Don’t be a better secretary foiling some basic information nobody really needs. Push yourself to really provide value to the client and your standing will take of itself.

For many insecure overachievers this is exactly the way to go and you might enjoy it as well. Real fast track promotions happen not through your work alone so make sure you got all pieces in place to rock your consulting career.

Whatever the current direction is make sure to setup your team first so that you can later cover all your topics in your timeline. Same goes for collaborating with clients. Make sure they are fully on board and effective instead of having to deal with uncertainty and the feeling the project is unclear and unorganized.

Once your team levels up you can let them run more freely and have even more time to deliver the overall impact. Since in real life you have many juniors on board and quite some scope to cover you should apply the aforementioned principle often and early.

Rarely things are all sequential and therefore starting things early, parallelizing them or coming up with work products early on are giving you critical runway later on. This is also a great capability in foreseeing how a project will turn out and how it can become even more successful.

The most successful projects in my view were completed in half the time and answered additional strategic challenges on top. If projects are running over time or answered unconvincingly very often the root cause is the project leadership or the scope from the start.

Make sure to you and your team apply this concept early on. Work hypothesis driven and finish early and successful.

The truth is clients are not looking for strategic robots or machines but also the person who is supporting them in their toughest challenges. Be human and be yourself and the clients will take you even more seriously. Be intentional when and what you share and leverage the Johari Window framework.

At the end it will be more fun for everyone involved and you clients might remember you many years later because of that.

I personally run a tight ship and even today can replace any role on the project anytime. You got to know the details, because they do matter and provide the foundation of effective recommendations and final impact.

Too often I have seen partners desperately trying to add value and fail. Even clients asked to remove them from the meetings or even the projects. Don’t be one of these guys.

It is relevant to not only ride along a project, but become an active contributor and essential part of the team. So make sure you understand at any moment of a project or your daily work how the big picture looks like and how your work contributes in achieving the project objectives. You should be able to convince your clients, your leadership and at least wow your dinner date with. So make it compelling, make it count.

Focus on the big items first on which you are currently working on and bring them into the right sequence and ask yourself why they are essential. Now you already have your basic story. Spice it up with some details, evidences and numbers to make the story compelling and even more alive. If you have this ready you can easily shine in internal meetings or conference calls with your senior partners. They love compelling stories and you will be able to tell them what today’s message is. If there is a partner on board carefully observe and learn how he is doing it.

Sometimes you will also enjoy the weird show of one partner not getting anything together. Let it run for a while and then try to stop the non-sense (I suggest you are in the role of the Engagement Manager at this moment) and lead the rest of the call to a good end. At the beginning of a project most clients are typically even more confused than you and will appreciate your support here as well. Make sure you know what’s going on and help them to sort things out and to communicate accordingly.

Naturally, the message can and should change if necessary, but again make it compelling.