At the halfway point in this semester, our team has remained on track and within the scope of our original project plan. However, like many consulting projects – especially those requiring new skills and unfamiliar subject matter – we have had to navigate the dual challenges of work efficiency and client use-case alignment.
This challenge is akin to a tightrope walk. With a short timeframe and unfamiliar terrain, we must balance the need for work efficiency, thoroughness, and on-time delivery of key results. At the same time, however, it's equally crucial (if not more so) to ensure that our work and outputs remain fully aligned with the initial needs and objectives of the client. To put it simply, we need to dive deep into new complicated, technical subject areas, derive actionable findings and recommendations, and stay focused on how we can most effectively and efficiently meet our client’s big-picture needs – and do it all at near-breakneck speed to stay on time and on target.
Our team has worked hard over the past weeks to strike the right balance. We've consciously standardized our research process, through data tables and cross-checks, to ensure that we deliver similar levels of analysis in each of our designated topic areas. This should not only benefit the client and provide more standardized outputs, but also helps us distribute work effectively and avoid duplicated efforts or major scope changes.
Despite these efforts, our team has used all our team meetings to tweak and change our research processes, and to iterate on our previous week’s findings. We've leveraged our practical experience each week – a real example of learning by doing – to discuss how to improve both our work products and our time allocation. While it can feel uncomfortable to constantly have to reframe, rework, or refine a deliverable or a process, I think that we are certainly better off for it.
It's easy, especially as graduate students, to revert to an academic focus in our work projects. We become accustomed to parsing quickly through massive amounts of new information and data and putting together elaborate reports to explain what we’ve learned. While these skills have their advantages, academic reports are almost never the ideal deliverable for a client. Even with very clear communication, expectations, and feedback from our client on the eventual use-case of our work, our team has slipped, at times, into the standard “knowledge dump” so closely aligned with most coursework.
For me, this has reinforced the importance of staying vigilant against the temptation to focus too much on efficiency and thoroughness in a consulting project, rather than on striking a balance that works best for consultant and client. As we look ahead to the second half of this project, we anticipate further iterations, refinements, and a continuous reevaluation of our work processes and deliverables to ensure that we successfully navigate this delicate tightrope.