![]() It’s better than banking, it’s not every day of the week, and it’s not every month of the year. In reality, you have cyclical work life balance in management consulting. The myth of consulting work-life balance is that you have it all the time, and it’s the type of field that you go into to build a sustainable lifestyle. So in general, over the course of your consulting project, the first and the second weeks, you’re going to feel like you have a lot more than right before some of those major deliverables. And you’re going on vacation during those weeks of a project. You’re having a three hour lunch with a friend that you haven’t caught up with in a little while. Then you’re going to start cranking on some data, you’re going to work on some things – but in the second week, you’re doing your laundry. You’re going to be asking lots of questions, you’re going to be doing no material work. You’re going to go to a kick-off meeting, you’re going to have an opening dinner with a client. On the first week of a project, your life is going to feel amazing. In addition, over the life of a project, you’re going to have a totally different pattern of work-life balance. So understand that your work-life balance will feel really different on a Monday or a Tuesday than it will on a Friday or a Saturday. Sundays, generally you’re getting ramped up for the rest of the week. Saturdays, you’re rarely working in consulting. Fridays…that day, you have work-life balance. In general, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and half of Thursdays are going to be hard days. Every day that you go into the office, you will not have it. Then the second piece is just understanding that work-life balance isn’t something that happens on a daily basis. If they fill in the blank, what they mean is, “we have work-life balance compared to bankers, who have zero work-life balance whatsoever.” Consulting Work Patterns So that’s why consultants say they have work-life balance. Those kind of urgent situations don’t happen in consulting. So anything that you were planning on doing, you have to completely re-write. A deal will come up the Wednesday before Christmas…goodbye Christmas. A deal will come up on a Thursday, and your weekend is shot. In banking, in contrast, you’ll have a totally different situation. PSA – they’re generally going to be just before your major deliverable, so at the mid-term and at the end of the project – so you can know that you will not have a life at all during those periods. And over a longer period of time, you know 6-8 months in advance when your crazy weeks are going to be. They are at least 6-8 weeks long, unless you’re doing a tiny due diligence project. Consulting Project CyclesĪnd here’s why…because the projects are generally pre-determined. But compared to banking, which is how they mostly compare it, consultants do have a more balanced lifestyle.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |