle the gun safely. He was obsessed with the right techniques, positions, and movements. He made me repeat them slowly again and again. I was anxious to shoot and found the learning techniques boring.
And then he told me one thing that really stuck with me:
‘Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.’
If you execute the best possible technique correctly, without rushing, that would be the fastest way you can potentially move. The right technique is much more important than rushing and hassling.
Practical shooting is awfully similar to consulting work.
For example, to win in practical shooting, you must be fast. But it only counts if you are 100% accurate. If you miss even one target, it doesn’t matter how fast you are. The speed becomes pointless.
That means that you must optimize for two objectives simultaneously: accuracy and speed. And speed is a secondary objective. Please remember this principle.
Accuracy is primary. Speed is secondary.
The same applies to consulting. Your accuracy is much more important than your speed. Don’t take it at face value when your managers are asking you for faster outputs. Stay calm, stay focused, and try to improve your speed without compromising on quality and accuracy.
So, let’s get into the more practical things.
Identifying what your exact bottlenecks and root causes are becomes your highest priority.
You must work on multiple complex skills like problem-solving, slide-making, top-down communication, scope management, prioritization, and workstream management.
Each of these skills has its own subskills to learn.
Then you must sequence and orchestrate them in the right way to achieve the best efficiency and effectiveness.
Let me give you a few pointers where you might waste time.
1. Jumping right to execution without thinking first
This is probably the most common mistake consultants make. They feel incredible pressure to deliver. That’s why they jump to execute slides without spending time to think. For them, thinking even for five minutes feels like a huge waste of time.
As a result, they produce shallow-level content. This leads to more comments, rework, and iterations. At the end, they spend much more time than if they had thought about it thoroughly and produced higher quality outputs.
2. Not having a solid slide-making process
This is a little bit similar, but a bit of a general problem. Often, consultants don’t have a solid, repeatable process of how they produce slides. Every time, they approach it as a creative process.
As a result, they often miss critical steps. They spend too much time thinking about trivial things that can be easily standardized, like design, layout, and graphic elements. But most importantly, if you don’t have a repeatable process, you can’t analyze where you waste time and think about how to improve it. It’s all random and ad hoc.
3. Undercommunicating to your managers
Often, the work you do is genuinely difficult. But your managers don’t have the visibility. They think it’s easy and they wonder why it takes you ages to produce it.
Here, speed isn’t actually the problem. It’s not managing managers’ expectations well. Then the managers have the feeling that everything you do is super slow, and the results are underwhelming.
Unfortunately, finding these bottlenecks on your own is super hard.
Your EMs don't provide you with thoughtful feedback. They don't spend time analyzing your working processes. They don’t tell you which bottlenecks waste your time or how to remove them. They only react to visible mistakes. They focus on symptoms.
As a result, you stress out about speed, but you can’t do anything practical to improve it. Your root causes and bottlenecks remain unresolved for months, if not years.
This is how you risk losing your job because firms like McKinsey are unforgiving. If you don't figure this out on your own, it’s your fault. Goodbye.
But this is a solvable problem.
With the right system and coaching, you can improve much faster than you think. You remove confusion and guessing from your process. In a matter of weeks, you can see dramatic improvements.
If you are an MBB lateral hire and want to improve your output speed, read my full guide explaining the practical system of How to Create Great Slides.
If you are an MBB consultant and want to improve your performance through personalized coaching support:
We will discuss your pain points, challenges, and aspirations. No strings attached, just straight answers to your biggest questions.
If you want to learn more about my coaching program, read this post:
The coaching program for MBB consultants.