How Strategists Think | Nic White-Petteruti

What do consultants actually do? What do strategists do?

The purpose of this interview is to answer those questions and other topics professionals can learn from consultants.

I introduce Nic White-Petteruti, Director of Strategy for Gallagher Bassett and former management consultant with over 15 years of experience.

Without further ado, let’s get into it!

Q: What do management consultants actually do? What does a day look like in the life of a consultant?

I'll give the most consulting answer possible, and that is, it depends. I always viewed my role primarily as someone who comes in to a new client with curiosity and an open mind.

I didn't pretend like I knew more about my client's business than the person who had been living daily it for 20, 30, or 40+ years. I think that's the wrong approach and that's a knock that consulting (sometime fairly) gets a lot.

For me what good management consultants actually do is more about:

1) bringing a different perspective, and again, curiosity to the problem at hand. Ask “stupid” questions, because they might actually reveal insightful answers and spur new ideas  from the client or yourself.

2) Bringing, I hate to say frameworks, but bringing techniques and ways of thinking to a problem. Knowing how to structure or identify a problem that might not be otherwise apparent to the client is crucial as well.

The day-to-day is going to be research, modeling, interviews, being on site at the client as necessary, etc. Sure, the there’s going to be a lot of analysis, synthesis, and lots of slide building. PowerPoint decks and finessing language and slides to make them look pretty – it’s important because ultimately you’re trying to create clear and concise recommendations for your clients.

At heart it's all about collecting information, synthesizing information, trying to derive insights from the data you have available, whether it be quantitative, qualitative, what have you.

Q: What is one lesson you’ve learned about research working as a consultant & strategist?

I think to me, in all my consulting projects and even today in my current role, talking to people is really important. While it's not going to be the only step, conversations with people who know more than me are always one of the first steps I want to do when starting a new project.

An hour call with an expert can get you so much farther than any article that you've read. That was, and is, one of the bread and butter places to start on any new project.

As you're asking them questions, their answers are prompting new questions, they're revealing new terminology that you didn't even know that you should be Googling.

To me, it's kind of opening up the doors, right? Opening up the aperture and making the problem you're trying to solve that much more robust in terms of where you can look and seek out data.

At the end of the day, data and by extension, data collection is the crux of consulting and strategy work.

I've done everything from desk research to custom surveys to trying to use Google Maps to measure the perimeters of industrials facilities (for estimating the potential demand for fencing products in the US). 

It’s all about how much time you want to spend doing certain types of data collection.

For example, when sizing niche markets, you have to get really creative and think about different ways to either build up from the bottom or come up with top down assessments.

Q: You mentioned asking questions as being essential to being a good consultant, what are some ways one could get better at asking questions?

Avoid questions that could be yes or no answers. Because that can shut down a discussion really quickly. If you're in a position where someone responds with a one word answer, ask follow ups. Say, “hey, can you explain to me why you said that?” or “what's the basis for your answer here?”

It's that secondary or tertiary question that really opens up the discussion, so again, being curious, being interested in the “why” behind any answer is really what I think helps a question or interview yield more deep and insightful information.

The other side to that is just preparation, right? Pretty much any interview I go into, we do some preliminary research and try to draft up an interview guide.

After the first one or two interviews, I've got a good sense of kind of how things go or where I want to take my line of questioning, but initially having something in front of you, those questions you want to ask and the points you want to tick off in the course of conversation I think is really important as well.