My SA experience continued…
If you’re looking for a regular smooth ride, consulting may not be the right position for you. My last week had all the ups and downs that I had been promised and then some. To provide a little background, my workstream is starting to transition from the planning phase to the execution phase. One key step in this process is getting buy-in, which can be a tricky proposition. I’ve had some meetings with individuals who are incredibly receptive to what we’re trying to do and seemed almost thankful to be included in the process. But that is definitely not always the case. Sometimes there may be office politics, turf wars, or strong personalities at the client that need to be considered and potentially dealt with. Prior to walking into a big meeting last Thursday, my manager and case team leader warned me that there may be one individual who might be uncooperative with our efforts, but they still allowed me a portion of the presentation to present (no kid glove treatment here).
Their warnings were spot on. At multiple junctures this individual (let’s call him “The Detractor”) made certain to let us know of his disapproval and dissatisfaction. In fairness, some of his comments were constructive, and, in my view, helped us to get to a better product. But some were just hostile and unnecessary. While it’s true that we were warned, I wasn’t prepared for the reaction in the room. Prior to the meeting we had prewired many of the meeting attendees, so they wouldn’t be surprised in the meeting and had gotten decidedly positive responses (Prewire, v.: to introduce materials to an individual or group of individuals prior to meeting with them in a larger group, often in an attempt to get their buy-in or make any final changes). However once The Detractor began voicing his concerns, many of the attendees who not 24 hours prior had told us that they were completely on-board with what they were doing began jumping ship. At the close of the meeting I must admit I was a little discouraged. Our team had spent days putting together the work we presented and watched as a whole room of people, many of whom we considered supporters, tore it apart.
Our team began debriefing and the mood was slightly disheartened. Fortunately our former Marine Corp case team leader sat down with us, assured us that we put together some quality of work and expressed little doubt, actually no doubt at all, that we would wow them in our follow-up meeting in one week. We spent the next few days constantly tweaking our models and doing our best to incorporate the group’s feedback (at least that’s the nicest word I can use to describe it). Our goal was not simply to produce a good product, but to re-win over a group who may no longer find us as credible as they once did. The following Thursday arrived quickly and soon I was heading back to the room to meet with the same group. My team had strategized exactly how we would handle potential situations, including who would play nice and if necessary, who would push back (definitely not me). I was cautiously optimistic, guardedly confident, and most importantly, ready to defend the work that we had done.
Before we could even sit down in our seats, The Detractor had already looked ahead in the printouts that we had provided to the group and started suggesting that we had failed them again (he actually did sound like a cartoon villain complaining to his henchman after they had failed to defeat the good guys). We jumped ahead and immediately began discussing the models that we had planned to save until we had achieved our other goals for the meeting. As The Detractor continued to “hate on” (technical term) our work, two interesting things happened. First, instead of simply agreeing to everything that was said, our case team leader pushed back and helped to try to explain to The Detractor where our models fit into the entire project and why our methods were a great compromise. While this did not satisfy him completely (or at all for that matter), the other interesting thing is that it more than satisfied the rest of the room. Unlike the previous week, they began to defend us. A very engaging discussion occurred, but instead of Bain defending Bain’s work, it was the client defending Bain’s work. Not only had we convinced almost everyone in the room of the quality of our work, but they had so much confidence in it that they were willing to defend it to The Detractor. It was a complete 180 from the week prior. After the meeting concluded, our debrief was more of a celebration, frowns completely upside down.
As a team we’re not giving up on The Detractor and while we may not necessarily need him to love everything we do, having more buy-in never hurts. I guess if there’s a takeaway here (I mean I am a consultant right? How could I end a story without a takeaway, should I do this in bullets?) it would be that you have to prepared for the unexpected, and that not everyone will always love the slide that you spent hours, maybe even days putting together. That said, you have to still maintain confidence in your product, otherwise, in a situation like the one I experienced, you might not be able to recover. Maybe Lou Holtz said it best (and this kind of hurts as I’m not a big Notre Dame fan) “You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.”
Filed under: Case team experience, Internships, Week in the life Tagged: Bain, Business, Individual, Meeting, Notre Dame, Team leader, Thursday Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
