From personal goals to career objectives, these tried-and-true suggestions won’t steer you wrong.
By David Maister
Back when I was teaching MBA students, they often asked me for advice on everything from career direction to whom to date. I finally found it much easier to compile my favorite pieces into one list, which I offer to my fellow consultants today:
So now comes the test. You’re a consulting firm, and business is down (or is forecast to be down). What do you do? Let’s assume that the obvious first action is to exhaust all possible avenues of generating new revenues. What’s left?
Business, as a subject, is about things of the logical, rational, analytical mind: concepts such as “the value chain” or the numerous P’s of marketing. Even when it’s analyzing and discussing people, business is often treated as an intellectual process of analysis and discussion: advanced financial analysis, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the characteristics of great leaders, etc. Business, at least as it is taught in our business schools and most in-house training programs, is about understanding and knowledge.
One of my favorite books is called The 2R Manager, [Jossey Bass, 2002]. It was written by Peter Friedes, the former CEO of the HR consulting firm Hewitt Associates. (Full disclosure: I liked the book so much, I wrote the foreword.)
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