Career 03
Consulting
Seeing the Patterns Others Miss
Consulting took the systems thinking of engineering and applied it to entire organizations.
Working with major corporations taught me something fascinating:
Companies rarely fail because they don't have smart people.
They fail because smart people are often solving different problems.
Finance optimizes finance.
Engineering optimizes engineering.
Sales optimizes sales.
Operations optimizes operations.
Everyone can be making perfectly rational decisions inside their own department while the company as a whole moves in the wrong direction.
After enough consulting engagements, patterns begin to emerge.
The companies are different.
The industries are different.
The personalities are different.
But the underlying problems are remarkably similar.
Misaligned incentives.
Broken communication.
Unclear strategy.
Bad assumptions.
Leaders who have become too close to their own organizations to see what is actually happening.
Consulting taught me that sometimes the greatest value you can provide isn't an answer.
It's the question nobody else thought to ask.