Joining a Consultancy: What Surprised Me Most

You can be flexible and opinionated—it’s all about context.

Consultancy work requires strong opinions and a willingness to change them when the context changes. The surprising part was not the variety of projects, but how often the most valuable skill was understanding a client's real problem before enthusiastically solving the stated one.

The useful question behind “Joining a Consultancy: What Surprised Me Most” is what changes in the work afterwards. A sound idea should improve a real decision, not only give us a neat phrase for describing it.

The answer is rarely a universal rule. It is a way of looking at the decision clearly enough to choose on purpose.

Make the work easier to do well

The leadership part is rarely the grand speech. It is the ordinary environment around the work: whether people can ask an awkward question, whether priorities stay still long enough to act on them, and whether useful effort is noticed.

My practical test is simple: after a conversation, does the other person have more clarity and more agency? Good leadership should not make the leader look essential. It should help the team make sound decisions without waiting for permission at every turn.

Leadership is not having every answer. It is making better answers possible.

A practical way to start

Before changing anything, I try to answer three ordinary questions:

• What is the smallest useful step?
• Where will feedback arrive first?
• Which trade-off are we accepting deliberately?

None of those questions produces an automatic answer. They do make the trade-offs visible, which is usually the point where a team can stop arguing from instinct and start making a decision together.

Trust is built in small, repeatable moments. Say what matters, make space for challenge, and follow through when somebody takes the risk of being honest.

That is not a dramatic conclusion, but useful work is often built from undramatic conclusions applied consistently.