B7677-001: Strategy Consulting Skills
2009CD & 2010Spr, meets 4 Thursdays: May 28, Jun 11, Jun 25, Aug 6; auditing not permitted
Instructor: hitendra wadhwa
This course exposes students to the structured problem-solving and communication skills used in management consulting. The course is organized around the five phases of a typical strategy engagement: scope definition; problem structuring; data gathering and analysis; recommendations development; and final presentation. Students get to learn and practice specific consulting tools and principles associated with each of these five phases, such as issue trees, hypothesis-driven problem solving, interview guides, triangulation, pyramid structure and storylines. The course emphasizes hands-on practice and real-time feedback. Formal discussion of consulting tools and skills is supplemented by live consulting engagements (LCEs) -- consulting projects drawn from students’ organizations. Working in teams, students get opportunities to practice and hone the skills they are introduced to during the course through client interactions and through in-class presentations and feedback of their LCE work. These skills covered in the course are broadly applicable across business functions and industries, and besides their relevance to management consulting will be valuable to entrepreneurs and managers in the strategy, business-development or marketing-planning aspects of their work.
