Introduction

This course introduces students to fundamental soft skills, work techniques, and technologies employed by management consultants. Topics covered in this course include project scoping, creating statements of work, meeting facilitation, project planning, design of presentations and written reports, management briefs, and delivery of status reports. The course will improve your ability to present analyses of issues and organizational problems in a concise, accurate, clear and interesting manner from the perspective of a consultant. It is designed to be taken prior to the experiential graduate courses in the School of Business.

Course Objectives

This course trains graduate students in the basic tools used by management consultants to plan, execute, and communicate their work. Students will learn to scope and plan consulting projects, develop an unambiguous statement of work, design status update presentations, management briefs, and learn how to facilitate meetings with different groups of stakeholders in the course of an industry project.

Course Outcomes

Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:

• Understand the roles and objectives of management consultants
• Understand the tools and techniques employed by consultants to communicate with clients
• Facilitate meetings and gather input from clients
• Evaluate the most appropriate mode of communication with stakeholders
• Effectively use presentation tools
• Create a statement of work based on a project outline
• Create status update presentations and management briefs
• Effectively communicate to a range of stakeholders

Textbook or References

• Turner, Arthur N: Consulting is More than Giving Advice. Harvard Business Review, Aug. 31, 1982
• Cespedes, Frank; Mattson, David: Performance Improvement Consulting and Hi-R-Me: Making Sales Calls. HBS Case 819043
• Davenport, Thomas; Libert, Barry; Beck, Megan: Robo-Advisors Are Coming to Consulting and Corporate Strategy. HBR.org, January 12, 2018.
• Christensen, Clayton M.; Wang, Dina; van Bever, Derek: Consulting on the Cusp of Disruption. Harvard Business Review, October 2013.
• McGinn, Daniel: Inside Consulting’s Black Box. Harvard Business Review, September 2013.
• Kesner, Idalene F.; Fowler, Sally: When Consultants and Clients Clash. Harvard Business Review, November-December 1997.
• Various Case Studies from Harvard Business School Press.

Grading Policies