Learning To "Give Up" And Do Things The Slow Way

Our client wanted a company database that includes a wide variety of financial and ESG data as our final deliverable. Getting from a blank Excel spreadsheet to a database with various sub-pages and a list of over 3000 relevant companies was a challenging but rewarding three-month journey. From this process, I learned that there are a lot of tools out there to make research easier and more efficient, but sometimes we have to admit that things have to be done “inefficiently”. 

My team initially thought that we could just download exactly what we needed from one of those fancy financial information databases that existed out there. When going into the library I pass by the Bloomberg Terminal with its special keyboard and thought that it had all the answers we needed. I was wrong. Understanding how to use the terminal with its funny shortcuts was a challenge. When we finally figured out how to download a complete Excel spreadsheet of the information we needed, a lot of what we needed was showing up as empty values. Following weeks of the team trying (and mostly failing) to learn about different financial information software to “efficiently” generate our database, we realized perhaps in our pursuit of efficiency, we forgot the most basic and most “inefficient” solution: to go directly to company websites to find the data we needed. This process, although tedious and time-consuming, gave us what the client wanted: an understanding of what data exists out there, how easy it is to find it, and what this uncertainty means for them. 

In the information economy, “efficient” research solutions seem to be convenient shortcuts to get the ‘right’ answers. A financial information database should, by logic, include all the financial information in the world. Or a tool like Chat GPT can answer all our questions accurately, and in nicely constructed paragraphs! But in the consulting industry where the client needs come first, answers that can be generated by some clicks on a computer are unlikely to be the ‘right’ ones. The basis of any project is data, but the most valuable part of any project is how this data is interpreted. 

In our case, a lot of the data doesn’t exist. We got there after around a month of trial and error. Rather than being a weakness of the consulting project, we eventually realised this should be a factor that we acknowledge, understand, and explain. An absence of data or absence of an intuitive solution could sometimes lead to discomfort, especially when the job of a consultant is to devise practical recommendations. However, sometimes admitting defeat in the face of a complex world of data and taking a step back to understand why things are the way they are, could go further in helping the client solve their problems. 

The Sustainable Investing Research Consulting Project has been an amazing learning experience. Within a few short months, this project has pushed me out of my comfort zone, forced me to rethink how to conduct research, and gave me the chance to work with five amazing people.