As my team and I close the book on the first chapter of our consulting project, I am feeling rather satisfied with the progress we’ve made. We presented our preliminary findings to the client last week and I believe they were pleased with our results. While it’s good to celebrate the little wins, they didn’t come without some challenges. Yet, thankfully, the challenges also yielded valuable lessons.
One of the critical lessons was the importance of truly understanding the client's business, culture, and unique challenges. It took us a while to pinpoint exactly what the client was looking for with this particular project and the more we talked with them, the more the goal posts seemed to move. Furthermore, it seemed like all the members of our internal team would hear different things from the client. In a way this was positive, but it required multiple iterations to try to define and get at the core of the problem. Parts of the beginning were rocky, and we had to also figure out our distinct working styles and areas of strength. At this point in our project, thankfully we’ve coalesced into a cohesive team with a more coherent vision. It helped me learn that part of consulting projects is about being adaptive to both your team and your client.
Looking forward to continuing learning as we delve deeper into the work.