The New Business of Consulting

1 So You Want to Be a Consultant

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

Albert Einstein

Kayla was livid. She really wanted to do stellar work, but how could she when she never knew what was happening? This was the third time in a month that she had to hear bad news about her department from Amy, who was in the contracts department, instead of from her own manager. Didn’t he understand that anything less than total transparency was not acceptable to her?

She started this job four years ago, right out of college with her MBA and the expectation that she would use what she learned and continue to learn and grow. But that hadn’t happened.

She had been turned down four times for the additional training she wanted. Granted, the first time it may have seemed like a selfish request because the only rationale she provided was that “she wanted it” and she hadn’t tied the content to her job. But every request after that was directly related to problems and issues that occurred on the job. The last time, she even put together a cost-benefit analysis that clearly showed that what she would learn would save the company money. Instead, her manager told her to wait because next year she would be in line for the leadership development program. He seemed to be shocked when she told him she wasn’t that interested in being a leader, and that she was more interested in being a top performer and expert in her field.

Leadership wasn’t for her. The previous month, the CEO had ...