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Hi Jason, In Australia, there are some basic obligations that you need to comply with under the Trade Practices Act 1974. For example, you should not: 1. engage in misleading or deceptive conduct 2. make false or misleading representations 3. accept payment without intending or being able to supply As a freelancer you would need to obtain an ABN and comply with any relevant tax laws. I am not aware of any specific legal obligations imposed on consultants, per se. Have I missed anything? robocat? pparaman?

Jason, I would consider buying the Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto. It’s a book that describes an approach to communicating complex ideas in easy to understand ways. It is based on the MECE Principle.

Margueritta, Good question. Blue Ocean Strategy is one of the books that I am planning to read, but haven't read yet. As you might guess, the book is all about Blue Ocean Strategy. The top review on Amazon provides the following insight:

Itsme, Thanks for joining the Consulting Forum! You have a very poetic turn of phrase, but I am not sure I understand your background or your question. From your comment above, am I right in saying that you were previously in senior management and are now working as a consultant? And you want help to sell you skills? You may benefit from reading the following posts which will help you understand how to create your 'elevator pitch', i.e. a high-level overview of whatever it is that you are selling: 1. The Elevator Pitch 2. 12 Tips for Creating an Elevator Pitch Hope that helps.

Good question, Victor. I agree with wil that it depends on the purpose of your blog. The issue appears to be one of reputation. If you blog anonymously then the ideas or opinions you put forward will not affect your reputation. You can be crazy, controversial, shallow, sensible, anti-establishment, misguided, or whatever you want to be. You can even put forward opinions that aren't your own, just to see what happens, and not worry about people misinterpreting you or quoting you out of context in 10 years time when you are running for federal politics. The ability to write freely and without consequences can be very beneficial (and I have written anonymous blogs in the past). One of the best ways to test ideas (and decide whether you agree with them) is to put them out into the world and see how people respond. In a digital world, you may not want this formative trial and error process to go down on your permanent record. If we assume for the sake of argument that in the long run it is more important "who" you are than "what" you do, or "how" you do it then writing an anonymous blog could come with a large and often overlooked downside. Writing an anonymous blog allows you to put forward ideas without standing behind them. It allows you to write without purpose and "without identity".

Victor, I have no clue which ones your friends write. That said, thanks for sharing Jason Baptiste's blog. I like the layout, I like the content. Nice one!

wil, You ask some very good questions! I don't actually have current information on recruitment dates. One of my friends in the industry told me that the top firms are currently incredibly understaffed and people are very overworked. My guess is that it is a very good time to apply right now. I suggest calling McKinsey, Bain, Booz, BCG and some of the other firms and asking them your question about recruitment dates directly. If you do find out the answer, could you please let me know. If don't find the answer, I will endevour to ring around a few of the firms during the next week or so and update you with what I find out.

Yes, Victor, of course, please share any good educational RSS feeds you have tucked under your sleeve. Although, given the large number of good book suggestions above, I think I have my reading cut out for me. Referencing your quote about the "Fear Tax" in the other thread, I would have to say that Seth Godin is an amazing blogger. Probably the only blog that I read religiously. What other blogs are we reading?

Wil, Leadership can be a tricky one to demonstrate and I know that a lot of my "over achiever" friends have taken on leadership roles in volunteer organisations purely for the purpose of padding their resume with the required leadership experience. To demonstrate leadership, you would not necessarily need to have business leadership experience. If we define leadership as "the process of influencing others to achieve an objective" then you would be able to include a broad range of activities in which you were involved in coordinating or directing the efforts of others. - Did you tutor physics classes? (and in particular, did your students excel?) - Have you taken part in any volunteer organisations? Which experiences are you currently planning to include?

Hi Jason, Course suggestions include: a) Financial knowledge - You should consider the CFA Program Strategy - You should consider an MBA

Jason, Thank you for your interesting question. Finance, strategy and technology are all interesting options for further study and, as it happens, I have dabbled a little in each. It is worth referencing Victor's comments from yesterday. Victor provided Jbot with some good advice regarding thinking about new business ideas. There are a series of questions you can ask yourself to help you decide what to do: 1. What inspires you? What are you passionate about? What do you think about when you are free to think about anything or nothing in particular? 2. What are you good at? What do other people tell you that you're good at? 3. What would you like to be doing in 5 years time? Or in 10 years time? Is there a way you can start doing that today? Why not? If you can answer the above questions then this should help you find the passion, talent and focus you will need to answer the next question: 4. What is wrong with the world? What problem needs fixing? How can you be the solution? A lot of people have become rich beyond belief by answering question 4 and then putting their head down and getting to work. One notable example is Larry Page and Sergy Brin who saw a problem with Internet search and created Google. My understanding is that prior to launching Google they tried to get Yahoo to invest in the idea, but Yahoo turned them down. The lesson here is that you should not pay too much attention to the opinions of supposed experts. Hope that helps. Tom

Hi Mike, Thank you for your questions. ( To answer your second question first, my understanding is that management consulting firms hire from a diverse range of backgrounds. Your experience in commercial and property law could be valuable as it would provide you with insights that other consultants would not have. (a) Getting a job in a management consulting firm is quite difficult and normally requires attending a number of case interviews, which assess your ability to think on your feet and solve business problems. As a starting point, here are a few links to help you understand the case interview. The first 2 explain how to think about the case interview, the third one contains 6 hours of video explaining how to prepare for the case interview, the fourth contains links to practice questions: - Top 5 Tips to Nailing the Management Consulting Interview - The consulting case interview: 10 tips for a successful performance - CaseInterview.com - Practice Questions You can also find books on Case Interview Preparation here: - Bookshelf Since you are an experienced lawyer, you may not be interested in applying for an entry level consulting job and one way to transition into the consulting industry may be to do an MBA. You can find information about the top business schools here. © If you are also considering other potential career options, you may want to consider: - Real Estate Investment/Development - Real Estate Finance - Legal Recruiting (headhunting) - Teaching/Academia Hope that helps. Tom

To start with, I'd suggest taking a look at the list of Online Case Interview Practice Questions. I'd be interested to know if anyone has found any additional practice questions.

Wil, great question! I was actually discussing this question with pparaman tonight. Para is a consultant at SVA (see other topic). Para's view is that having contacts in the industry is a good way to get you into the interview room, but it's up to you to get the job. I tend to agree with this view. That is not to down play the importance of contacts. The industry is competitive and it can be difficult to get interviews, especially at the top firms. Contacts are very useful things to have.

My comments: (1) An MBA provides knowledge and understanding about how to deal with everyday business problems. You can get this knowledge without an MBA, but this will require significant effort on your part. If you consider only one simple framework, the profit framework (profit = revenue - cost). An MBA student may: know the concepts of revenue and cost; understand the factors that affect revenue and cost; know how to use the value chain analysis to break apart costs; have studied a number of case scenarios that highlight the opportunities and traps to be aware of; have studied for and passed a number of exams which require an indepth understanding of this framework. (2) I don't think having a PhD counts against you, a PhD is probably harder to obtain than an MBA. Refer back to point 1.

Wil, I don't have current knowledge about how competitive the market is in Australia. However, you always have to perform extremely well to land a job at one of the top firms. My understanding is that consulting firms hire from a broad range of skill backgrounds, this would include physics PhDs. I am sure the analytical problem solving skills you have developed in physics would be very helpful in the consulting field. Do you need an MBA? My feeling is that you need to be ready to do the job on day one. Having done an MBA would help you in two ways: (1) you learn many of the skills you need to do the job well from day one, and (2) the large commitment of time and money you have invested in doing an MBA provides a strong signalling effect. That is, firms can be more confident that an MBA graduate will be motivated and take the job seriously. Regarding Problem Solving Test, I asked your question to a friend who works at McKinsey Sydney office. His understanding is that the problem tests have been introduced in Australia as part of the process. However, I believe the problem tests have been introduced only recently. Hope that helps.

Hi Jim, Thanks for joining the forum. Assuming this is a serious question, let me summarise your current position: you are looking for a product to sell the business should require a low capital investment the business should have a low risk profile My suggestion would be to start a blog and use it to build a community of interest. If you can connect people who are interested in the same thing then, if you ever come up with a product, you will have people to sell it to.

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Magueritta, All of those sound like key success factors. To avoid reinventing the wheel, I think the wikipedia page is worth reading to get a good very basic understanding on this. Cheers, Tom

Hi Margueritta, My understanding is that you want to develop strategies for your consulting firm to make it more competitive. Having established that the industry is very competitive is a good first step. Now that you have done this, two useful frameworks to look at would be the Value Chain Analysis and the Portfolio of Initiatives. I comment on your analysis below. You say: Differentiating your services can allow you to appear more valuable to customers, and can allow you to service certain customers better than other firms can. When you say "communicate with competitors" did you mean "communicate with customers". You say: Do you mean by this comment that the scope of your operations is so large that it makes it difficult for new firms to compete with you? And that by introducing a broader range of products and services you can provide customers with more value? You say: This seems like a leap of logic. Why does the threat of substitutes justify any particular action? You suggest adopting an alliance strategy, or entering substitute markets. What analysis have you done to suggest these strategies make sense? You can use the P5 Forces to help you analyse the attractiveness of offering substitute products and services. You say: High customer bargaining power means that there is downward pressure on the prices you can charge. This makes it important that your services are differentiated and unique so that your customers cannot easily replace you. Hope that helps a little. Regards, Tom

Actually, I can't remember the exact use to which money was put in the book. The priciple that I remember drawing from the book was the following: save 10% of your money each and every month, don't spend your saved money, look for an opportunity to invest your money, be careful about where you invest your money, reinvest the proceeds of your investments, wash, rinse, and repeat

Jason, Nice topic! Of the 3 books you suggest, I've only read the Richest Man in Babylon. The book is based on a very simple principle, which is very difficult to apply in practice. Easily one of the best books I've read! I've read at least 2 Richard Branson books and have to admit I'm a massive fan. Other educational books which I've read and recommend: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham The Art of War by Sun Tsu (see blog post) Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie The Art of Happiness based on interviews with the Dalai Lama Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Hi Margueritta, Thanks for the comment. The Porter's 5 Forces framework is used to analyse the competitive intensity and attractiveness of an industry with regard to overall industry profitability. You can use it to look at the consulting industry. The five forces are: Existing competition Barriers to entry Substitutes Supplier bargaining power Buyer bargaining power 1. Existing competition This would refer to the current players in the market for consulting firms including the big firms (McKinsey, Bain, BCG, etc), the boutique firms, etc. 2. Barriers to entry Consulting is a service not a product, so there would not be any variable unit costs, or cost of building factories etc. Barriers to entry might include the cost of hiring skilled consultants, set up costs (e.g. overheads, computers, software etc), marketing (e.g. cost of building and sustaining a reputation among prospective clients) 3. Substitutes Inhouse advisory roles may be a substitute for consulting firms. Management training, workshops, seminars, and books. 4. Supplier bargaining power Labour is probably the main input for consulting firms. The state of the job market will affect whether consultants can demand high wages from consulting firms. 5. Buyer bargaining power Buyers are the companies and individuals that buy consulting services. For thinking on this point and the other points, please see my post: http://www.tomspencer.com.au/2008/08/17/porters-five-forces-model-analysis-framework/ Hope this helps.

Thanks for your message, After discussing your question with my good mate Para I have the following thoughts: You could use the Porter’s Five Forces and Value Chain Analysis, but as always, the usefulness depends on what the non-profit does. This is true of for-profit businesses as well. Many non-profits operate businesses – like fair trade coffee suppliers and if they were analysing whether to enter a new market, then you could use Porter’s 5 Forces. Also, a microfinance business could used P5 forces to assess a market. Say, for example, an international NGO was deciding on whether to start a microfinance operation in Bangladesh (a highly saturated microfinance market with low barriers to entry) or China (a nearly empty microfinance market, which has significant demand but very high barriers to entry) – they could use P5 to assess them. As for the Value Chain Analysis, this might also be useful in trying to decide how to deliver the maximum social impact. What activities does the NGO engage in? Are they able to conduct their activities more efficiently than other NGOs who carry out similar work? Are they carrying out niche work that is not being attended to by other NGOs? Can the NGO create a greater social impact by dropping activities that are better performed by others and focussing on its core competencies? These are but some of the questions that you might want to ask yourself. Hope this helps, Tom

I received these two comments a while back from a reader working with an NGO: Tom, I’m working on a project with a non-profit organization without a charitable status. I am faced with an obstacle of applying Porter’s 5 Forces Model to the NGO industry. From my interpretation of the model, it is only suited for commercialized organizations. I am having a hard time determining the Barriers to Entry and Bargaining Power of Suppliers (as there are no suppliers, at least none that i can think of). Any idea how i can apply this model to NGO’s? Any help would be appreciated. . Again, how can the value chain analysis be applied to an NGO? I am suggesting to the team to envision the product/service as the campaigns that the NGO likes to push forward to the public. Thanks