He and I have stayed in touch over the years and, a few months back, he hit me up to let me know that he had an offer to join McK as an experienced hire. I gave him some thoughts based on my experiences with the net-net being that I thought it would be a career-changing experience for him.
The email from him below was a catching-up message to let me know that he’d joined McK and was having a great experience so far. He also mentioned an issue with getting accustomed to the approach for communicating insights, so I took the opportunity to give him a few words of advice. I’m sharing it here because I thiught that some of you might find it interesting.
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This is “P”, and I wanted to follow up with the epilogue of the last time we spoke. I did end up joining the firm, and as I expected, I am learning a lot, and I am learning very quickly.
Folks at the firm are incredibly smart and hard working. I’m excited and honored to work alongside them.
One hurdle that I am still looking to cross is the fact that I was basically hired in as an EM, but didn’t come through the ranks of Analyst/Associate, so the communication style, especially when it comes to decks, is a learning curve I am still dealing with…
In any case, I wanted to reach out and give you my [early] impression… I hope this email finds you and yours doing well.
-P
Hey Marquis,
My response:
Hey P,
Wow, man…they threw you right in the deep end of the pool, didn’t they? Hahaha! That’s just part of the game at The Firm. Congratulations on making the right choice to join McK. …The learning that can be gained there and the lifetime “stamp of validation” that comes from being a McK alum is well worth it. By joining that company, you’ve officially put yourself into a different category of business people. Boom! Congrats again.
In terms of your comment about the communication style thing, that is a really big deal at McK, but there are a couple of ways that you can get up to speed on what they’re looking for pretty quickly.
- Pick up a copy of “Say it with charts” (http://www.amazon.com/Say-With-Charts-Executives-Communication/dp/007136997X) if you haven’t already — It is written by Gene Zelazny, who spent 30+ years at McK, and is basically the Bible of how to structure slides and decks. You should read this thing cover to cover and then read it again.
- Get the McK templates deck and use it as a way to structure/frame your ideas — Back when I was at McK, there was a really useful deck that had about 150 slides in it, each of which has a different slide template that could be pulled into a deck. Once I was given this deck about 4 months into my time at McK, I found it to be a really helpful way to find the right way to lay out and communicate an insight in a slide. The layouts in that template deck literally made the difference between me creating janky looking slides with good info and me producing solid work product.
- Go to [knowledge repository] and download old practice documents to see examples of how to lay out information — …There are thousands of old documents there that are categorized. Go download a bunch of those decks and read through them with an eye toward how the information is communicated. I think that you’ll find this to be a really helpful tool as you learn the game.
I hope that the comments above are helpful. I know that the game at McK can seem overwhelming in the beginning, but, if you figure out where to focus your efforts, you should be able to come out golden when it’s all said and done.
Take care and enjoy the rest of the weekend.
Marquis
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