projects i'm working on right now -McKinsey book coming soon (hopefully!!!)

hi all - it keeps on amazing me how many visitors this blog still has! i am glad the content on McKinsey, hedge funds, trading, interviewing and life at London Business School is still useful for many people - at least I know I didn't waste my time blogging (I knew anyway since I won the ipod for the best MBA blog in 2006, the ipod still works by the way :-) - thanks clearadmit.com!!!

I remembered this blog yesterday when I was filling in the FT Alumni Survey about my MBA at London Business School, hopefully we will be again number 1!

I told you to watch this space, and much more time than I expected has passed and I am still nowhere near where I wanted to be on my projects. Life has been busy. The markets are crazy. Not crazy, but volatile. I have a new website for women in business, it doesn't have much content yet but I am hoping to add a lot more over the next couple of weeks. The address is www.highflyingladies.com - check it out! I am working on writing several books actually. One is my McKinsey diaries combined with lessons learnt (you could say "how not to do it at McKinsey ;-) ), and another one is on my life in trading during the financial crisis - the problem is it is a never ending story :-). I was thinking of finding a publisher and all these things but have now decided to just design ebooks myself and self-market them eventually, there is so much for me to learn! I can't wait to finish them, I enjoy writing so much and blogging has always been fun but it would be great to publish a couple of books. I wish I had more time.

I am hoping to let you know soon once the McKinsey book is finished. Leave a comment here if you are interested - maybe I could have some of the readers of this blog to get a free preview of the book and let me know what you think about it?

Hope you're all well!

Electives for next year - Finance, Finance and more Finance

It's time to choose electives for next year, there are many great ones so the choice is not easy. In the end, it turns out my elective portfolio will be very finance focused, which I didn't necessarily plan, but most of the top teachers here happen to be the finance or economics guys, and I cannot risk taking a class in which I don't learn anything. Based on my background in psychology, there is not much I can learn from Organisational Behaviour or Marketing classes, or even Decision Sciences, so I feel like Finance & Economics is the way to go. These are my preferences as I have submitted them:

Autumn 2007:
- Global Capital Markets and Currencies (Economics)
- Options & Futures (Finance)
- Mergers, LBOs and other Corporate Reorganisations (Finance)
- Managing Corporate Turnarounds (Strategy)

Spring 2008 - University of Chicago GSB
- Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity (Entrepreneurship)
- Cases in Financial Management (Finance)
- Cases in Financial Risk Management (Finance)
- Time Series Analysis for Forecasting and Modelling (Statistics)

Summer 2008:
- Credit Risk (Finance)
- Financial Engineering & Risk Management*
- Equity Investment*

I will probably replace the latter two with the Creativity and Personal Mastery (CPM) course, but I'm unsure about it. I'm not sure if I should work on my personality or on my technical skills. If I look at the times I am unhappy (which are the times one might choose to take philosophical courses), it is usually because sometimes I feel like I haven't lived up to my aspirations or worse, that I will not live up to my aspirations. But somehow I feel that if I spend my time working on achieving my aspirations, rather than questioning them or agonizing about them, I will be happier in the end. It is a very weird decision to make, and I wish I could postpone it till next year, which I can't. I should probably go for CPM, because the other two courses won't add that much to what I will learn in other electives, particularly after doing some hardcore finance at Chicago GSB. Let's see.

Yesterday I handed back my laptop and blackberry to McKinsey so I am officially part of the alumni now. It is weird not to have a blackberry after 3 years!!! I did not write a good bye email in the end. I guess I would have done it if I had resigned in a normal fashion, but because I mainly resigned because they wouldn't let me do anything else but work for them over the summer of the MBA, and because that they said if I want to come back after the summer to just call them, I would have found it weird to send an official "I'm leaving"-Email. So I left in silence, though I called some people who were closest. Luckily, the person I got on best and worked with the most during my time with McKinsey was elected partner last week, so I still heard about it before leaving. I really wanted him to become partner of the Firm, so I was happy it happened before I left.

Funnily enough, whenever I thought of writing a good bye email, or whenever I thought of how I feel while working there, all I could think of was this Charles Dickens quote from "A Tale of Two Cities". It would have been wholly inappropriate to write such negative thoughts in my farewell, but in actual fact it sums up quite well the contradictory feelings I had. So if I had written an honest goodbye, it would have been this:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times;
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness;
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity;
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness;
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair;
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us;
we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."

I resigned from my job today

Obviously, you and I knew what was coming, but now it is official and my company knows, too. I sent in my letter of resignation today. It's about time, because I'm starting my summer job with another company in London in 5 weeks already. Now I'm getting lots of administrative emails (I have to hand back my Blackberry, Laptop, mobile...) and also requests for meetings from some partners. I will go to Germany for a a few days at the beginning of June to sort everything out.

I am relieved now, because I can speak openly to everyone and start saying goodbye to people. Now that I'm thinking about whom I need to call, I realize just how many friends I made over the two years of the analyst program. I think I will dedicate a whole day just calling everyone, catching up and saying good bye. I have also received the invitation to join the alumni network already. The alumni network is big and powerful, the best ever, but it is weird to be "on the other side" now.

Just thought I'd share this with you.

Looking back on 2 years with McKinsey

I've added tags to almost all of my posts now to make it easier for readers to browse my posts by subject. Just now, I browsed through all my posts about my time at McKinsey before coming to London Business School. It was beautiful to look back and think about what a crazy and enriching experience it has been, and also to think about all the friends I made there. I also think most of the things I am enjoying and looking forward to now are thanks to my time there - the benefits I earned through hard work, the brand name, the trainings, the coaching by Managers and Partners - in a way I can engage on a new path now and the path is much more rosy thanks to the effort I put in there. I was remembering what our global head Ian Davis said at one training:

"Being successful at McKinsey doesn't mean making partner. Being successful means that whenever you look back on your time with McKinsey later in life, you think it was the right thing to do at that moment of my life and I'm glad I did it"

But reading through these posts, you will also understand how different my life is now. I play tennis in the sun almost every day, I play football with the women's team, I go to Richmond Park, Hyde Park, Regent's Park a lot, I am planning lots and lots of holidays around the world, I enjoy trying out new restaurants, I sleep a lot, I have new friends from all over the world ... this definitely beats working 17h days!

10 questions (not!) to ask at recruiting events

Knowing that I was off to business school, I volunteered to take part in a recruiting event of my consulting company in May. Actually, we call these events "sourcing events", where we "source" new candidates to apply for a job with us. This is distinct from actual recruiting events where you would conduct interviews. So there I was on a Saturday morning 9am after a very tough 80h working week, having come home from the airport the night before.

First, a principal from the Swiss office made a very interesting speech about the sports industry (basically, the big money behind FIFA, Olympics; Basketball etc.), and then there was a free brunch for all the candidates with about 5 consultants mingling with the candidates to answer their questions on consulting and our company. What struck me was that some candidates gave me very bad vibes and some gave me very good vibes. Some made me feel bad, angry or shocked at their naivity, others made me feel at ease. Obviously, based on these observations I would make recommendations for the candidates or not. After the event, I thought about why I got a negative impression of some and a very positive one of others. I think this is helpful for anyone attending recruiting or networking events.

What not to ask at a recruiting event...

• Do I have to have studied business studies to apply?
  
• Isn't it horrible to sleep in hotels 4 nights a week? I could never do that!
• But do you really work so much? Isn't it tiring?
• But do you recruit natural scientists? (upon my affirmation) But I studied advanced robotics, can I do advanced robotics work in consulting? or another girl but do you have molecular biologists? (upon my assertion that we have just about everyone you could imagine in my company) Well, I don't think so because my university was the first to launch a molecular biology degree 3 years ago
• Do you like your job?

... and why not...
Regarding the last question, it is actually the most valid of the list and can give useful insight. However, since I didn't like my job very much at the time, it made me feel bad. It made me feel bad that I had a job I didn't like, and it made me feel bad because I was in a dilemma about what to say. Obviously I cannot say that I don't. So I can say yes, you learn a lot, but that it is definitely a tough job. So the problem I have with the last question (do you like your job?) is that it can put the other person in a defensive and uncomfortable situation, and you should always try to make the "recruiter" feel at ease.

The first four questions are terrible, because rather than show interest in the job or the company, the candidate is looking for reasons NOT to like the job. I found that many students who had no idea about my job only wanted to hear about the negative aspects of the job or threw around prejudices they had heard. Some questions also stem from insecurity. Instead of saying that they have a background in computer science but they would love to learn more about business, they ask "but do you hire scientists? But can I do robotics?". Some also showed a high degree of inflexibility. Some candidates had a background in biology or medicine and asked if they could apply their knowledge in consulting, and I started telling them about work for healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, but they would insist "but can I do molecular biology?". First, it shows a lack of interest in a wider range of topics, and it also shows a high degree of ignorance about the business world.

So keep your doubts about the job to yourself and ask more diplomatic and positive questions instead. These will usually give you the information you wanted, but leave a much better impression.

... and what to ask

• What do you actually do in consulting on a daily basis?
• What would a typical week look like?
• What are the people like in your company?
• I studied political science and would love to try out consulting - how would you advise me to approach consultancies?
• I would love to have a better idea of the kind of work you do. What kind of projects have you worked on so far?
• ...

If you are looking for commonalities in these questions, you will quickly notice that these questions show genuine interest and an open-mindedness. These people respected that I probably can tell them more about the job than any little prejudices they might have heard second hand, and asked with an open mind. They also conveyed a much more positive attitude by asking how to make it happen, rather than listing all the problems there might be. The questions were also very open, engaging me in conversation, rather than abrupt, such as "isn't it horrible to sleep in hotels every week?".

I think it is not about lying or asking only flattering questions. It is about coming in with an open mind and asking the person who probably knows best what the job is like what their job is like. This is very different from coming in thinking that consulting or investment banking is a horrible job and looking for confirmation of this opinion. If you think the job is horrible and you know all about it, why attend the event in the first place?

Consulting - the good memories I take with me

As most of you predicted, my nostalgia has disappeared very fast and I'm enjoying my spare time . I sleep till 10 or 11 every day, then hang out at the public outdoor pool for hours swimming and sun bathing, visit my family for dinner and watch football matches in the evening, not a bad start of my two year holiday from work :-).

But as I promised, before I leave for holidays I want to share some of the good memories I take with me from consulting. As most consultants will tell you, the best memories are usually from the people and from the trainings, for some reason the combination of the two is the best - the people you meet at trainings. I don't know why this is, but people are different in a project setting, while during trainings you realize how nice and fun most people are.

In my case, the first training was a 3 week "Mini-MBA" near New York in September 2004. This is a great training for all "advanced professional degree candidates", i.e. all non-MBA hires. So it is a training that unfortunately none of the MBA graduates receive. It requires about 70h self study in advance via books, phone conferences and one excellent online course provided by Tuck called "Business Bridge Online". It was so good that I tried to convince my learning department to let me take that online course again now to prepare for the real MBA but unfortunately they said I cannot take the course twice :-(. Interestingly enough, on September 11th 2004 I flew off to New York to meet my future colleagues.

The Mini-MBA is very much organized like an MBA, you get assigned to a study group and have core courses in Finance, Accounting, Marketing, Strategy and Operations taught by business school professors. Two of the professors were excellent and entertaining - Finance professor Artur Raviv from Kellogg and Phil Parker teaching Marketing and Strategy from INSEAD. The other professors (all from Kellogg) were a bit disappointing to be honest, but it was also a tough setting - we had class every day from 8 am to 8 pm with only a 1h lunch break in between and were supposed to learn the whole core course curriculum of a normal MBA in 3 weeks. So I just got tired of listening to all those professors, especially when it came to subjects I don't usually like (especially Operations!). You can imagine how intense it was! One negative side effect of this intensity is that by now I've forgotten everything they taught us there :-).

My first study group was excellent - one Jamaican lawyer, one Iranian lawyer and an Austrian neuroscientist. We had a lot of fun, never finished our cases in time for the presentations and composed a lovely song together based on "the sound of silence" by Simon & Garfunkel, it was a very creative and supportive study group. The other colleagues were equally cool - we had a former human rights lawyer who had mainly worked in sueing oil companies for environmental crimes in developing countries, a guy who had sold satellites to Eastern European defense companies, one Russian and one Polish Physics PhD from Caltech, several female Chinese computer scientists, a Mexican philosophy PhD... overall a group of 30 crazy people from all over the world.

One especially fond memory I have is from the first weekend which we got to spend in New York. I went to Central Park and Fifth Avenue and also to visit Columbia University and Chinatown, unfortunately there wasn't much time to see everything but maybe that will change once I go on exchange to the US. On the picture a bit further up you see two of my best friends at the training, one Jamaican, one from Hong Kong - both have left the firm by now, as it often happens. I think the annual turnover of staff is about 20% so no wonder a couple of years down the road many of the people I started with have left already.

When I came back for our local introductory training, I was in for a shock. It was cold and grey back home and suddenly I was in a group of 30 ambitious German new hires in black suits, most of them engineers and business majors, 80% male. It took me a while to adapt to this new environment after the lovely training in New York. Luckily, there was a new training awaiting me called "Basic Consulting Readiness". This is a training all new hires do, including MBAs. This training is usually local or at the most regional (within Europe).

In our case it was held in a beautiful location in the Austrian Alps (view from my balcony on the left). It lasts 5 days and you learn the basics about dealing with clients, how to do relationship building and interviewing and some other more technical skills for problem solving. To sum it up, it is hours and hours of role plays, group observation and feedback from 8 am to 8 pm and lots of partying till the early hours of the morning every day. It's a lot of fun and it helped me look beyond those black suits of my new German colleagues and start liking many of them.


Once back from the introductory training, we were assigned to our first projects. This is were my bad awakening started, though the whole staffing to projects deserves a post on its own. To sum it up, what happened was that I had begged them to assign me to any project except for one in the healthcare sector (I was ready to do oil & gas, defense, finance, whatever, the only thing I did not want to do was healthcare). Then they call me in the evening to let me know that they have found a project for me - in healthcare! I couldn't believe my ears. Unfortunately back then I didn't know yet how things worked and thought that's what I had to do now. So there I was assigned to help a bankrupt hospital chain back on its feet. Two days into the project, it turned out they had overstaffed it (there were 20 consultants running around) and I was taken off the project again. I was overjoyed of course by this divine intervention - the only problem was: by now all the other open projects had been assigned and there were no open spots left for me, so I had to join an internal project for the first 3 months. So overall my first months at work were very disappointing.

Luckily, that time passed and after that a very happy albeit stressful time followed. I worked with a lovely team for the next six months, along with one chaotic engineer as our project leader and another crazy but very good guy who had studied philosophy at Harvard (he has since left to set up his own investment fund in Russia). Looking back now it was the best team I ever had, unfortunately back then I was impatient and curious and I was eager to do new things, work with other teams with other clients in other industries, so I decided to leave the team after six months, go on an extended holiday to Uzbekistan and then searched my luck in a 4 months project in retail banking followed by a 3 months project in private equity.

After 1 year in consulting, it was time for another big international training, one that people often consider the best training of their time in consulting. It is a 2 weeks long training in leadership. So you can imagine even more role plays and even more feedback than in the introductory trainings :-). Our training was supposed to be in Miami, but just a few days earlier hurricane Wilma destroyed our hopes and it was suddenly relocated to a much more shabby location about 30 miles North of Chicago. This relocation to a 3* location from the 70s along with bad weather put a very depressive mood on our group. Everybody felt deceived - 1 year of hard work and then this? So it turned out more than half of the people talked constantly about leaving, about how unhappy they were, about how much they disliked their jobs - it was pretty grim.

The training itself was great though. We did a lot of useful role plays involving personal conflicts (open and hidden), disruptive behaviour, personal attacks, difficult announcements etc., it was very useful not only for the job but also for my personal life, I really enjoyed it. On the weekend, we went to downtown Chicago which was great, I never knew how beautiful Chicago was, but I loved it. To be honest, and hoping not to offend anyone here, I liked Chicago more than New York. It seemed much more relaxed and easy going, there were street musicians everywhere and the whole Lake Michigan and the architecture are just fantastic. So since then the University of Chicago is also my top choice for an exchange term in autumn 2007 (as you see I'm planning ahead!). I knew it was great academically but I hadn't expected the city to be so beautiful and cool.



I was also very much impressed by Chicago nightlife. I don't remember all the places we went but I definitely remember I had some incredible Sashimi in a bar called Sushi Samba Rio (the best sashimi I had in my life - I'll be glad to join the LBS Japan trip to try something even better in Japan, but till then I think that sashimi beats everything I ever tried). I think we also went to the Sound Bar and then some more clubs that unfortunately I don't remember the names of, but we had a good time. We had an especially good time on the last night, partying late into the night as we all dreaded the flight back home, back to our respective projects the next morning.

These are two friends I made over the last two years, on our last night in Chicago. The guy on the right is leaving for the IESE MBA and the girl is headed for the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. So I have friends now in Barcelona in New York, as well as Rome, Miami and San Francisco, which is great, and I hope I will finally have the time during the MBA to visit them!

So all in all, in terms of the training I received as well as the people I've met, the two years of my life I invested in consulting were definitely worth it. I'm glad I have two years off now to think about how much time I want to invest after the MBA, and what is the best field to spend my time in! Luckily it turns out we have some interesting profiles in the class of 2008 - former banana farmers, DJs, physiotherapists (!!!), entrepreneurs - so I'm ready to be inspired :-).

Consulting life is over... and I feel nostalgic already!

So, it's finally over. Two years of counting down the days and suddenly it's over. I thought I would feel very happy, but somehow I became sad and nostalgic yesterday.

It might have something to do with the lovely farewell evening my team prepared for me. First, an archaeology PhD team mate of mine who had worked as a museum guide before gave us a private guide through the Glyptothek, one of the most famous collections of Greek and Roman statues worldwide.

After that, we went to a cool Israeli restaurant. It's quite original, on the toilets they play yiddish language courses. I had a kosher t-bone steak and a lovely mint salad. Then people heaped presents over me. One present was a book published in 2006 "Cool restaurants in London", it looks very promising and I look forward to checking out some of those places.

We stayed there for 4 hours talking, laughing and drinking Israeli wines. It turned out 3 of the 5 I was with had studied in Chicago (two at Northwester, one at Univ of Chicago) so they were telling stories of Chicago, which gave me certain ideas for the exchange term :-).Then the client project leader who was also with us (he's our age) told of his cycling tour from Bolivia down to Chile, pretty impressive.

So obviously I was very touched what a nice evening they had prepared for me and got a bit sentimental. One thing was very sweet. When we said goodbye, I told the partner i was a bit sad to leave now, he said "Forget McKinsey, just enjoy yourself", which I found very sweet.

This morning I was supposed to go to the client's offices one last time to say good bye but a funny thing happened that prevented it. Just before the museum tour was going to start I went to the toilet and it turned out the zipper of my skirt had broken, so I couldn't close it anymore! After ten minutes of useless effort I called the archeologist girl who came down with safety pins. We fixed the zipper enough for me to participate in the rest of the evening, but I didn't want to show up at the clients offices with a skirt held together only by safety pins :-). They couldn't fix it in the hotel (at least not in the given time frame) so I went back to Hamburg in the morning, with the plane full of Italians (Italy plays in Hamburg tonight).

I'm curious about how I will feel the next days. I guess a mixture of nostalgia and relief.

Last night in the team room

So, consulting life is finally drawing to a close! This is my last night in the team room. Hopefully it is the last night in a long time that I'll be sitting in a remote office building far away from home at 10:30 pm. I'll be here till tomorrow but tomorrow we're having a little farewell party, one of my team mates is an archaeologist and is taking us to a collection of classical statues. Afterwards, we're off to an Israeli restaurant for some kosher food. Friday I have one last meeting and will use the time to say goodbye to some clients and then fly home, never to come back!

There were many moments that I thought I would never survive those two years till the MBA. Many moments.But I did and it feels great! Probably soon I will write some more posts on consulting life, now that I can be more open.

Diversity initiatives in employers as a symptom of decline?

I have been wanting to write this post in a long time. I still haven't reached a conclusive answer but there's one issue I'm thinking about a lot. It's about diversity initiatives of big employers, in particular women's initiatives. The truth is, I'm still not sure if they are such a good thing (though on the surface they obviously bring advantages to women working in those companies).

What got me thinking was a comment made by a senior colleague I've worked a lot with over the last years. Before becoming a management consultant, he worked for Hewlett Packard for many years. One day he was commenting how HP used to be a great company but that now it had lost much of its attractiveness. Then he went on to say that it was when more and more women reached the top levels of HP when things really started to go down. I was startled by the remark because he is a very fair and reasonable person who has enjoyed working with me and has respected and supported me very much over the last couple of years. So I concluded that his observation might have been correct, I think he just got the causal relationship wrong. Maybe things were starting to go down at exactly that time, but I believe the decline of males in the company was not the cause but the effect of the decline.

I have found a lot of evidence for this hypothesis. Doesn't it surprise you that investment banks and management consultancies are launching all these women's initiatives these days? Doesn't it surprise you that when things went badly in 2001/2002, these same companies fired women in droves, and now they somehow want to have a lot of women working for them? Obviously, they say they want "the best talent" and therefore can't focus only on 50% of the "talent pool". Though this makes sense, I think it is also a symptom of the declining attractiveness of an employer - for some reason, the top students aren't applying as much anymore, so they need to go fishing for applicants in additional "pools". For example, have you ever heard of any private equity firms launching "women's initiatives"? No? Isn't it interesting? They have not even got half of the female share of i-banks and consultancies, but they don't feel the need. The industry is booming but somehow they can hire more than enough people fishing only from 50% of the talent pool, because many guys who would have wanted to work in i-banks and consultancies in the old days want to workfor PE or VC firms nowadays.

This is one thing I observed at the admits weekend: lots of guys I talked to want to go to "Private Equity or Venture Capital". One fellow admit from India even joked at dinner "if I hear the word Private Equity one more time today, I'm leaving!!". Equally, my husband commented the next day that all the female partners he talked to during the partners' club event proudly declared "my husband wants to work in PE" and "my boyfriend wants to work in PE". So, interestingly, most of the guys now want to work in PE (=more money than IB/MC), while the women are happy and grateful that for some mysterious reason, the i-banks and management consultancies are hosting women's events and handing out scholarships.

So that is what I think about the whole issue. I think women should control their enthusiasm about these developments. We should think harder about what they mean. In the most likely case, they mean that there are more attractive and better paid jobs out there now, and that guys have higher aspirations/ higher self confidence and go for the most attractive jobs. At the same time guys start looking for other jobs to take, women are grateful to get the chance to work in very tough jobs that were previously associated with high prestige but have already peaked.

I know this post may be provocative or disappointing to some, but I think it helps to be realistic about what's going on in the job market. Also, I'm hoping to hear other people's thoughts on this issue, since as I said I haven't made up my mind yet about what to think about these developments.

Getting ready for the summer!

My return to to work after admits weekend has been surreal. First, I come in on Monday just to find out that my two team mates have fallen ill with scarlet fever. In fact, it turns out I had infected them the week before, since I went back to work after a few days of illness, thinking I had tonsilitis! Apart from that, the leadership seems to be a bit nervous and I had my partner shouting at me for some alleged wrongdoings. Do they think they can motivate me to work by shouting at me if I'm leaving in five weeks? I don't think so!

Luckily, today is a bank holiday and I get to plan my life after management consulting. I'll have about 6 weeks off before I move to London in mid-August, so here are my plans. For the first one or two weeks of July I don't have any plans, I'll just sleep and hang out, enjoying the summer in Hamburg, maybe going to the Hamburg beach at the harbour. Coincidentally, I finish work on June 30th and it's my sister's wedding on July 1st so I'll definitely have a great motivation to celebrate!

From July 10th to July 26th, I'm planning to take an intensive Russian course. I was happy to find out at the admits weekend they have extended their portfolio of languages offered and are offering Russian, Mandarin and Arabic next year in addition to the usual suspects. It seems the first two terms we'll have 4h per week so I'm very enthusiastic about that, it sounds like I will have a good chance of finally reaching some level of competency in Russian. I don't think I'll ever get such a great opportunity to learn a language again.

From July 26th to about August 10th, I want to go hiking somewhere sunny. I have had such an unhealthy lifestyle over the last two years that I really just want to be outdoors on the move all day for a long time, getting exhausted and breathing fresh air. Some days all I breathe is hotel air, taxi air, office air, airport air, airplane air... no wonder I'm constantly falling ill! So the two favourite options I'm considering are:

Hiking in Switzerland

I was going to go to Zurich anyway where two good friends from my old student days are doing their PhDs, so today I realised it wouldn't make much sense to go all the way to Greece, if I'm going to Zurich anyway I might as well stay there and go to the mountains from there. The good thing is my friend there goes hiking every weekend so she should be able to tell me all the best routes and nicest spots to enjoy lakes and mountains. I'm especially curious about the Italian part of Switzerland (see picture), since I only know the German part so far. This is my preferred option.


Surfing in Portugal
Somewhat less relaxing than hiking, the very exhausting option is to fly to Portugal and take a surf course. I learnt surfing in the Sopelana surf school near Bilbao and extremely enjoyed it (at least once I managed to stay on the board after catching the wave!) but haven't had the opportunity to surf since then. Surfing was much more exhausting than I had ever imagined, so that's exactly what I'm looking for. They even seem to offer surf courses where you do yoga on the beach every morning, a weird combination but also pretty cool!


What should I do? Maybe both?

Week in the life of a consultant

This post is for MBA Blogger who wanted to know what life is like as a consultant. I couldn't recommend him a book, so this is my version of consulting life....

Monday, Monday

My week starts on Monday morning, 5:45 a.m. My alarm is always set for 6 a.m. but I usually wake up shortly before it rings, worried I might oversleep and miss my flight. I used to do the packing on Sundays but by now the process has become so efficient I can shower, dress, pack my bags and have a tea within 30 minutes.

At 6:30 I'm off to the airport, get my ticket from the machine and go straight to the lounge. I used to cling to every possible minute of sleep and thus arrive only a minute or two before the deadline for electronic tickets (25 minutes before takeoff) but I have picked up the habit of arriving 10 minutes earlier to spend some time in the lounge. That way I can have a small muesli with tea and grab a banana or two that come in handy during the rest of the day. In the lounge, I already tend to bump into at least 5 colleagues heading to different cities for their projects. The usual questions are "where are you at the moment?" and "how is it going?", apart from that we don't usually talk too much.

In order to be a consultant you need a client...

Monday around 9 or 9:30 the working week begins.... To explain what we actually do on a daily basis is very hard, because it is so varied. The general idea is that we get assigned to a project, and this can be anything from cutting backoffice cost to designing a market entry strategy to setting up world class operations or customer experience, really anything. The very first days are dedicated to meeting with senior clients (members of the board and their direct reports) to agree on concrete actions to take and the direction and scope of the project. Then we spend a lot of time gathering data, understanding data, discussing potential solutions and creating concrete suggestions. There are different approaches to this. The approach I like the most is what we call "collaborative problem solving" which means you don't do many presentations as a consultant but learn more to solve problems and develop solutions jointly with the client, using their expertise and "the wisdom of the masses".

Once you have gathered enough data and information, a lot of time is spent on drawing good and meaningful charts. At the beginning I couldn't believe how much time I had to spend on this and I thought it was completely useless. Now I see the point of it. First of all, the more experience you have, the faster you draw the charts so the more time you spend on the actual content rather than the format. Secondly, each word and number in the hands of the wrong people (or the right people who misunderstood) is very dangerous, so it is very important to document on a constant basis the status of discussions. We tend to work on critical issues decisive for targets, bonus payments, investment decisions and so on, so it is important to have documented what you propose and what you don't propose, otherwise people can easily shift blame on you.

So I would say we spend 1/3 of the time on meetings and discussions with clients, 1/3 on conducting excel analyses and making presentations, and almost 1/3 can be spent internally in discussions with project managers, partners and directors. This is often insightful but sometimes seems a waste of time when you're busy. At my current project, we have a lot of interaction with partners and directors (directors are one step higher than the partners and actually the highest you can get within our company). We tend to get together 3h per week with all the teams working at this client to discuss current events at the client (critical discussions, frictions between senior managers, potential takeovers, competitor moves etc.), this is a great way to get to know the industry and the higher echelons of the client. Additionally, we have two or three more hours for the small team working on one topic to discuss it with directors. They make sure we are going into the right direction and like to challenge everything to test if we have thought everything through.

Working hard

Working hours depend very much on the project, the normal consulting hours in Germany are probably 8:30 am till 11 pm, but currently I have to work till midnight or longer on many days and also start at 8 am most days. There is not much "facetime" as in investment banking though, if there's not much to do I leave much earlier than that. Yesterday for example I left at 7:45 (I think that was my record during the last 2 years!), or on Friday I just took the flight home at 1 pm since I had worked till 3 am the two nights before. So hours are definitely very flexible, but if there is one thing to count on it is that you don't have any private life during the week.

Keeping in touch

The time spent in taxis is a great time to call friends and family. By now, it's almost only family I call on the way to and from airports and hotels. In the first year, right after the introductory trainings, I would call many new colleagues or they would call me. Conversations were very kind and supportive. We would call and e-mail each other at least once a week to see how everyone was going, how they liked it and so on.

This has subsided significantly in the second year. Some people have adapted to work fully and have found new friends among the people they work with, or they were opportunistic from the start and have shifted their attention to people higher up in the food chain. Some people are unhappy due to tough projects or unfavourable performance ratings and avoid contact (promotions are very transparent so if you're not promoted, while all your peers are, everybody will come up to you and ask "why weren't you promoted?"). And then there is the third group that is somewhere in the middle, moderately happy but really counting down the days till they can leave. They are focused on finding a new job, dreaming about their MBA or just spending time with their loved ones and also tend to become less and les communicative.

Most of the best friends I have made fall in the third category, one Jamaican lawyer is looking to return to a law career, one Californian HBS grad is looking into a teaching career, and my fellow peer from Germany is counting down the days till his IESE MBA in Barcelona starts. These are the people I'm still in touch with. If I hear from people from the other two categories at all it is at the time they are looking for a new project and they call me to ask "have you worked with this partner?", "how's this guy?" etc.. I tend to be very helpful with extensive advice but have often experienced that once people pick a new project, they don't really bother to update you where they ended up finally. I wonder if this will happen also with lots of contacts at business school. You have a great time together, then everybody starts new jobs, the first year people stay very much in touch to find out how they are doing at their respective jobs, and then most people fall out of touch and only call each other when they are looking for a new job and remember they should "network". The important thing I guess is to have 5 people or so who are true friends for a longer period of time.

Home sweet home

Thursday evening before takeoff I also head to the lounge if I have time to have a quick snack before the flight (the food on the planes is usually unacceptable). Again, I tend to bump into several colleagues, which is nice because people tend to be more cheerful and talkative on Thursday evenings when compared to Mondays. I used to go to the duty free to bring chocolate or champagne as a present on Thursday but this has also become less interesting over the years so now I don't usually bring any presents home anymore.

Casual Friday

Friday is our "office day" (see the view from my office on the left) where we have no client meetings and use the time to prepare documents for the next week, conduct analyses and also complete some of the admin stuff we don't have time for during the week, such as expenses etc.. I also like catching up with my peers, especially with the above mentioned partner in crime counting the days till business school. I tend to be very efficient on Fridays since I like to go home early. I try to head home at 5 pm, unless there is something urgent for Monday. Usually I opt for leaving early no matter what, even if it means I have to spend an hour or two on the weekend finishing.

This pretty much sums up my week. On the weekend I usually recover from the week, sleeping a lot, relaxing a lot, playing with my nephew, shopping, watching Seinfeld or Bruce Lee movies , doing some sports and so on. In general, time passes extremely fast. This is good because there are only 9 weeks of work left for me now and I hope they pass very fast.

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Honesty is such a lonely word

In the corporate world, being honest and to the point gets you into trouble. I have been warned this week that I am "too honest". When the partner tells you something you know is not going to happen,I am not supposed to say "that's not going to happen anyway". Instead, I should smile and say "Sure, I'll do my best to achieve that" and come back a week later, confessing that there is a "slight problem" and a "significant risk" that, despite my best efforts, it's not going to happen.

I was quite good at shutting up and smiling in the first year of my job. Somehow now though, such a short time before the MBA starts, it's hard to get going. I'm just myself which is not always good. There is another complication though. Not everybody likes politics. In my case, I should smile and say yes to most people initially, but then there are others even higher up than the partners who like honesty. They will rip your head off as soon as you try to waffle and blabla. They are the ones who like me. So it seems I have to change my approach constantly.

What is tough about this is that I know it's not a problem of my company. It happens everywhere. The higher up you get, the more politics you'll have to deal with. It's going to happen at any job in the future. So I'm seriously considering setting up my own business.

The final application deadline for company MBA scholarships at LBS is approaching and I want to dedicate this weekend to the Deutsche Bank women's scholarship worth £20,000!! I'm sure I'm not the only one applying for that one, especially since the share of females in the MBA program seems to have jumped to ~30% this year. So my next post will be dedicated to scholarship applications. I hope my honesty doesn't get in the way of writing convincing essays ;-).

Another 17 hour day

What can I say, it is Thursday night 1am and I worked 17h today, finally going "home" to the hotel now, but next meeting will be at 8am tomorrow, then steering committee at 10am, another meeting at 1pm, and then hopefully around 5 or 6 pm tomorrow I'll finally fly back to Hamburg. What a mess. On days like these I really look forward to being a student again.

Wish every one tight sleep.

Relationships and management consulting

Last year the head of my company gave a moving speech to all the newly recruited analysts and associates. He wanted to make the point that being analytical and smart won't be enough in the future. He told the story of a team that had been complaining about the client project leader. They said he was inept and slowed down the whole project. They didn't know why he was so uncooperative and unmotivated. He went there to talk to some clients and find out what was going wrong. The response he got from the client employees was that everybody in the house knew that the project leader's child had had an accident and was in intensive care - except the consultants. The point he wanted to make was that we wouldn't get anywhere in this job if we couldn't connect to our clients and show interest and empathy to everybody we worked with. I think it is terrific that he wants to change company culture and make us focus more on personal relationships. On the other hand, I don't see how it is going to work.

If you want to be a management consultant, you need to accept sleeping away from home at least 3 nights per week, usually from Monday to at least Thursday. You are likely to work 14-16h per day and have no private life during the week. The type of people who are least likely to mind this lifestyle are those who suffer the least from lack of contact with friends and family. I am supposed to work when I have the flu, when it's my mother's birthday, I only get to see my cute nephew (see picture) a couple of hours on the weekend and I have to miss my boyfriend .... and then I'm supposed to care if my client's wife has depression or his child is ill? I just think there is an inherent contradiction here. Those people who really care about relationships and friendship cannot be happy in such a job and are likely to leave after a couple of years. I still think people who don't mind being away from family and friends 5 days a week for years are complete freaks. That's why I think consultants who've been in the job for a long time are unlikely to be compassionate about other people's personal problems, as they are insensitive even to their own.

That's why I'm very eager to change jobs post-MBA. I am afraid I might turn into more of a freak if I stay (and if not I'll be unhappy most of the time). Now it's only 3-4 more months of work, which is excellent. I've also started a new project now with much much nicer people than in my last two projects so I'm very happy and know that the weeks will fly by. Soon I will enjoy the admits weekend and then pack my bags and move to London!

New year, new blog...

Happy new year everyone! I'm on holiday at the moment so I disappeared for a while, not a good move right after starting the blog, but I definitely plan to write more frequently from mid-January.

In the time I've been gone, I was very happy to discover that I'm not the only MBA2008 blogger of London Business School anymore :-). Moe has joined me with his blog . With two blogs like this, I hope current applicants will get ample advice and the admits can start networking :-).

I'm starting a new project in the new year, specifically I have to fly to Las Vegas on Sunday for a week. Not a bad way to start a new project. I wonder if the technology fair will still be on and I bump into Bill Gates :-). I know Lufthansa offers wireless internet access on its transatlantic flights by now but I don't know if US Airways does. If it does, I'll definitely have lots of time to write blogs over the weekend, otherwise I'll just pick up the weekend after.

Happy new year to everyone again!