ALL CHAPTERS
Chapter One
How We Got Started
“It just happened to come along.”
- Ford Harding
An overriding theme for the senior consultants in our interview group (many of whom have 20 to 30 years in the business) is that they became consultants almost by accident. One young fellow stopped a stranger on the street to ask directions—he was on his way to a job interview—and ended up getting a different job offer, in consulting. Another accepted a job offer from a consulting firm because the company that was his first choice pulled a switch on the position he was to have filled. Another didn’t know what consulting was when he was first approached by an old friend with an invitation to visit his firm.
Many times the reasons for taking a job in consulting were practical and straightforward—the need to pay bills. But often the reasons are far more complex (and sometime more humorous) than mere happenstance or economics. One consultant attributes his career choice to the vagaries of love, or more precisely its logistics. Taking a job with a consulting firm was the only way to stay near his fiancé. But in another case, taking the out-of-town consulting job was the only way to get away from an old romance.
Of course, others always had more focused goals. One contributor knew early on of his passion for problem solving. Another just thought that he could do better than the consultants he had hired in the past, so he started his own firm.
A number saw consulting jobs as temporary stops on the way to bigger and better positions in corporations. But they were seduced by the business and ended up making careers out of consulting. A few others left consulting for a while but came back because they “missed the fun” or they weren’t “psychologically suited” to corporate life.
As John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.” This certainly was the case for these senior consultants.
BY ACCIDENT
Picked Up Off the Street
I got out of business school, and after a year and a half resigned from my job. I had taken a job in industry and found out that was not what I wanted to do with my life. So I resigned and relocated back to Boston. I had no idea what I wanted to do, was quite disappointed, and perhaps even a little depressed, because I had gone to two years of business school to learn to make good decisions and obviously my first big decision, which was a career decision, had turned out to be a bad one.
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