(Part 4) Top products from r/consulting

If you're working in consulting - see if you can find whether your firm has any classes taught by Training the Street. Most efficient course I've ever taken as an excel guru.

I started on my own however with this book: Excel 2010 Bible. I know it's not a video course but absolutely amazing for the medium.

Finally, as someone who actually teaches excel for my firm, the one thing I always break curriculum to show off are form control buttons. There's a great little starter here. They require 0 VBA yet put one of these puppies on a graph's source data and you have an interactive workbook that will blow a partner's pants off.

Good luck!

If I was running an 'Interviewing for PM roles 101' first and foremost I'd go over this article by Ken Norton. It runs the gamut of questions I've had over the course of many interviews and sets expectations around a possible interviewers frame of mind.

For books I have three: Cracking the PM Interview, Swipe to Unlock, and Decode and Conquer. Cracking the PM Interview is a general overview of what PMs do, how to prepare for interviews, and general interview questions. Swipe to Unlock give reasons for why certain PM decisions were made and the strategy behind it. Decode and Conquer has more interview questions, but also sample answers to them and is a bit more technically-focused.

My recommendation is to come up with something you want to build and explore what it would take to do that. For example, what if I was interested in who would win the Oscars? I might use Twitter's Search API and explore which movies come up the most with the hashtag Oscars. What would that take? Well, I would have to integrate with Twitter security so they know it's a valid request, use Twitter's documentation to figure out how to search for terms, and then import that into a data analysis tool to do sentiment analysis. In an interview I discussed what I would build, worked through what features I would want to add, and a roadmap for deployment, which was a fun exercise!

Who Moved My Cheese? is an old standby. Quick read, but so very important in understanding the very idea of dealing with change.

Selling to VITO (The Very Important Top Officer) is a great foundation for understanding how to build relationships instead of just cold calling. (I actually have to read this again)

Bosworth's Solution Selling is a book you'll read and nod and say "well duh, this is obvious" and then you'll go into the field with people who have obviously never read it.

That should be a decent start.

SQL is insanely easy. Like, learn enough of it in a week to do real work easy. Everyone used to recommend this book But you can probably find better sources these days on youtube or something.

For python, you can find tons of resources online.

R is like SAS. It's a programming language geared specifically for doing statistics/data analysis.

Personally I've found there to be few helpful books which directly relate to management consulting / business strategy. The only one that I've found really helpful is:

• Winning - an overall look on business strategies and philosophies used by Jack Welch (former CEO of GE)
  
  But here are some books that are very helpful in developing people / soft skills essential to effective consultants:
  
  
• Getting to Yes - an incredible book on negotating skills.
  
• How to Argue and Win Every Time - not as argumentative as it sounds, this is a great book which is hugely helpful on how to present your positions and how to get the best outcome for everyone in a situation.
  
• Influence - brilliant book on the ways in which we are influenced to do things.
  
• The 48 Laws of Power - a very Machiavellian put pragmatic look on the ways in which personal power is gained / lost.
  
• Vital Lies, Simple Truths - how to recognise self deception that we're all prone to and how to overcome its limitations
  
• The Blank Slate - a mindblowing book on human psychology and what we're naturally predisposed to be. Helps you to better understand people and their motivations in not just business but all aspects of life. Read from Part 2 onwards.

Look up these two books:

• "McKinsey Way";
  
  
• "McKinsey Mind".
  
  Both are reminiscences written by a former McKinsey consultant and I suppose they are exactly what you are looking for. Lots, lots of interesting insights inside, especially for a newcomer.
  
  After you grasp the idea of consulting from these volumes, and remain eager to read more, you might want to move to books focused on so-called "case interviews". "Crack the Case" and "Case in Point" are good examples to start IMO.

There's a very good Korean drama called Misaeng: Incomplete Life, which is about a Korean trading company. There are a lot of good examples of the Korean business culture in and out of the office. When I was working private sector in Korea, I worked for companies in exactly this industry, so the show resonates a lot with me (minus the hyper-inflated tv drama). The show is streaming on Netflix too!

Also, the book Seoul Man by Frank Ahrens, is a good read on Korean business/life culture. Frank was the highest ranking non-Korean executive at Hyundai (and arguably Korea at the time). I've met with Frank a few times and occasionally chat with him from time to time. He's a good guy.

I 100% agree with this. I've been reading Managing the Professional Services Firm and David makes it very clear that "prestige" is, in reality, a more advanced pyramid scheme marketing trick for HYPW (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wharton) grads to lap up while the partners at those firms make all of the cash. I don't even think this is unique to consulting firms. Most big companies that heavily employ from the Ivies work this way, I believe.

This book explains why McKinsey is special. BB have very similar value systems. Big 4 don't.

https://www.amazon.com/McKinseys-Marvin-Bower-Leadership-Management/dp/0471755826

I'm a big fan of https://www.amazon.com/Adolf-Hitler-Definitive-John-Toland/dp/0385420536

its less dry than other biographies on him and does a decent job of humanising him so you learn about the man as well as the historical events.

I picked up one of the new GaN 61W PD USB-C jobs.


Its much smaller than the stock power adapter(2"x2"x1").

Picked up a nice 6 foot USB-C cable to go with it.


Stock power adapter stays at home, new little guy lives in my cord bag

I only carry USB-C chargers/cables and got little adapters for the three items I travel with that are micro-usb.

Mouse(MX Anywhere 2) stays with the computer.

There is a book I highly recommend called Say it with Charts that was written by McKinsey's Director of Visual Communication, Gene Zelazny. It is, IMHO, the bible on how to display information in presentations.

Becoming the Evidence Based Manager by Gary Latham

Leadership BS by Jeffrey Pfeffer

Dying for a Paycheck by Jeffrey Pfeffer

Evidence Based Management by Denise Rousseau and Eric Barends

The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

Work Rules by Laszlo Bock (of course)

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And more that are actually based on solid evidence, not stories (sorry, I mean case studies. Same thing).

The Strategy Paradox by Michael Raynor
https://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Paradox-Committing-Success-Failure/dp/0385516223/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494094612&sr=8-1&keywords=strategy+paradox

There is some use to Clay Christensen's work, especially if you're doing some scenario planning and prompting questions during those types of workshops. Though, you can't just read his books and apply it the way he does. There are a lot of people trying to 'debunk' what he says...but in the 'debunking' it's clear those people don't really understand the concepts.

If you are charging hourly then you are missing out on a boatload of revenue. I highly recommend that you read Alan Weiss's book, Value Based Fees.

>interesting real stories about consulting experiences from someone's life

Consulting Demons

Depends on what type of consulting, but I found this book to shape my thinking when talking to C-Level folks about strategy. And no, I do not know the author, so pure recommendation

The best stereotype to describe your question is "millennial".

It is silly to put a value-judgement on neutral observations such as "more conscientious" just because you decided that gender is not a valid category of analysis. You may say "no, there is no such research", or "I disagree with the research", but the moralistic standpoint doesn't make any sense. It's sort of like getting upset about buckets and cabbages. Here's the research I mentioned: https://www.amazon.com/Average-Over-Powering-America-Stagnation/dp/0525953736