Pressure Points

Michael Dennis Graham, senior vice president with Clark/Bardes Consulting in New York and coauthor of Creating a Total Rewards Strategy (Amacom, 2003), helps top firms — including McKinsey, Bain, and A.T. Kearney — to craft their compensation approaches. Graham acknowledges that stress is part of the consulting pact, but he emphasizes that it varies significantly depending on firm quality, structure (private partnership vs. large public company), and type. He paints a vivid picture of the pressure top consultants face in their early years. "If you were told as you walked through the door on your first day of work that you had to bring enough work in to pay for your own salary," Graham allows, "that might be a bit stressful." But he also believes that pressure serves a purpose.
"I've heard comments relating that dynamic to a self-cleaning oven," he says. "You turn up the heat until the stuff melts off the sides of the oven. In a downturn, you turn up the heat a little more."

Few of the consulting firms Graham advises provide substantial programs to help lower the heat on junior-level consultants. Nor necessarily should they, he says, for two reasons:

• First, stress and pressure fuel the natural selection process at top consulting firms, which aim over the long term essentially to retain one in 10 of the top 10 percent of recruits from the top 10 percent of business schools (which recruit from the top 10 percent of undergraduate programs).

• Second, top consultants thrive on pressure — at least according to those who themselves survived the self-cleaning phase of their careers. "It's called being on the jazz," Graham says. "This is so exciting and thrilling even though it's a high-wire act. If we solve the problem incorrectly, we'll lose the client and it will be a difficult situation. You're either numb to the stress — which could be the case and you don't even know it — or you've created the sort of psyche that allows you to walk the high wire and not see that you're actually 1,000 feet above the floor. Somehow, you've managed to convince yourself that it's only a 10-foot fall."

Those who disagree tend to differentiate between negative (office politics, for example) and constructive (the challenge of solving an imposing problem) pressure. "For people to be able to think creatively and strategically, they need to be — to some extent — fresh, motivated, and enthusiastic," says Karen Ferguson, executive vice president and cofounder of Resources Connection (see "Peak Work/Life Balance") in Costa Mesa, CA. "I don't know how you're in that mode if you've worked straight for 26 weeks."

Thought Leadership is Lonely

Despite different takes on the value of stress, most consultants agree that anxiety levels frequently strike the red zone right now. Much of that strain relates to the profession's nature. Some of it stems from continuing economic uncertainty, which has pushed many firms to shift service lines, reduce new hires, trim ranks, or prune pay increases in recent months. Geopolitical insecurity recently spurred the National Mental Health Association to distribute a set of tips for "Coping with the Stress of War in the Workplace" in late March.

Even if those worries fail to penetrate A-player armor, consultants rarely can sidestep the double dose of organizational stress they encounter in their project work. Consultants and those who advise them on HR and leadership issues regularly come back to four intrinsic stress-inducers that make the profession unique: "billability," thought leadership, client friction, and the intellectual capacity of those whom consultants advise.
Jeffrey Hollowell possesses a doctorate in counseling psychology and 15 years of experience in banking and corporate finance. As a consultant with RHR International in Dallas, he focuses on executive assessment, selection, and coaching; CEO succession planning; M&A integration; and organizational assessment and development.
"Consultants predominantly deal with, at a minimum, a midlevel executive," he says. "And they typically interact with the senior-level management team. For me, the higher-level stress is the fact that you're dealing with people who process information extremely fast. I have to be so attuned to where the clients are and pace myself with them. It's like doing psychotherapy eight hours a day."
Payne says that consulting "is constantly about having greater knowledge and insights than your client." Remaining in that thought leadership position requires vigilant attention. It calls to mind Satchel Paige's advice about not looking back because something, or someone, might be gaining on you.
Consultants often work alone and regularly go one-on-three with clients who are struggling through a problem thorny enough to require the expensive outside help. An engagement Hollowell worked on this spring marked the first time he was on a client site with a fellow RHR consultant in three years. Of course, the colleagues didn't see each other during the day because they worked with different client teams in different parts of the facility. "Clients don't want two consultants talking to them at the same time," he says.

That hits upon another unique source of stress, something that Payne describes as the "price-value element." It crops up whenever the client wonders what, exactly, justifies paying the consultant $500 or $750 an hour (or, let's say, a senior partner a cool $2,000 an hour), while the client pays his own managers closer to $150 an hour. That constant evaluation process often sparks more obstructive forms of friction.
"The best consultants want the toughest, ugliest problem," Graham says. "The attitude is, 'Give me the worst company performing in the ugliest situation with the worst financials — this is what I do best.'" At the same time, the consultants must work with top executives within the client company who feel slighted. Why did that blue-ribbon problem have to go outside? "That creates stress for many consultants," Graham adds, "because it's difficult to get people to cooperate, and you certainly need their cooperation if you're going to be successful."
Add the ever-present factors of constant travel, absurd hours, and revenue pressure to the mix, and a more complete picture of the stresses consultants regularly endure emerges. An extended period off the clock creates problems for consultants, particularly at the junior level — where Payne says that they often engage in an extracurricular hedging of their project bets. "You're trying to keep your relationships active, in case the project you're working on with your current client falls apart," he says. "You're nudging yourself toward other guys who you know have projects starting up, but you don't necessarily have the time, so you'll keep them interested in you by doing a bit of 'freelance' work for them, in case your project falls apart."

Viktor Frankl, CEO

Consultants whose Teflon hides are wearing a bit thin these days have different coping mechanisms to choose from. Hollowell recommends the four Ps (see below), while many firms already employ the four Cs — contracts (employment agreements), counseling (the opportunity to do pro bono work), clubs (membership in social and professional clubs), and cars (an out from the stress of hailing cabs) — to alleviate pressure in the firm's upper echelons.

Firms often encourage partners or those on the verge of partnership to use perquisite programs because it makes business sense. Those individuals have entered their most productive years as consultants, and untenable stress can decrease their productivity. Mistakes committed at that level can be painfully costly. "You don't want these folks to be tuning forks that you hammer away on until they start to do things that are inappropriate," Graham says.

Hollowell's and Payne's coping advice veers more toward the personal and psychological, although both consultants take pains not to dip into touchy-feely terrain. Hollowell believes that a dose of Martin E.P. Seligman, the University of Pennsylvania psychology professor who has conducted widely embraced research around positive psychology and learned helplessness, and a taste of Viktor Frankl, a preeminent 20th-century psychiatrist and author of the landmark Man's Search for Meaning, offer a "good way to cope with what's taking place in the consulting industry today."
Hollowell culled his four Ps from Frankl, Seligman, and his own work. He suggests that consultants battling stress ask themselves four questions: How permanent are these conditions? Is this personal? How pervasive is this situation? And, most important, What is my purpose? "What I love about consulting, despite the stress, is that it is such a satisfying, meaningful activity," says Hollowell, who mentions an office manager he had met with the day before our discussion. "I know I helped him deal with an extremely difficult situation with the owner of his company. Those two hours with him did it for me yesterday. Did I get billing for that? Yes, but I also made a difference for that person and that company."
Hollowell suggests that consultants consider the sustainability of their professional purposes. Income and prestige —  zipping to London on a moment's request because a top CEO there needs their insight, for example — are important, but how do those underlying motivations weather a sustained downturn or hold up 10 years into the profession when, as Payne says, "the luster of the tunnel beneath the United Terminal in O'Hare or the spectacle of the Charles de Gaulle Airport has considerably dimmed?"

Peter Hainline, CEO of the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana region for Right Management Consultants, faces a tense situation every time he walks into a client's building on a career transition engagement. "We're the people who lower the stress," he says. "Well, guess what? We have a lot of stress, too."
To cope, Hainline maintains a big-picture focus that illustrates Hollowell's "purpose" advice. "If the only part of our job that we had to do was to be there right after the person was terminated, meet with them, and then send them back to our company for help, I probably would have quit this job a long time ago," Hainline says. "When I see that person come into our office with a bottle of champagne and roses for everybody, celebrating the job that they never thought they could have gotten, all of a sudden the psychological payback is there. You helped that person make a life-changing decision and achieve a goal they never thought they could reach."
In addressing the other three questions, Hollowell reminds consultants to keep in mind that (1) the current economy and war are not permanent; (2) decreases in billing don't necessarily reflect on your abilities (the uncertain economy is likely a larger factor); and (3) there is more to life than work. "It's the nature of our work," he notes, "that we get so focused on helping clients solve problems that we can lose focus on our life overall."
Payne's techniques are useful to consultants who have lost sight of the forest for the trees. He prescribes a holistic approach featuring fitness, intellectual retrenchment, and regular consultations with a personal board of directors. "It's all about keeping yourself fit," he notes. "That means intellectually fit and adding value, and physically fit — eating the right diet and getting exercise. And although it's never talked about overtly, it's about keeping yourself spiritually fit as well."

Many consultants — particularly successful veterans — have embedded those approaches into their routines. Look closely. They're the ones who can locate a quiet oasis in any airport, regularly read a nonanalytical text or keep a personal journal, keep up with their marathon training by jogging in the parking lot of the Newark Airport Hilton, pass on dessert, and use their gadgets to maintain contact with friends and family.
Stress-savvy consultants and firms also use down economies to "build the architecture for the future," Payne says. They craft new methodologies, publish books, and reflect on new models and ways of consulting. "Right now, the leaders are using increases in off-the-clock time to conduct detailed analyses of industries and companies and to get their names out there," he notes. "Look at PricewaterhouseCoopers — it's a packaging machine."
Payne also encourages consultants to adopt a corporate governance tactic by increasing the frequency of contact with mentors and other personally influential individuals. "In times of stress you need to meet with the people on your personal board of directors," he says.
When Tony Santora, vice president of organizational consulting services at Right Management Consultants in Cincinnati feels his anxiety levels surge, he does just that. "I can go to a number of people inside our own home court here and get information and some type of validation," he says. "It's part of an ongoing mentoring and internal coaching process. There are quite a few people inside the organization itself who can, usually in a very eerie way, let me know what it is that is causing the stress."

And that, he says, helps to defuse potentially implosive situations.

Sidebar: Peak Work/Life Balance

When Resources Connection associate Madeleine Bjornheimer needs to rejuvenate her consultative juices, she heads to the Himalayas.
The Washington-based guru of auditing, SEC reporting, and financial management works a 40-hour, four-day workweek — she's currently helping WorldCom climb out of bankruptcy — and has taken as many as 14 weeks off in a year, during which she's led treks in Nepal. "What appealed to me when I joined Resources Connection five years ago was the opportunity to grow professionally without dedicating my whole life to work," says Bjornheimer, who "worked a lot of stressful hours and wasted too much energy on politics" with Deloitte & Touche at the beginning of her career more than a decade ago.

Bjornheimer's compressed schedule lets her dedicate one day a week to running a business, Explore Adventure Sports (www.exploreadventures.com). When she's not calling on her restructuring expertise, Bjornheimer leads treks in Nepal and Tibet and bike tours in California wine country and Scandinavia, and organizes trail-running races in the Colorado Rockies. "I truly believe," she says, "that a rich life outside of work makes me more efficient and enthusiastic on the job."
As does Resources Connection executive vice president Karen Ferguson, who describes work/life balance as a pivotal factor in her decision to cofound the 1,500-employee firm seven years ago. Her consultants are paid by the hour. They accept or decline projects as they wish and can work schedules (compressed workweeks, flex-time, part-time, or full-time) of their own choosing. "It allows the consultant to say, 'No, I don't want that project, that overtime, or that travel, or to commute into Manhattan,'" Ferguson explains. "With a traditional bench model, consultants really have to go where you tell them to go. That is true of the Final Four, McKinsey, and similar types of organizations. To control your bench costs, you need people to do whatever you need them to do. I think our model helps limit stress."
Click the "Employee Spotlight" link on Resources Connection's home page, and a less stressful vibe is obvious. The associate's "unique hobbies, interests, achievements, or accomplishments" take up as much space as his or her professional biography. Touchy-feely? A bit, but also touchy-feely like a fox. The natural resistance consultants encounter at client sites probably dissipates faster when client employees see another side of that associate.
In fact, Ferguson stresses that performance remains the bottom line. "The key to consulting, whether it's based on our model or the bench model, is that people have to make themselves very valuable all of the time," she says. "You can accomplish great things with a day off here and there. It's about getting the most out of superstar, A-player employees. The last thing you want to do is burn out your amazing talent base." That said, many Resources Connection associates work without flexible arrangements. And, Ferguson says, those with too many work/life qualifications exclude themselves from more projects. It's all about balance.

Asked how she feels about pressure as a self-cleaning mechanism for consulting firms, Ferguson questions whether the best and brightest are always the ones who withstand the heat. "Sometimes, it's the high end of average that survives that process," she says.
Resources Connection associates deal with the heat by opening the oven more frequently.