8:10 am: Stop snoozing the alarm and drag myself out of bed
8:45 am: Arrive at the office and head straight to the office kitchen
9:00 am: Check my personal emails while munching on my bowl of Cereal. Don’t you just love “Fruit Loops” Cereal?
9:15 am: Open “Lotus Notes” and immerse myself in work emails. No shortage of deadlines to meet today. Luckily I am working in the office these days not on the client’s premises and no travelling on the agenda for a while. My schedule is usually so jam-packed with site visits and travelling!
10:00 pm: Have a “check-in” meeting with my manager to agree on deliverables for the day
10:05 am: Start the real work: spreadsheet analysis, article reading, thorough research, interviewing experts, presentation updating and customizing, client calls.
11:30 am: Time for a Cappuccino refill and back to work! Have a client recommendation to present tomorrow – need to analyze a marketing and business development plan submitted to them by a third party we introduced and ensure that it fits into the general launch strategy and guidelines we established for them. My firm was instrumental in developing a critical new business initiative of theirs from scratch and now we are at the branding and launch and marketing planning stages for this initiative. Have to juggle a lot of expert advice and different perspectives and keep a very open, curious and energetic mind in my job. Its amazing the new things I am exposed to and learn every day!
1:00 pm: I am literally starving. I hit the Italian restaurant by our building and bump into a couple of colleagues. We have lunch together and I run back to the office in less than an hour
1:45 pm: Back at my desk; finalize the presentation before meeting with my manager, who happens to be a partner in this renowned organisation. Show the presentation to him ahead of the team meeting and he has some excellent advice and pointers for changes. He recommends some past presentations the firm worked on to look at and a couple of our client’s competitor web-sites to visit to tweak my presentation slightly.
2:30 pm: Progress review team meeting starts! The partner is challenging our ideas big time while my thoughts fly to London: I do miss college days, the weather, the shopping . . . . luckily I have training there in the near future.
4:00 pm: Team debrief in the team room. Finally agreed on next steps and each team member heads back to their office. Management consultancy involves a lot of teamwork as well as the ability to conduct independent work – anyone who cant handle the dynamics and tug-of-war of a team environment is likely to be out of their depth in this role. It also requires excellent communication and analytical skills as we are advising clients in a most-informed manner on the best decisions to take – and these are critical decisions!
4:30 pm: Back in my office I spend some time on the phone with my main client preparing them for the upcoming presentation; they are in a hurry to see the results of our analysis and move forward. I also have a new prospective client visit tomorrow with my manager and need to tweak the introductory credentials presentation for that although the first meeting with a prospective client usually entails mostly a lot of listening (to the client team and my absolutely genius, very charming and highly creative boss).
5:00 pm: Presentation returned to me with red marks in it. I have made an ‘error’ in one of my key assumptions and that has thrown all my analysis out of whack. Need to revisit my spreadsheet with the new corrected assumptions and change the whole jist of the presentation accordingly. The correlations will change, the expected performance will change, the ROI will change, the charts will change, and it may be a long night here in the office reworking our presentation . . .I run into my manager’s office to make sure I understand where I have misjudged so I do not make the mistake again. Another Cappuccino refill! I can not get over my never ending need for a caffeine boost!
6:30 pm: My manager peers over my shoulder at the work I’ve done so far to ensure I’m on the right track. He agrees quite a bit of reworking is required but we’re on the right track. We both know that after the client presentation it will probably be back to the drawing board again to accommodate their revised objectives, choices and preferences. . . .
9:00 pm: Finally turn off my computer and head to the mall. I am watching an action thriller movie tonight, could use less of that in my own life . . . . . .
11.30 pm: Mesmerizing performance! This was the best action thriller I’ve seen so far. I grab a muffin on my way out of the mall and head home
12:30 am: Peacefully sit in my bed, start reading the “The Secret” (I got it as a birthday present from my mother to help me reach peace of mind and sovereignty). I barely get through the second page and I am officially logged off.
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