TALENT RESPONSE

An independent consultant's guide to creating a portfolio of work without constantly feeling that you're "selling." Our observations from working with independent consultants within our network – most of whom have roots with established management consulting firms – highlight several patterns that differentiate the most successful independent consultants from the rest. Independent consultants enjoy freedoms that few other professionals do: opportunities to be their own bosses

Managing a portfolio of independent consulting work is akin to managing an investment portfolio. Just like in the equity markets, there are bull times and bear times for independent consultants – and a good performing project is worth more in the bear times than in the bull times. There are some important lessons from investment theory that can be applied to managing a project portfolio. You may not be able to eliminate a bear market for project demand, but a diversified stra

Unpredictable project demand. It’s the nature of consulting. It costs consulting firms and other organizations a fortune in lower utilization, but the true cost is even more than you know. But that doesn’t mean the symptoms of variability are unmanageable. We’ll first examine the true cost of variable project demand, and then explore hiring strategies for mitigating both the explicit and hidden costs. The true cost of variable project demand In economics, true cost calculatio

There are many exceptional consultants who would be great potential assets to boutique consulting firms, but unfortunately most remain just that: potential assets. Without knowledge of and access to the full-time and project-based hiring needs of those firms, consultants miss out on some of the most rewarding job opportunities. In this post, I argue that “Nexus Connectors”—central hubs of one-to-many relationships—play a critical role in connecting top talent with top employe

Playing fair in the search for project-based management consulting work is very noble…just not very smart. While a sport fisherman may enjoy the art of fly fishing in a wild river, the guy fishing in a pond stocked with trout is simply going to catch more fish. Similarly, you *could* go fishing for consulting projects, calling on contacts and attending networking events, hoping to identify the right need at the right time, and so on and so forth. However, there is an easier w

Are you a quitter? If things aren’t going the way you want them to, do you just quit? I do. I’m a quitter. You name it, I’ve probably quit it. Jobs. Relationships. Religions. A Career. As my favorite Chicago Booth professors of Freakonomics profess in The Upside of Quitting, we often put too much emphasis on sunk costs – time, money, or sweat equity that we’ve invested in something – and not enough emphasis on opportunity cost – other initiatives you could be doing in the fut