The story of how I couldn't get my point across after moving from a corporate job to consulting (Part 1)

Hello everyone, thank you for your hard work every day.
This is Ambitious.

First of all, I'm sorry for the incredibly long title. lol

However, today's content is exactly what the title says. lol

I would be happy if you could read it to the end.

<Who I want to read this>
・People who are thinking about changing jobs to consulting
・People who have changed jobs to consulting
・People who are interested in me

My self-introduction is here.👇
(Thank you for over 1190 likes🙇‍♂️)

Here is what I have been thinking about recently💁💁‍♀️

Changing jobs to my long-awaited consulting role

As I have mentioned in previous articles,
I joined a corporate company as a new graduate,
and then changed jobs to consulting👇

To tell you a little bit,
I joined the corporate company with the premise that I would eventually move to consulting.

First of all, there are various reasons why I joined the corporate company, but

it was because I wanted to see the front lines

.

Unable to get to the main point in internal meetings

With that background, I changed jobs to my long-awaited consulting role.

At first, it was really tough.

I didn't even know what they were talking about. lol

Sometimes it took me several hours just to understand the conversation.

After that,
the scope and difficulty of the tasks I was entrusted with, such as research, data organization, analysis, document creation, and meeting facilitation, gradually increased.

In order to carry out the above tasks,
I have my boss or the person who requested the work review them.

Simply put, a review is a place to confirm and align whether the direction or content of the requested work is correct.
※In addition to meetings, there are also written reviews, etc.

At that review session, even though I wanted to explain the work I had done,
there were words that my boss or the person who requested the work always said to me.

"What is this about again?"

"Why are we doing this in the first place?"

I wanted to say, "No, no, you're the one who requested this," over and over again.
(In short, I didn't say anything at all, lol.)

Reasons why my point wasn't getting across

Since it wasn't just one or two people saying things like this to me, I started to wonder if the problem was actually me.

Until then, honestly, I had been thinking, "Is this boss okay?" but in reality, it was me who wasn't okay. Haha.

The moment I realized the reason why my points weren't getting across came suddenly.

It happened while I was stationed at a client's office.
I heard a conversation that sounded familiar.

Client's boss:
What is the purpose of this aggregation?

Client's subordinate:
Because you (the boss) told me to "aggregate it."

Client's boss:
Did I say that? In the first place, what kind of data is this?

(The client's subordinate explains endlessly)

There are a lot of things to point out in this communication, but haha.

With the last thing the client's subordinate said,
I realized that my own communication up until then had been poor.

It was,

I thought that since I was working on this task with you (the boss), you already knew the background.

.

Yes, as you all have already realized,

The me at that time,

was trying to jump into the main topic (what I wanted to talk about) while skipping the meeting's goal, background, and purpose, under the assumption that the other person already knew and understood.

.

It's embarrassing to talk about such a low-level issue, but
this was me at the time.

Is the communication gap mentioned above common for people from operating companies?

Furthermore, I believe this communication gap is
more likely to occur for people who have moved from an operating company to a consulting firm.

The reason for this lies in the differences in how supervisors work.

Many supervisors at operating companies, while their roles may differ,
often handle the same tasks or themes as their subordinates.

On the other hand, supervisors at consulting firms operate on a project-by-project basis, and in particular, manager-level supervisors are often handling 4 to 5 projects simultaneously.

Therefore, even in internal meetings,
they are often meeting with subordinates or project stakeholders from multiple projects,
talking about Project A right up until the last minute,
then talking about Project B,
and only then getting to my Project C.
Because of this, it's not so much that they've forgotten, but rather that they haven't been able to switch their mindset. (Though there might be cases where they simply forgot, haha.)

That is why we need to start meetings by talking about the goal, background, and purpose of the meeting,
to get the supervisor's mind switched over to our project.

At operating companies, since supervisors often handle the same tasks or themes as their subordinates, the burden of this mental switching is minimal.

Because of this, when I was at an operating company, I don't think there was much need to align on background and purpose so thoroughly.
(Please guess why this happened with the operating company client I mentioned in the example above, haha.)

In the consulting industry, this is sometimes called "setting the scene."

Summary

To summarize.

How can you enter the main topic smoothly in a meeting without being asked,
"What is this about again?" or "Why are we even discussing this in the first place?"

Furthermore,
I always keep track of my supervisor's schedule,
noting things like how their day is completely packed in 30-minute increments,
or that they had such-and-such meeting today,
and I try to approach internal meetings with them after imagining that they are probably thinking about such-and-such and have likely forgotten about this project.

As many of you may know, this book is a good reference.

Here is how I, who moved to consulting and couldn't get anything across, mastered the consulting style of communication 💁‍♀️💁

Thank you once again for reading to the end.

Please be sure to check out my other articles as well~

Ambitious