ALL CHAPTERS
| How We Got Started 1 |
| What it Takes to Succeed 2 |
| Rating the Clients 3 |
| Dealing With Clients 4 |
| Presentations & Meetings 5 |
| The Matter of Ethics 6 |
| On the Road Again: Travel 7 |
| International Business 8 |
| The Home Front 9 |
| Story Tellers |
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 reason 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.
I spent several weeks trying to think through what I wanted to do, and visited with some old professors. I put together a resume, and sent it to some headhunters. Then I got a call from a recruiter to come downtown because he wanted to meet me and while I knew the general neighborhood where they were located, I didn’t know it that well. So I parked on a major street, but I wasn’t quite sure how to get where I was headed. I stopped this fellow in front of an office building and asked him how to get to such and such a place. The guy gave me directions and then he began to interview me on the street! He knew the office I was going to was a headhunter firm. He wanted to know if I was looking for a job. Well, yes I was, actually, I said. He asked me what my bag was. I said marketing, consumer goods marketing, which is how I thought of my professional identity in those days.
And I remember it clear as today. Hotdog, he said. I’m looking to hire somebody as a marketing consultant, to work right here in this building. A week ago he’d been appointed to head a new a marketing consulting practice, and was looking to hire an MBA who knew something about marketing. So he asked me if I could be back at 3:00. That was on a Friday afternoon. On Sunday night, I was on an airplane to Texas for my first consulting assignment.
I’d like to tell you that I knew what I was getting into and why, but if I did I would be lying. I think there was actually a combination of factors at play. One was just that I needed a job. Number two was that I had no specific direction in mind, and therefore the kind of general comprehensiveness of consulting seemed to be as good as anything else at the time. Most of all, I was attracted by this individual who struck me as a very sharp guy who I could learn a lot from. So I think it was the combination of those three reasons that got me into consulting, more or less by mistake. Plus having to ask for directions.
‘It’s Not IBM, Is It?’
How I got into consulting was very much an accident. It was in 1962 and I was working at a Ryerson Steel subsidiary and had just installed a computer system. I was also trying to finish my doctorate at IIT. I had completed all my course work and was getting ready to get onto the thesis. That was already in my twelfth year in school. I’d gotten my masters degree, gone into the Army, come back, gone to IIT for six years at night, taught classes there, took two classes a semester, and was 36 hours past my masters, all in operations research
So, I wanted to get into a job where I could do operations research consulting. The only place I could think of was IBM, which had people they called “management science representatives.” I went and talked to my IBM salesmen. They said, “You’re the perfect guy. We want you to be a management science representative.” So I signed up and told my boss at Ryerson that I was leaving. He said, “No, we want you to stay here. We’ve got another job for you. You can be head of information technology at Inland Steel Container, our parent company.” Everybody was trying to talk me out of leaving. They had all sorts of ideas about how I could work on my thesis. But I said no.
I went over to IBM on a Monday morning and met with the branch manger. He said, “Before you begin as a management science rep, I’ve got a little project I’d like you to work on.” I said, “What’s that?” He said,“I want you to go over to the phone company and install another computer just like the one you put in at Inland Steel.” I said, “Wait a minute. That’s not what I signed up for. I signed up to be a management science rep, and I want to work on my thesis.”
“I’ll give you a $2,000 raise if you go to the phone company.” I said, “Thank you, I resign.” He said, “How can you quit? You just started an hour ago?” “Hey, you just don’t get it. By offering me a $2,000 raise on an $11,000 base, you obviously don’t understand me. I’m not here to get more money. I’m here to do what I want to do. And I don’t want to be jerked around five minutes after I start.”
“Well, you can’t resign,” he said. “You just quit Inland. I said, “adios.”
As it turned out, I had interviewed with Cresap McCormick & Paget about three months earlier, and turned down an offer. I didn't really want the job at that time—I didn’t want to travel. Ev Latiolais was the partner and I had his phone number in my wallet. I called Ev and asked, “Is that job offer still open?” He said yes. I said, “I’ll be right down.” So I went downtown and the next thing I knew, they made me an offer. I think it was $12,000 or so, plus some disappearing bonus at the end of the year.
So I signed on.
When I went home that night, my wife met me at the door. She said, “How’s IBM? How do you like IBM?” “I quit.” “You quit? What do you mean you quit? How could you quit? You’ve got five children, you know? You don’t have a job, how could you quit?”
I said, “Oh, I’ve got a job. I signed on with a consulting firm, Cresap McCormick & Paget. My wife said, “Who?” “You know, CMP.” “It’s not IBM, is it?”
And that was that. I started the next day and was off to Michigan for a little assignment. The snow was deep out there. The job also screwed me up because I couldn’t get my thesis done. I was traveling all the time. So I never finished my thesis. I didn’t get the doctorate. Unfortunate.
Consulting is a place to go while looking for a real job.
I think most of the people in my generation who entered consulting just needed a job. I don’t think it was an orderly, well-thought out process. Most people had industry experience somewhere and were considering a change of career or a different job. I suspect most probably looked at consulting as a place to go while looking for a real job.
Some of the transition we’re seen in and out of consulting has to do with the profession being seen as a good place for career development. As a consultant you get to experience a variety of things with many different companies. And if you happen to find a situation and company that clicks, well, things can happen.
There is definitely a pattern today that has been developing since the 80’s. People enter the job market as undergrads, they go to Andersen Consulting, spend three or four years there, and then off to grad school. We saw some of this in the 70’s but not as much. Now, with most of the firms it is a huge program. We have a program in which we hire something like 500 or 600 candidates a year, who will stay with us for two to four years.
And with us there is always the promotion possibility. You can go from being a fresh BA to associate consultant, and if you’re doing well and we want you back, we can offer a full ride to grad school. Tuition reimbursement. But the full ride can also be a kind of handcuff. Obviously, you have to pay off your ride by giving us three yeas.
It just happened to come along.
I got into consulting around 1976. I had been working for a public-private, not-for-profit partnership. The group was run by the top business executives in Chicago, the CEOs or presidents of the major corporations in the Chicago area. My particular function was in the job development area.
We were trying to attract business to Chicago and I was convinced that the group really didn't know much about how location decisions were made. It seemed to me actually that they were operating under some false assumptions. Additionally, I had done some work on a project with a location consultant and when they had an opening, I approached them about it and was hired. I began to see that perhaps this was an area where I could make a contribution.
It wasn't a terribly deliberate move on my part. I did not set out to be a consultant. It just happened to come along at a time when I was very anxious to change jobs. I had been interested in that gray area between the public and private sectors and location consulting certainly fit into that category.
I have to say, before I became a consultant, my impression was always very positive. I thought it seemed like fun and exciting work. Mentally stimulating. I've been a consultant ever since, except for two brief years as the director of marketing for an architectural firm. It's a big industry with all kinds of people and a lot of very good firms. Of course, there are also firms you wouldn't want to be associated with, as in most industries. But overall I believe consulting makes a major contribution to the economy and to society in general.
What exactly is it about consulting that keeps me going? I think it's a chance to make a real difference. You have the opportunity to work on things that are very important to the people you're working with. As I said, the variety in the work is stimulating. There is also that looseness of structure, which allows you to take things to another level, to stretch and do something different. You aren't constrained the way I think you often are in many large organizations.
That Gut Feeling
I graduated from business school in 1964 and went to work in information systems back in its dawn. I was working for General Electric (GE) in Phoenix and back then GE had a big computer division. The area I was in was involved in some very interesting programming and systems design work.
I did not like Phoenix, believe it or not. We lived there for about a year and were actually kind of poor. Phoenix is not a place for poor people, at least not if you want to enjoy what’s there. Also, in the summer it’s so damn hot and humid. Around this time I was also coming to the conclusion that being a data processor wasn’t what I wanted to do.
Undoubtedly, I was influenced by the fact that my dad was a laywer. Growing up I was always around professional services of some kind. Maybe that’s why when I saw an ad for a consulting position at Cresap, McCormick and Paget , I decided to respond. They wrote back. If I was ever in Chicago, they’d like to talk with me. I also responded to an ad for a position at A.T. Kearney, which was brought to my attention by a search firm. That was another opportunity in Chicago. I actually ended up arranging four interviews in Chicago, all in one week.
One of the people I met, Don Ramlow from A. T. Kearney, was an old name in the business. Don asked me which other firms I was talking to. Then he asked me how I was going to make my decision. Being the analytic type, I said, well, I’ve got this matrix with all these characteristics, and I’m going to do a systematic comparison of all the firms. He smiled. That’s not going to work. He said I’d go through all of this analysis only to discover that there was little difference in what the firms do, who they hire, how much they pay, what kind of work they offer, and who the people were I’d be working with. I would in the end find no discernible difference between any of them.
Well, what would he recommend then? Don said, okay, here’s what I think is going to happen. I would go back to Phoenix with my matrix and my analytic method, and one night I'd wake up in the middle of the night. I’d have this feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I would just know, this is where I belong. Of course, he was absolutely right. Don’t ask me why. But that’s the way it turned out.
As to why I got into consulting, I think my systems background gave me something to sell. I liked the idea of using analytic abilities, which is built into the nature of consulting work. I was also very project oriented and everything in consulting is project oriented. You’re also constantly doing different things, always learning, not doing the same thing over and over. There just seemed to be a number of aspects to consulting that appealed to me.
I don’t profess to tell you that I thought all this through when I entered the field. It just sort of began by happenstance and gradually gelled in my thinking into the idea that this is what I should be doing. I did later spend 10 years in line management but otherwise consulting has been my career. The truth is I came back to it because, compared to line management, consulting is a lot more fun.
So I gave it a shot.
I majored in accounting in college, which I really enjoyed. The college I attended had what they called a cooperative program that allowed juniors and seniors to alternate between working and studying every other semester. The program would find us a job in a management training program in our career area. For me that meant a position in accounting with the Kroger Company. I remember how much fun I had my first semester over at Kroger, learning about corporate accounting. Then it was back to school, followed by another semester at Kroger.
The second time around I was put on a special project with a consulting firm that shall go nameless. Let’s just say the people at this firm couldn't if their lives had depended on it find certain parts of their anatomy with both hands. They didn't have a creative clue about anything. A couple of Krogerites and myself actually pulled together the brunt of this project. We also watched as the consultants did presentations based on our work. As a result I got a very bad taste in my mouth for consultants.
Later, I went on to graduate school, served two years in the army, then spent about a year as an accounting instructor and another year as an auditor. I was very happy. At the time, Ed Kangas, who would later become Deloitte’s global chairman, was trying to attract people from the audit function into consulting. His thinking was to build some glue between the two units, and he was making offers to anyone on the audit staff with an MBA to consider transferring into the consulting group.
Well, I met with Ed and told him I wasn’t sure. I thought the consultants had too much to sell. Besides, I kind of liked what I was doing. But I did tell him if he were really insistent, I would give it a try, as long as I had the option of a ticket back into auditing. That was okay with him, so I gave it a shot. On my first assignment I found myself working with Ed to develop a strategic plan for an insurance company. This was in 1973. So that’s how I got started, and it’s been so much fun, I’ve never looked back.
Consulting? What’s That?
I started out with a degree in mechanical engineering and a Masters degree in business from the University of Wisconsin. Then I went to work for Inland Steel in what they called the Randall Rangers. It was a tremendous training program. A solid year in which five people visited every nook and cranny of a business. We would spend anywhere from a day to a week, going from the accounting department to the steel mills to the iron ore mines up in Minnesota and Wisconsin. For somebody coming right of college, I had great exposure to the entire picture of a large business.
I worked in the mills at Inland Steel as a foreman. The only problem was I couldn’t stay awake on the midnight shift. They only ran two shifts and midnight to 8:00 was just unbearable. Nothing to do. So I decided to go back to school. Inland Steel had a paid tuition program and I got an MBA at night from the University of Chicago. I still have a tremendous appreciation for that. No question about it, a wonderful company.
I made the switch into industrial engineering and spent about three and a half years at Inland as an engineer. Around that time a couple of things happened that turned me toward consulting. A good friend of mine who was working for Heidrich and Struggles got me an appointment with Gardner Heidrich. Gardner gave me an hour of his time and when we were done with the interview, he said something like, young man, you ought to be a consultant. I think I said, what’s that? I didn’t have a clue what consulting was all about.
In those days, my in-laws happened to be living next door to a fellow by the name of Bill Hocking, an operating manager and director for a firm called Fry Consultants. Bill was not the senior guy but sort of at a vice president level. The firm was originally called Booz, Fry, and Allen but Fry had spun off back in ‘64 or ‘65 and formed his own firm. Well, after meeting with Gardner, I started talking to Bill. I was very intrigued and I ended up joining Fry Consultants. We must have had about 25 or 30 professionals in the office, which in those days was actually a fairly good size. I don't know that the other firms at that time had offices that were much bigger. We were over here at 10 South Riverside Plaza in Chicago. Every practice was represented: marketing, organization, recruiting, psychological evaluations. We had these small groups of about two to five people in all the functional areas of what we then called consulting.
As I remember it, the firm was still predominantly known for industrial engineering. Unlike now, however, when we have to take almost everybody we bring in and train them in what we do, it was absolutely a no-brain transition for me. I started an industrial engineering project on Monday. They were not doing anything really notably different from what I had already been doing at Inland Steel for three or four years. So it was “Manager, get out of my way, what do I need you for? Give me the five grand or whatever the project was sold for and let me run with it.” In other words, it was a very easy transition.
Tell me again what it is you do?
I’ve been with FMI Corporation and its predecessor since 1968. I came to FMI kind of through default. At the time, the company I was working with, Fieldcrest Mills, had posted me to Richmond, Virginia. This was right after I got out of the army. I had worked with Fieldcrest before the army, and when I came back, I worked in Richmond for a year before considering a proposal to move to New York for a different posting.
Well, my wife had no intention of moving to the city. That’s why while I was in New York considering our options, she was in North Carolina looking for a house. Actually, I was not too keen on starting a family in New York, either. Needless to say, the wife won and it became my goal to get relocated to North Carolina and then find another job in the area. As things worked out the company wouldn’t pay my relocation expense. I had heard about this other firm called Fails and Associates Limited from an old fraternity brother from North Carolina State, so I thought I would look into that. I remember asking him, “Tell me again what it is you do. What is this company you’re working for? And, by the way, are they hiring anybody?” The opportunity was there with Fails so I took it.
When I joined the company in 1968, I was being paid $15,000 a year, as I recall, plus a bonus when times were good. It was a pretty good claim back then. In fact, when I got out of the army in 1967 and returned to Fieldcrest, I believe I was making $850 dollars a month. So it was a step up to join a consulting firm.
MONEY
Lo and Behold, I Had a Family to Support
Unlike some other people I never planned to be a consultant. At least that was not my original thought. I was on track to become a university professor in Renaissance humanism, studying for a doctorate at Vanderbilt University in Nashville when, lo and behold, I had a family to support and had to consider some alternatives. Consequently, I got into the administrative line with a public health department in Nashville, Tennessee. I did this for about five or six years, building an administrative services operation for the metropolitan government of Nashville and the surrounding county.
I had the good fortune to work with a medical director who understood a lot about administrative issues. He got his start in Dade County, Florida, which has a long history and experience with metropolitan government issues. He understood a lot and allowed me to work out a lot of my ideas about creating a strong, streamlined administrative operation. You could say it was a ground floor experiment in government efficiency.
Back then my wife was finishing her PhD and I decided I would follow her wherever she had to go. I had pretty much decided I would not continue toward my own PhD. I finished everything but the dissertation. But looking at the economics of it, I thought my wife would have a much better chance in the academic environment. Actually, that’s how it worked out. I had seen how difficult it was for some friends of ours, couples who were both working in graduate or teaching areas, to both secure jobs in the same area and move through the promotional ranks together. My wife and I also had similar majors and academic interests, which only would have compounded our situation. So in 1976 when she was offered a job on the East Coast, I circulated my resume and also found a job with an organization called Naremco.
Naremco was a consulting firm that specialized in records and information management. It was administrative services type of consulting and a natural fit for me. All the experience I had on the government front lines was very much what these folks were into. So it proved to be a happy marriage and I’ve been there ever since I took over in 1986 when the founder retired and have gone on from there. Our client base is now very broad and includes about 80 percent of the Fortune 500. The work basically involves corporate headquarters issues and functions, rather than line or plant work.
So I took the extra thousand.
I worked in my dad’s business after I got out of school, followed by a stint in the Navy. I had an accounting degree and really wanted to be an auditor. In 1968, a friend of mine, a fraternity brother, called and suggested I try to interview with Arthur Andersen. I did and was very impressed with their approach. I liked their attention to people and professional development. I hadn’t really seen anything like it before. They also said they would pay me $11,000 to be an auditor or $12,000 to be a consultant. I had a wife, one child and another in the oven so I took the extra thousand. And that's how I became a consultant.
Taking the job meant moving to New York from Pennsylvania where I was then working. We didn't have any money and my wife was very pregnant and I had rented this apartment in New Jersey for $190 a month. It was a very small two bedroom with a leaky roof. We had two women of ill repute living below us who entertained people at all hours of the night. The first time my wife saw the place she cried. But it was the only place we could afford and we lived there for three years.
I’d been working in factories and had ripped all the pants for my suits. So I had no suits, just sport jackets and slacks. Of course, you had to wear a suit at Andersen, so we scraped together all the money we had and I bought myself a suit. On the very first day of work, it rained. I mean it rained big time. And I had to wear that suit every day for two weeks, until I got paid and could buy another one. My wife ironed it every night for two weeks.
Show me the money!
I became a consultant when I was 29. At the time, I was making about $58,000 a year. I was at a big Fortune 50 company, Rockwell International, doing well, getting all the promotions and the raises. I was doing such a great job I was getting raises of 6.36 percent over 15 months, which was 50 percent over the norm. Yet every one of my friends was making at least twice that. So I needed to do something different. I was in search of some dollars.
I went out and interviewed with A. T. Kearney and with Metzler & Associates, also with Kidder, Peabody. The latter had a great ad in the Chicago Tribune. It said, come make lots of money now. I thought, that’s my kind of company. I interviewed with Dick Metzler at the old Metzler office. Dick said several things that stuck. One was that we're here to make money. They didn’t put their profits into the walls or the flooring like some companies. I mean, Kearney did have this beautiful office and the Metzler office wasn’t much but that was cool with me. I checked out where Dick lived and that impressed me so I joined. What can I say?
We had the best system. The more you billed, the more you made, and the more you then moved up the food chain. With every step up you got a huge increase in income. Naturally, everybody really believed in that system 100 percent and wouldn't do anything to mess with it. That’s also why we would do some of the work we did, state commissions, jobs in the bayous, jobs where we’d end up getting chased by wild dogs. But that’s another story….
I’m going out with a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.
I wasn’t sure at first I wanted to be in business. I had graduated from Harvard College in 1968 with a degree in English literature but hadn’t really thought much about what I wanted to do. I had a couple of offers to teach in Denver. Of course, this was during the Vietnam War when there was a possibility of being drafted. I knew if I were drafted I was going to go. You don’t get raised in Western Pennsylvania and become a conscientious objector. That’s Deer Hunter land, after all. But teaching did offer a deferment so that’s what I did. I taught for three years and did a lot of creative writing. Later, I got a high draft number in the lottery.
I had gotten into stocks and bonds around this time and found myself thinking, well, if I’m going to be in business, I really ought to go to business school. So I went back to Harvard for my MBA. Honestly, I thought business school was a joke. It was a lot of one-up-man-ship and very little good teaching. I had people teaching production because they had a background in the Department of Transportation, even though I don’t think they would have known a factory from a train.
Later, after I got my MBA, I joined a small not-for-profit consulting firm in Washington, D.C., founded by Lever Brothers. They were involved in marketing for social causes. It wasn’t just public service advertising but involved some serious thinking about how to motivate people to change their behavior, in regard to their health and other issues. It was actually great training for what I’ve since done in consulting. How to inspire people to do things when money isn’t involved is a very interesting marketing challenge. I worked there for a couple of years until I joined one of our clients, United Way of America, which had hired us to write their football spots.
I wrote and produced for two years. In 1980, McKinsey contacted me about becoming their director of communications. I remember saying to them, “Well, that’s fine, but I knew you guys in business school and you didn’t like me then and I didn’t like you and I’m not interested. Besides, I’m going out with a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader tonight. We just did a television spot for for their organization.”
Well, I thought that was that. But they called back three weeks later. Apparently, they had called every major public relations firm in town and couldn’t find anyone who was the right fit. They still wanted me on board. Again, I repeated that I wasn’t interested. But now they offered to double my salary! Well, at that point I said I’d do it.
They seem to make a lot of money.
My interest in consulting goes back to when I was attending Wharton School of Finance for my MBA. During the spring of my first year I ran into a friend of mine who had graduated from Lehigh with me. He had become an accountant with Price Waterhouse. We were having a drink together and he told me about a bunch of guys wandering around the halls. He said, I don’t know what they actually do but they seem to make a lot of money.
That sounded good to me and I said, “Do you think they hire people for the summer?” He had no earthly idea so I wrote to Price Waterhouse, to Peat Marwick, and to Cooper’s. Price Waterhouse never responded. Peat Marwick said contact them when I graduated. Cooper’s invited me in for an interview. My graduate training was in industrial engineering and I had already done an acquisition of a small industrial engineering consulting firm. About two weeks after the interview they called to offer me a summer job.
So I started out with Cooper’s and worked the summer, liked it very much, and returned that January after graduation. I found out later that the person who had hired me was this wily old partner who was the most conservative guy I’ve ever known. Apparently, he wasn’t going to put his money on the line before he knew that my time had been sold. So before he would offer me summer employment, he took my resume and went out and sold my time to a client. My first job that summer involved sampling work in a refractory grip plant. We were trying to improve their management and material handling equipment. I got a good suntan, lost about ten pounds, and learned something about living on the road.
And, in spite of all that, I went into consulting.
INTENTIONAL
Interested In What Makes a Business Tick
I got into consulting because I was interested in the operations side of business. I joined Arthur Andersen in 1968 right out of college, with my degree in accounting. The normal path for someone like me would have been to join a CPA firm and go into the audit side of the business. But I knew even then that I did not want to be a practicing auditor. I was more interested in what makes a business tick, and how to go about improving operations, as opposed to focusing on the numbers or what had taken place in the past.
At the time Andersen was moving heavily into what is now called financial services, but which then was simply known as the brokerage business. The firm had made the decision to train a group of people within the consulting practice who could support the brokerage audits from a systems perspective. They told me if I came aboard, I could go straight into this group. Of course, I said yes. I didn’t hesitate. The irony is that I did very little of the EDP audit support work, which had been the reason this group was set up. Ninety-five percent of my time was spent in the brokerage industry doing straight consulting work.
What made me as an undergrad want to go into consulting? It’s been so many years now, I honestly can’t remember more of the specifics, other than, as I said, just being interested in the operation issues. I do know it’s been a decision I've never regretted. I spent fifteen years at Andersen and was a partner in another consulting practice for four more years before I left the business. In terms of a career decision, it’s been a great experience.
Of course, I’ve also had the experience of being so frustrated at times with a client that I’ve said to myself there’s got to be a better life. I would imagine most of us have felt that way at some time. You find yourself wanting to retire about three times a week. That hidden desire comes up to just open up a bookstore and sit out front in a rocking chair with some mint juleps. But you get over that. This has been a good profession for me. It’s been a constant learning experience and I really have no regrets. My older kids are in the consulting profession now and that was their choice. Of course, I suspect I had some influence there.
I thought I could do better.
When we started the firm I had been working for Citibank. I knew that I wanted to do something different. My own experience as a buyer of consulting services was that they were always promising me A, B, and C. I would get half of what they promised and it would cost me twice what they told me it was going to cost. Well, I said to myself, you know, I'm sitting on this side of the desk and I'm the one always paying. What if there were a consultancy out there that would actually tell you what you need, what you're really going to pay, and deliver what they really said they would? Now, wouldn’t that be something revolutionary?
That’s basically the premise that we went to business with. Let’s have a firm that focuses not only on looking good and telling people what they need to do, but on actually implementing things. Let’s give people more than pretty reports. So we started the firm with this idea. We were very tactically oriented. We’d go to a client and do a free walk-through, spend three or four days and come back with a very focused proposal. That’s how we worked. We’d say something like, “You know, we just looked at this area and we can restructure this for you and run it for $5 million a year less. Our fee to do this job will be so much, and it'll take us a year to do the engagement.”
Interestingly, when we got started I had picked out this nice high tech name, and a friend of mine who was a bank senior vice president asked me why I had picked this name. I said, well, I guess because it sounds impressive. He said no, if you want people to believe you're really in this business, put your name on the door. They'll take you a lot more seriously. So we became Lobue Associates. And for 17 years we were Lobue Associates until we formed a holding company. Now we are Lobue Holdings LLC.
Something else interesting. When I started, I said to myself, I'll do this for about five years and then get into something else. That was 18 years ago.
STAYED A LONG TIME
‘My God, How Did This Happen?’
Initially, my thinking had been that I would never go into consulting as a career. I thought I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial. But I had applied to business school when I was in college at Stanford, and at the time business schools sometimes required people to work for a few years before admission. They would leave a position open for you, which meant I was admitted two years down the road.
I looked around for the job I thought would offer the best training and ended up taking a position with Bain & Company. Being a consultant seemed like a great opportunity to learn, to be exposed to a lot of different industries, and to be paid while learning about different emerging opportunities. Still, I thought I’d just be in the business for a couple of years.
While I was working at Bain, a few of the people there left to start another consulting firm, called the Monitor Company. They were working with Michael Porter, the Harvard Business School professor. I went on to business school first but later ended up joining Monitor, which became known as a young, hot consulting firm with one office and plans to open up many more.
Even then I thought I'd work just long enough to pay off my student loans. In the meantime, I’d figure out what I really wanted to do. At least that was the plan. Well, I ended up spending almost ten years there, until 1995. I woke up one day and realized I was about to celebrate my tenth anniversary at Monitor. I thought, ‘My God, how did that happen?’ I must have enjoyed it a lot more than I ever expected.
Eventually, I left with a colleague and another partner, who happens to be my brother, to start our own investment group. I had been doing a lot of work in the information and publishing industries, so we went to some private investors and raised enough capital to buy and build specialty information businesses. In 1995, we started our company, called International Information Investors. About nine months later we acquired Kennedy. [editor’s note—Kennedy Information is the publisher of Consulting Magazine. It has since been acquired by the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.]
Psychologically Unsuited for a Regular Job.
I was at the University of North Carolina working on an MBA with the full intention of going to work in the forest products industry. Between my first and second years, however, I ended up working on a consulting project with a professor that involved assessing the market potential of a product then called the Power Whip or the Weed Whacker or something like that.
It was an interesting project and the professor, whom I got to know pretty well, suggested that I consider going into consulting. So I added a few consulting firms to my interview list for the fall. One thing led to another, and I ended up going to work for Theodore Barry & Associates. Before I went back to graduate school, I had worked for three years. So I did have some work experience before I got into consulting. But I had very little real knowledge of what consulting was until I got into business school. Even then, I think I learned more by going on interviews than from anything else. Actually, consulting was still a fairly new industry back then, with roots in industrial engineering and the think tanks of World War II. I suppose what appealed to me at the end of the day was just the chance to rub elbows with a lot of smart people in the industry and be exposed to a lot of different companies. Still, my thoughts at first were to just go into consulting and work at it for two or three years, then parlay that into another job.
Of course, what happened was I stayed at Theodore Barry & Associates long enough to become a partner, which was almost five years. I was made a partner in September 1981 and then resigned in November to work for a client. So I did kind of end up doing what I thought I was going to do, which was to leave and go into industry. I went into industry only to discover that I had become, as a result of consulting, psychologically unsuited to be in a bureaucracy.
I realized within the first couple of months that I'd made a terrible mistake. But I stayed there for almost two years until I could eventually work my way back out. At the time my employer, who had previously been a client, was gracious enough to say, "If you want to start your own practice, we'll be happy to be your first client. You can continue working with us." I quickly turned that into, "Absolutely, thank you very much. I will now start my own firm." And that's what I did, in 1983.
LOVE
The Places Love Leads Us-Chapter I
I don’t know that when you go to college you say, I want to specialize in management consulting. If you ask me why I got into this business, I would have to say it was really because of love. Early in my career, I was the eastern area financial manager of American Hospital Supply Corporation, which was a great company to start out with. It was a Chicago-based organization, very market-, customer-service driven, with a 30-percent compounded growth rate. It was also where I met my wife, which in its own way led me to this career in consulting.
When I was hired, I’d survived this arduous open-interview process where we were required to talk about ourselves for an hour, with TV cameras going. Ostensibly, the interviewer was himself being evaluated for an HR class, which is why the cameras were there. But, of course, what would happen is the VP of HR would ask the class to evaluate the candidate. They’d look at your logic flow, image, voice inflection, whether your tie was crooked. I mean, they would just rip you to shreds.
Somehow I survived through all this and took a job, eventually being promoted to a field location in New Jersey. This is where I met my wife. She was heading up customer service. I was such a workaholic I think she felt sorry for me and wanted to help me. So she introduced me to all her friends and I dated all of them until she was the last person standing. Then we started to become good friends amidst a frenzy of 75-hour workweeks, when there wasn’t much time to play anyway.
One thing lead to another and when I was promoted again, this time back to Chicago, that’s when I realized the feelings we had for each other. So I had to make the decision between career and love. My wife is a native New Jerseyian and said she would come with me to Chicago, but I could tell she was hesitant. I thought perhaps I should try to explore other opportunities within the organization. I looked into sales but just had a terrible feeling about hospitals. It was such a sterile environment. I thought I’d better steer clear of that, even though they were great jobs. I mean the products sold themselves. The reps made over $100,000 a year (this was back in the 1970s). But I had to be honest with myself and say, not for me.
As luck would have it, I had met the vice chairman of Peat Marwick consulting at a Beta Gamma Sigma function and ended up sending him a resume. About three months later I got a call from him. Or I should say, I almost didn’t get the call from him. My wife was home painting the house and answered the phone on the 13th ring (pre-answering machine days) and I got the news that they wanted to interview me.
The rest is history.
Where love leads us-Chapter II
My story is not one of having mapped out a clear career path in consulting. It's much more mundane. I graduated from Lehigh University with a degree in electrical engineering. I’d done fairly well in school so there were many opportunities. Unfortunately, the one thing I absolutely did not want to do was anything involving engineering. I had good grades in the area but knew I was would be the world's worst engineer from a mechanical or actual application side.
Instead, I looked for business jobs where I would be able to apply my engineering degree. I was looking at positions with IBM and GE and some of the blue chip companies. For personal reasons, however (my grandmother was very ill for a long time), I decided I needed to find a job in the Philadelphia area, at least for a time. That’s how I ended up working for PECO Energy. At the time it was called Philadelphia Electric Company.
I wasn’t interested in energy per se, but it just happened to be the right geography at the right time. I also thought it would give me the opportunity to go to school at night and work toward my MBA, which I did at Temple University. So I worked there for about four and a half years, until 1990, and progressed through a number of entry-level and lower level management jobs.
Frankly, I think I was quite naive about consulting back then. I didn't understand what consultants did and had absolutely no aspiration or inclination for the business. In late 1989, however, McKinsey was hired by PECO Energy and I found myself working alongside their consultants. I recall they had somewhat of a rarified air about them, and everyone knew they had firm access to our CEO. I was becoming aware of the McKinsey model, but quite frankly I was somewhat disdainful of it. That was where I was at then.
Another personal situation also intervened to influence my career direction. I had been dating a great woman, a local Philadelphia gal who everyone loved, including my parents. Well, at one point she moved back home with her folks for a couple months, for reasons I didn't fully understand. I eventually learned that there had been this whole sort of confluence of events involving a medication she had been taking. It had really deep-sixed her and she was hospitalized. It was the saddest thing in the world.
I visited her for many months during her hospitalization. Later, when she went home, she surprised me by telling me she wanted to get married. Honestly, I had never been thinking about that. I also knew it would never work. Unfortunately, she couldn’t accept this and began stalking me, at home and at work, calling me all the time. I just couldn't get rid of her and it became a terrible embarrassment. She was a nice person but I don't think she really understood what she was doing.
I had the opportunity to talk to a recruiter during this period. Well, the next thing I knew I was offered a management consultant position with the Metzler Group in Chicago. To tell you the truth, I didn't care about the profession, the romance of travel or the money. None of that mattered. I didn't even have my MBA yet. What I did have was a way to get out of Philadelphia! So off I went to Chicago. Six months into my appointment in Chicago, the firm received a large consulting contract back in New Jersey, close to Philadelphia. I had an obligation with the firm to finish my MBA program, so it worked out for me to go back. The project lasted about eight months, long enough for me also to get involved with someone else back there. Consequently, when the project ended, I faced a situation where I had to either go back to Chicago and possibly risk ending the relationship or decide to get engaged and married. I chose the latter course.
As you know the lifestyle of a management consultant is one in which you’re often traveling five days a week. The good thing about that is that it means you can live almost anywhere. Because my fiancé had a job in Philadelphia, we decided to move back there. And that’s my personal story of how I got involved in this business. It was anything but a preordained path.
THE REST OF IT
Sounded like a good idea.
I got my start in consulting through a professor at the University of Michigan shortly after World War II. I had been out of school for three or four years, and a friend of mine and I thought it would be interesting to start our own consulting business. So we arranged an interview with my old teacher, Professor Gordy, who told us he thought it sounded like a good idea. He also cautioned that it might be better if we had a year or two of experience first with an established firm. He offered to introduce us to what was then McKinsey in Chicago. We had interviews and were actually both offered jobs. I accepted and my friend came along about three or four years later. This was back in 1945. Later, the firm spun off and became A.T. Kearney. That was my start in consulting and I was there until 1975. I must have done about 600 assignments over the years.
The consulting industry was fairly new in those days. When I joined the firm there were about 10 partners and 25 professional people on staff. Today, they must have around 2500 on staff. Obviously, it was a pretty closely-knit group in those days. Tom Kearney, our managing partner, had been associated with James O. McKinsey since 1929. I have the letter sent by McKinsey to Kearney confirming their initial agreement. McKinsey originally had his own public accounting firm in New York City, and Kearney was his first partner in their Chicago consulting group.
Will I Ever Work Again?
How did I get the idea that I could be a consultant? Actually, it was someone else who put the idea in my head. An individual at a client site suggested I could do this on my own and put me in touch with the finder, the lead generator. But it was looking at the revenue issue that did it for me. I was paid little enough considering the potential consulting revenue; well, even if I worked very little, I knew I could equal what I had made before. But it was not only the financial motivation that I could make more money; it was also that there was very little risk associated with doing it.
I started as an independent consultant back in 1980. I knew only one product, a legacy mainframe system for payroll personnel and benefits. I didn’t even know it very well, but I knew something and hung out a shingle. Actually, most of my early work came through a finder, someone who had contacts in the business. I started at $250 a day, and he took half of that. But I learned the craft, as it were.
In the early days, most of my experiences involved doing internal training for companies. What would happen often is that I would then be invited to stay and do longer training engagements. In 1986, I consulted for the Pillsbury Company on a project that was larger than any I’d ever done. I realized at that point I was going to need more than myself. So I incorporated in 1987 and hired four people. Three of the four are still active with our firm, and here we are today with almost 100 employees and revenues of not quite $20 million. In fact, we recently won an award as one of the 25 fastest growing companies in Dallas. All these years later we’re now in the emerging business category! Of course, today I’m involved exclusively in running the company. The last active consulting activity I did was at the end of 1994.
Yet there were several early years when I worked very little. Times were tough. If I weren’t booked six months in advance, I wouldn’t believe I was ever going to work again. I would never believe the future bookings were going to happen. If there was a gap, I would panic, believing I would never fill it. I could never really believe I had any money other than what was in the bank. I didn’t know it at the time, because I didn’t have a network of consultants to draw on, but I found out later that we all tend to feel that way when we first start out.
Actually, one of the reasons I started the company was that I was so lonesome as an independent. I was working an awful lot and I had contact only with customers. There is a jargon in our industry and I was expert at the jargon. But I didn’t have anybody to talk to as a peer. When I started my company in 1987 one of the things I thought I’d find was some relief from this loneliness. I’d have other people I could talk with about the systems and the work, other people who kind of walked on my side of the street. Well, as you probably know, I found out that it’s still lonely at the top! It’s just a different kind of loneliness.
STORIES FROM READERS
Do you have a story about how you got started in consulting? We would love to hear it. Please send your best to the email address below. Top submissions may be included on this site or in future editions of Lore of Wizards. Submissions will be reviewed and contributors will be contacted prior to publication.
A Correction
Great work on the first chapter, but I have one correction for you to make. You have added about 25 years to the age of Ed Kangas. When he asked me to transfer to consulting he had not yet become a partner. But he did go on to become Chairman of Touche Ross and then Deloitte & Touche International.
I Found MY Calling
A thought occurred to me while sitting in a lecture hall during the Bar Admission Course in Toronto Canada with two of my law school friends discussing the impact we would have on the world. My friends wanted to change the law and as accomplished judges both of them have done so. I wanted to change how law was practiced.
Previewing my life’s work as both representative of and adversarial to my clients created conflicts that it would take a decade to understand and overcome. I became a real estate lawyer proud of and committed to outstanding client service and client education. When in the early 90s, the real estate recession struck, I saw an opportunity to chase my dream. So I began a consulting company Valuelaw consulting Inc. to help large law firm clients better manage the relationship between them and their trusted attorneys. The concept was knew and it took months of cold (sweat) calls to transcend the skepticism of companies that someone could actually help them create equilibrium with their lawyers without jeopardizing that valued relationship.
I remember my first large assignment assessing the irregularities and inequities in the billing practices and resource allocation practices of a very large and successful law firm for its equally impressive client. I knew I was making a difference and providing great value to my client and at the same time helping a law firm maintain a highly valued relationship. The sense of satisfaction was real and exciting. I had found my calling. I continued doing work for law firm clients and eventually gained the trust and confidence of large law firms who retained me to lecture, strategize and consult on marketing, business development, client relationship management and billing issues. Formal marketing and coach training followed and I was set to abandon my law mother’s apron strings for a professional life of making a difference raising the bar of legal service and client relationship management, helping lawyers develop business and even enjoy greater satisfaction in their work. The task continues with its successes and missteps. But change is happening.
A Personal Story
I am a former Life magazine Washington correspondent and associate editor who turned to corporate communications during the decline of that publication and other large-circulation magazines. A Stanford journalism major, I found that my education and work experience prepared me to assist and advise CEOs of several Fortune 500 companies as an executive and a consultant. The reporting of public affairs and the contacts thereby developed gave me a perspective I could not have gained any other way. I recently completed my last consulting assignment and have returned to journalism as a freelance writer--58 years after becoming a reporter on a small Oregon daily.