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The Cliches of Consulting vs The Reality

StrategyU

The mystique of strategy consulting has inspired films such as Office Space and Up In the Air and TV shows like House of Lies. While I generally agree with many of the criticisms of strategy consulting, I am more interested in demystifying what consultants do and how you can learn the same skills without having to work in the industry.

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Exploring Consulting Frameworks: The Experience Curve

StrategyU

The Experience Curve is one of the most famous frameworks in consulting. It was developed in the 1960s by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), one of the biggest consulting companies in the world at the time. Here is an excerpt from Lords of Strategy about how BCG helped to repackage this thinking: BCG devised the curve in 1966.

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Eight common challenges of boutique consulting firms

StrategyU

I started StrategyU with the intention of teaching knowledge workers the tools, frameworks, mindsets, and approaches that I learned in strategy consulting. When I started this, I thought that my audience would be people in big companies stuck inside strategy, finance, or analytics groups that didn’t have access to training.

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How I’d Use AI Tools (If I Still Worked In Consulting)

StrategyU

To demonstrate this, I asked Bard , googles AI chat tool, the following question: “What are three ways someone might use a tool like Bard that would help them work like a strategy consultant?” This information can then be analyzed to identify trends, patterns, and insights that would be helpful to a strategy consultant.

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The Ultimate Guide To “Scoping”: How Consultants Define Problems and Shape 

StrategyU

Think about a problem that you are facing today. “I But if you told a consultant about the problem, they would likely ask you a bunch of questions before saying that. This is a very different problem that needs to be addressed very differently (and reducing your caffeine intake won’t help!).

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Consulting Pitfalls: How To Avoid “Book Report Thinking”

StrategyU

In consulting, I was taught to start with the answer. Do you have a toolkit for business problem solving? I created Think Like a Strategy Consultant as an online course to make the tools of strategy consultants accessible to driven professionals, executives, and consultants. So remember.

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Five Freelancing Skills That Matter – Lessons From A Former Strategy Consultant

StrategyU

Having made this transition after working in the consulting industry was easier than it would have been if I had made the leap from industry but there was still a lot I had to figure out along the way. Consulting under your personal name is becoming a lot more normal in the age of social media and personal branding.