Struggle with slide-making? It's because of a poor problem-solving approach
Struggle with slide-making? It's because of a poor problem-solving approach
When consultants struggle with slide-making, they often blame their poor design skills. But in reality, they most likely don't have a solid problem-solving approach. Learn how to fix this problem.
To illustrate my point, let me tell you Mark's story.
He is a second-year MBB consultant. When I met him, he struggled with low confidence.
And slide-making was his main pain point, leading to many mistakes, comments, and iterations. These mistakes damaged his productivity and reputation, leading to poor performance.
You'd expect a second-year consultant to be proficient in slide-making. But, while Mark could create well-formatted slides, he struggled to get the content right.
To fix this problem, Mark started completing practical exercises as part of the Hero's Journey coaching program.
If you are an MBB consultant and want to improve your slide-making process and achieve high performance, book a free 1-1 consultation to discuss how exactly I can help you. There is no commitment, and you can ask me any burning questions you might have.
The first exercise went okay. It was a simple text-based task to set the baseline.
In the second exercise, he made some basic mistakes. The main problem was that he stopped at an obvious answer and didn't push for an insightful one.
But then, he completely bombed the third exercise.
He came up with an absolutely incorrect answer. We couldn't even discuss it meaningfully.
It became evident what his main root cause was.
He lacked a rigorous problem-solving approach.
That is why his slide-making process was unstable, causing all kinds of mistakes. No wonder he couldn’t fix this problem for two years, as with every new problem, he created new random mistakes.
Instead of providing him with harsh feedback, I started asking him basic questions:
What is the main problem we are solving?
What is the most important element here?
How does this work in real life?
What makes our clients and competitors behave this way?
How do these findings affect our main problem statement?
What are we saying to our clients?
If you were a client, what would you do?
(of course, the questions were more specific to the exercise, but you get the gist)
Surprisingly, Mark answered all questions correctly and insightfully.
That was the first time I could see his versatile mind.
His problem-solving engine worked fine.
That was my learning point to him.
Mark is clearly smart and can think well.
He also can produce great slides when he knows what to do.
He was missing only one key ingredient - he had to ask the right questions himself before producing any outputs.
The ‘first think, then do’ principle.
To do that successfully, he must have a robust slide-making routine and integrate problem-solving moments into the right steps in the slide-making process.
To learn how to implement the robust slide-making routine, read this post: The most common mistake in the slide-making process.
Mark took this feedback very seriously.
I could see something clicked in his mind.
It was reassuring for him to know that he was smart enough, but he just didn’t have the right process to work.
As a result, he completely killed the next exercise, #4.
It was high-quality and insightful.
This time he really pushed the answer to an impressive level.
His output became an absolute benchmark in this exercise. I will use it to show other consultants where the quality bar lies for this task.
That was an 'Aha!' moment for Mark.
It was his first time doing such an impressive and insightful output.
Next time he faces a real-life task, he will push his outputs to this high level.
Imagine if partners receive this level of output as a first iteration, they will think he is a genius.
This is just one example of how consultants learn to achieve high performance in the Hero's Journey coaching program.
If you are an MBB consultant and want to achieve high performance, I would like to speak with you.
Book a Free 1-1 Consultation to discuss whether I can help you through my unique coaching program and playbook. There is no commitment, and you can ask me any burning questions you might have.
Read this post to learn more about the Hero’s Journey coaching program.