The Cons of Consulting
Years ago I had read the following quote somewhere: "Every good thing has something bad about it; every bad thing has something good about it!" And amongst others, it quoted an example about the reindeer and their antlers. The reindeer uses it antlers for its safety, yet if the antlers get entangled in bushes, it causes the death of the reindeer.
This good-bad paradox is so true of many more things in life. Consulting included.
The past 15 months in a consulting career have also highlighted a few cons of consulting. Besides the challenge of work-life balance that one faces, I believe there are a few more worthy of a mention.
Missing action orientation - Consultants advise clients. Period. Hardly anyone wants to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. So if you have been used to being on the ground "doing things", be aware that you will also have to kill your desire to know whether the client really did anything that you proposed or whether your fancy PowerPoint deck that cost the client hundreds and thousands of ££ is gathering dust in their drawers.
I had spent 15 years in Operations and Supply Chain before the consulting stint, was used to climbing onto stacks of stocks in warehouses, inter alia, leading people and delivering on KPI's. I miss that action.
Your career path - While "your career is in your own hands" is true even when you are in industry, in consulting you may find that your influence on your career path is weaker. More often than not, it depends on whom you tag along with (read "demi-Godfather"). If there aren't many assignments coming in, you would be on the bench, which has an adverse impact on your changeability metrics, which is then not seen positively in the bigger scheme of things. Yet, you may have little or no influence on your deployment on projects. Sounds crazy, isn't it!
No people management - Though they may never agree to this, but most consultants would actually make very poor managers. This is because in a consulting career you really don't have to manage people in the truest sense. In industry, as a senior manager I was responsible for getting output from over 250 people across multiple sites. I was managing and leading people on a daily basis, fire fighting with them, solving problems for them / with them, managing inter personal conflicts between them. There is nothing like that in consulting. Excellent skills in communication and structured thinking reflected in PowerPoint slides will only take you so far. Beyond that, the journey would involve igniting fire under your chair and that of others - something that I do not see in consulting.
Exit barrier - Once you've grown beyond a level in consulting industry, you get out-priced from other roles. Industry doesn't match the kind of packages you would be earning in consulting. By the time you figure out that you have saturated in this field and would like to move into industry, you would have developed the tendency of "living high" and then would be reluctant to take a "price-cut".
Like all my previous posts, the above observations are my personal views. The reader should remember caveat emptor!!
This good-bad paradox is so true of many more things in life. Consulting included.
The past 15 months in a consulting career have also highlighted a few cons of consulting. Besides the challenge of work-life balance that one faces, I believe there are a few more worthy of a mention.
Missing action orientation - Consultants advise clients. Period. Hardly anyone wants to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. So if you have been used to being on the ground "doing things", be aware that you will also have to kill your desire to know whether the client really did anything that you proposed or whether your fancy PowerPoint deck that cost the client hundreds and thousands of ££ is gathering dust in their drawers.
I had spent 15 years in Operations and Supply Chain before the consulting stint, was used to climbing onto stacks of stocks in warehouses, inter alia, leading people and delivering on KPI's. I miss that action.
Your career path - While "your career is in your own hands" is true even when you are in industry, in consulting you may find that your influence on your career path is weaker. More often than not, it depends on whom you tag along with (read "demi-Godfather"). If there aren't many assignments coming in, you would be on the bench, which has an adverse impact on your changeability metrics, which is then not seen positively in the bigger scheme of things. Yet, you may have little or no influence on your deployment on projects. Sounds crazy, isn't it!
No people management - Though they may never agree to this, but most consultants would actually make very poor managers. This is because in a consulting career you really don't have to manage people in the truest sense. In industry, as a senior manager I was responsible for getting output from over 250 people across multiple sites. I was managing and leading people on a daily basis, fire fighting with them, solving problems for them / with them, managing inter personal conflicts between them. There is nothing like that in consulting. Excellent skills in communication and structured thinking reflected in PowerPoint slides will only take you so far. Beyond that, the journey would involve igniting fire under your chair and that of others - something that I do not see in consulting.
Exit barrier - Once you've grown beyond a level in consulting industry, you get out-priced from other roles. Industry doesn't match the kind of packages you would be earning in consulting. By the time you figure out that you have saturated in this field and would like to move into industry, you would have developed the tendency of "living high" and then would be reluctant to take a "price-cut".
Like all my previous posts, the above observations are my personal views. The reader should remember caveat emptor!!
posted by Sandeep Gupta at
10:15 pm
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