Between 2011 and 2017, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which is one of the world’s leading management consulting firms, engaged in high level bribery in Angola. BCG has admitted to paying millions in bribes to secure contracts with the Angolan Ministry of Economy and the National Bank of Angola. The misconduct orchestrated by employees in BCG’s Lisbon […]
Author: Tom Spencer
In Lewis Carroll’s novel Through the Looking-Glass the Red Queen tells Alice, “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” In today’s fast-paced business environment, the Red Queen’s warning rings frighteningly true. […]
While CBDCs are still a relatively new concept, they have gained significant attention due to their potential to transform the financial system. What are CBDCs, and how do they work? Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are a new form of digital currency that will be issued and backed by central banks. Unlike traditional currencies, which […]
Whether you’re a busy professional, a student, or an entrepreneur, time management is a crucial skill for anyone looking to increase their productivity. Effective time management involves an ongoing and regular process of organising your schedule so that time is allocated to all of the important aspects of your life. This includes not only your […]
Imagine going the Olympics and crossing the 100 metre finish line in first place. Arms raised in triumph, and revelling in the glory of your success, you are a hero! However, the very next week you make your way back to the starting line and ready yourself for the starter’s gun. *Bang* You run the race over […]
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Merry Christmas!
Wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! During this festive season, we scale back our work obligations and make time for friends and family. Christmas is a season of gift giving. If you are a Christian, then this tradition holds special significance because it echoes the story of the gifts given by the three […]
“By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” ~ John Maynard Keynes Inflation in America is currently running hot, with the official rate hitting 6.2% in October, its highest level since 1990. Some market commentators saw this coming, and those same players predict that higher […]
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10 Flaws with Mainstream Economics
Having taught undergraduate economics for a number of years, I wanted to pen a list of some of the ideas that appear flawed but which form the basic pillars of mainstream economics. Although professional economists are often familiar with the weak points in their discipline, the problem lies in the fact that the ideas are […]
One of the key challenges of succeeding in business is finding the motivation to do the work necessary to achieve audacious goals. Since there is no shortage of motivational speakers, self help gurus, visionary CEOs, and spiritual leaders, it would seem odd that motivation can sometimes be hard to come by. Part of the reason […]
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Gardner’s Eight Intelligences
Howard Gardner, an American developmental psychologist and Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, proposed the theory of multiple intelligences in 1983 in a book called Frames of Mind. The theory challenges the idea that intelligence can be estimated using a single measure such as IQ. According to Gardner, each type of […]
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Merry Christmas!
This year was a challenging year for many of us. Some of you may have lost your livelihoods, and you may know people who even lost their lives. For those of us lucky enough to be healthy and hard at work during 2020, we had to navigate a new and challenging environment; a loss of […]
In the previous two articles, we explored the questions ‘what is digital currency?’ and ‘what is the value of digital currency?’ In this article, we will examine the potential risks. Why are some people hesitant about digital currency? What could go wrong? In outlining the potential risks of digital currency, we are not making predictions […]
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What is the value of digital currency?
In the previous article, we explored the question ‘what is digital currency?’ In this article, we will examine the value of digital currency. Why would anyone want to use one? What benefits do they bring? Digital currency derives its value primarily from confidence. If people have faith that the currency will be accepted by others, […]
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What is digital currency?
Since the advent of Bitcoin in 2008, digital currency has been a growing trend and a growing area of interest for consultants, businesses, fintech investors, central banks, and governments. In this article series we will explore three basic questions: What is digital currency? What is the value of digital currency? What are the potential risks? […]
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Investing in Gold ETFs
Gold remains one of the most recognisable precious metals and a highly sought-after commodity. In many cultures, owning gold is still considered a status symbol of affluence and good fortune. Historically, currencies from the US, and many other countries, could be converted into a certain weight of gold. Gold was the money, and the circulating […]
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The Cantillon Effect
Richard Cantillon was a 17th century merchant and banker, as well as arguably the world’s first modern economist. He authored Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général (Essay on the Nature of Trade in General), which 19th century English economist William Stanley Jevons later referred to as the “cradle of political economy”. Cantillon’s most famous idea, the […]
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Bitcoin vs Gold
With the US Federal Reserve printing up several trillion dollars of new money in 2020, market commentators have been banging the war drum. Inflation is coming! Some suggest gold as an inflation hedge, and others suggest bitcoin. But before we look at these two potential solutions to the inflation problem, let’s first consider whether inflation […]
Are you interested in pursuing a career in management consulting? It can be difficult and time consuming to figure out which firms to target in your journey to break into the industry. To help you get started, we have prepared a number of guidebooks, which list many of the top consulting firms. The guidebooks give […]
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EY buys Port Jackson Partners
EY has purchased Port Jackson Partners, a Sydney based boutique management consulting firm. Founded in 1991 by ex-McKinsey Directors Terrey Arcus and Fred Hilmer, PJP works with CEOs, boards and executives in Australia and overseas to set corporate direction, define business strategies and develop organisations. EY-Parthenon already has around 15% market share in Australia, but MBB […]
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Descent of the Global Monetary System
When I studied economics at Sydney University in the early 2000s and financial economics at Oxford in the early 2010s, I learned pretty much the same thing about money; very little. Money is not really respected in academia, and so most of the attention tends to focus on other topics: the interaction between buyers and […]
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Rising COVID cases, falling economy
As the coronavirus continues to spread, the combined health and economic impacts are likely to be truly massive. Where did it all go wrong? Since this is not a medical sciences blog, we will leave the health related issues to the relevant experts. However, that leaves plenty of topics to examine on the economic front. […]
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Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
Wishing you a happy holiday season! Thank you for being a reader of the Consulting Blog. We look forward to sharing with you more insights on consulting, strategy, and innovation during 2020. Christmas is a time of year to eat, drink, and be merry! Hopefully you will be able to take a break from your […]
You have just sat down for the evening in your study at home to write an important article. Your friend calls you on the phone, “Tom, what are you doing right now? Come for dinner!” The article is not due tomorrow, and discussion with your friend is always lively and entertaining. You instinctively close your […]
We have updated our lists of consulting firms in key markets: North America, UK, India, and Australia/New Zealand. If you are an aspiring consultant, these lists can help you narrow your focus and target a few consulting firms that are right for you. Below are links to the relevant documents. Happy job hunting! Consulting Firms […]
Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer the stuff of science fiction. Stanford Professor Andrew Ng has stated that “AI is the new electricity”.[1] In other words, it is a technology that has the potential to completely transform every major industry. Similarly, Executive Chairman of Alphabet Eric Schmidt has declared that “we are in the process […]
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Roadmap Into Consulting
Are you an aspiring management consultant? If you are reading this, then there is a good chance you are. Management consulting is an industry that offers its professionals a range of attractive benefits such as the opportunity to solve challenging business problems, network with senior executives, receive a high salary, and gain access to attractive […]
I’m currently reading Thinking Fast and Slow, a wonderful book written by Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. The book begins with a description of two different styles of thinking. The first method of thinking (which Kahneman calls System 1) is intuitive, easy, automatic, and emotional. This is what Kahneman means by […]
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Perfection
“Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it” ~ Salvador Dali Image: Twistedsifter
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Creativity
I was going to post a single quote for creativity but, in keeping with the nature of the word itself, there appear to be multiple different views on what creativity actually is. Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, has described creativity as the freedom to fail and try again. “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which […]
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Excellence
Three excellent quotes on excellence: “Some people have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them.” “Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.” “We must learn to honor excellence in every socially-acceptable human activity—and to scorn shoddiness, however exalted the activity. An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. […]
When it comes to consulting interviews, most people are fixated on the case interview. Which makes sense, given the amount of practice that’s required to ace the case. But, as an aspiring consultant, don’t forget that you will also face the Fit Interview! Fit Interviews can be very tricky because they require you to talk […]
Are you applying for consulting jobs, or thinking about it? Applications can be time consuming, and really difficult. Your task will be much easier if you have a few useful templates and guidebooks to point you in the right direction. We have taken the time to put together 14 consulting resources that you can download […]
As an aspiring consultant, it is easy to see what you stand to gain from this career choice: high salary, high status, strong networking opportunities, and attractive exit options. But a more productive question might be, what do you plan to contribute? With the arrival of the internet, we entered an age of hyper competition […]
Why do organisations hire consultants? If you are a junior consultant, knowing why your work is valuable is likely to make your job more meaningful. If you are a partner, knowing why your work is valuable is likely to help you sell consulting projects and make money for yourself and for the firm. Below we […]
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Consulting Exit Options
One of the benefits of starting your career in the management consulting industry is that it provides many favorable exit opportunities. Some of the possible exit opportunities that a consultant may consider are outlined below. 1. Another Consulting Firm Just because you leave a consulting firm doesn’t mean that you have to leave the consulting industry. […]
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Facebook Censors Free Speech?
On Friday, 22 September at 11.25pm, I shared the article below on Facebook. It attracted one like and a comment, to which I replied. I thought nothing further of it. The next day, I happened to glance at my Facebook page. The post had vanished! How strange. On closer enquiry, I found that the post still existed […]
Just this week, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon came out strongly against Bitcoin. Calling it a “fraud“, claiming that “it is worse than tulip mania”, and declaring that he will fire any employee who trades the cryptocurrency for being “stupid”. (While somewhat amusingly admitting that his daughter invests in Bitcoin.) Also this week, several China-based Bitcoin […]
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Lest We Forget
This past week we saw violent protests in Charlottesville, USA. They deserve our attention. A rally called “Unite the Right” had formed to prevent a statue of Robert E. Lee from being torn down. Lee was a General during the American Civil War who fought for the Confederacy, a collection of southern states that supported […]
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Uncooperative
In economics, perfect competition is hailed as an ideal. It is a situation where a large number of firms each produce a similar product, and so consumers can get what they want at the lowest possible cost. The cult of competition starts early. At certain elite high schools in Sydney, student exam scores are publicly […]
One thing they don’t teach you at university, but which every young professional needs to learn, is how to write an effective email. Here are five (5) steps to help you successfully structure your professional emails. Step 1: Start with a greeting You should start your email with a greeting. It is important to do […]
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Travel, Training and Mentorship
Three significant aspects in the life of a management consultant: travel, training and mentorship. Travel When it comes to travel, different consulting firms have different policies. McKinsey consultants often spend Monday to Thursday at the client site with Fridays in the office. Bain and BCG often spend a lot of time with the client at the beginning […]
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Celebrate, Motivate, Get Passionate
Three ideas for the new year. 1. Plan a Celebration It is common at the turn of a new year to set “resolutions” for things you want to do, change, or achieve in your life. The problem with new year’s resolutions is that, if they had been really important to you, you would have set […]
Merry Christmas! Joyeux Noël! Sheng Dan Kuai Le! (圣诞快乐!) Wishing you an enjoyable day, and a happy holiday season spent with good people, surplus amounts of food and drinks, and a large number of gifts! One idea that is firmly associated with Christmas is gift giving. This is a central part of the Christian tradition, […]
Six months ago I predicted that Trump would most likely win the US election. The official opinion polls told the opposite story, that Hillary was the preferred candidate, but my reading of the situation was different. It was mid-July, and I was attending a talk given by Elizabeth Economy, Director for Asia Studies at the […]
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Hope
“Hope is like a path in the countryside: originally there was no path, but once people begin to pass, a way appears.” ~ Lu Xun, Chinese author (Image Source: Flickr)
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Levered Monkeys
As Oxford’s poet-philosopher Ludovic Phalippou once put it, “we are all just levered monkeys!” What did Phalippou mean by this comment? Well, as I explained to my corporate finance students this week, the use of debt by companies is called “financial leverage”. That is, debt acts like a lever which can magnify the size of both gains […]
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Capital For You and Me
This past Friday marked the 40th anniversary of the passing of Mao Zedong, the founding father of the People’s Republic of China. Most notable here in China was the absence of discussion or commentary. This is perhaps understandable since it is Chinese government policy to celebrate past leaders’ birthdays rather than the anniversary of their […]
Management consulting is a service industry that earns its keep by serving large organisations – corporate, non-profit and government. During economic downturns these prospective clients typically have less money, or more uncertain cash flows, and so are less likely to spend money on consulting services. As a result, consultants are vulnerable to layoffs during economic […]
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How Empowered Are You?
What does it mean to say that someone is “empowered”? The Oxford dictionary defines the term as “stronger and more confident in controlling ones life”. Key to this definition is the idea of control; that is, the ability to influence the course of events. Roles in the community that we might think of as empowered include priests, professors, […]
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Cheap money, what is it good for?
Cheap money should help to stimulate the world economy, but is it working? Following the leave campaign winning the Brexit referendum, which will see the UK leave the EU two years after the Prime Minister notifies the European Council of its intention to do so, there was much fear about what this would mean for the strength of […]