Moreover, does it leak out and get traction in the real world?

I'm 40, with a 10y+ background in business transformation and operational performance. I've spent years helping organisations improve how they work.

Now I'm building my own advisory business since 2023, and I'm finding the commercial side far harder than I expected.

I've developed an offering, built the website, published a book, created content, approached potential partners and worked relentlessly on distribution.

But I'm struggling to turn all that effort into meaningful client conversations, let alone revenue. Ive got genuine conversations but im fed up of running and following up consistently even if i leverage some kind of ai agents for this. Time is becoming harder and more painful.

What makes it difficult is that I'm genuinely passionate about what I do. I don't want to quit. I believe there's real problems worth solving.

But lately I've been questioning whether I'm approaching everything the wrong way. I'm also realising how lonely building this business can be when you don't have a team or other founders to talk to.

I'd appreciate hearing from experienced independent consultants who have gone through this.

And how did you manage the psychological pressure of building something when the market seemed completely indifferent?

I'm not selling anything here. Please don't be mean as I could genuinely use some perspective from people who've been through it.

Hi
Wondering how to navigate work politics I'm an industry hire (I have an expertise) moved into consulting was hired into a specific account and it's an odd culture I was recently told by a few people they don't know why the team was hiring as they don't like new joiners.

It has impacted my confidence but my only other thing is to pivot industries which is tough given I've spent a long time building my expertise and was 'supposedly' hired for an account but I'm also cautious of sitting on the bench hoping the account will crack also isn't the wisest?

Maybe a rant it's been a rough 6 weeks

I'm based in the UK

Looking at this Bain deck from 2008, it seems that the decks produced today are far more "busy" and jam packed and complex in messaging than in days past?

https://www.kif.re.kr/KMFileDir/128587581493556250_Bain&Company%EB%B0%9C%ED%91%9C%EC%9E%90%EB%A3%8C.pdf

Inside McKinsey the election for their next leader feels more papal than presidential. ‘You cannot be seen to want the job’ one senior partner told the FT. 

McKinsey’s roughly 760 senior partners can select anyone from among their number when the voting begins in January. The top seven candidates will go forward to a second ballot that will whittle the field to three. If none of the candidates have passed the 50% threshold by that stage, the partnership will pick the winner in person, conclave-style, at their next meeting in Sydney in February.

North America boss Eric Kutcher is the candidate to beat but his path to the top is far from certain. My colleagues Stephen Foley and  Ellesheva Kissin have taken a deeper look at McKinsey’s former CFO here — and it's free to read.

Who do you think should be next global managing partner of McKinsey? Let us know below — Rachel, FT social team

Former consulting current Strategy / Ops in tech here

I‘ve been generally ahead of the curve in AI but even just in the last few weeks, I’ve seen an enormous step change in the speed and accuracy of AI generated analyses, presentations, and documents. Opus 5.5 combined with MCPs for Slack, internal search, querying, and Google Drive has been an insane development.

I can ask a complex question and get a sound presentation with analysis lined all in our internal format. Data requests are a total non issue - I can have an agent run every hour and fulfill anything I’m asked with a high degree of accuracy. It knows every initiative I work on and I can ask it any question about it. I know this has been the promise for a while but lately it’s just… worked, and fast.

I feel like I have the brain of my company and our partners in front of me and I can ask it anything. Has anyone else noticed a meaningful change in the very recent past?

Consultants are very good at turning an observable event into a complete commercial story.

A company changes agency, appoints a new CMO, raises funding, acquires another business or announces an AI programme. Within minutes, the assumption becomes underperformance, urgency and budget.

The event may justify investigation. It proves none of those things.

Before I treat it as a genuine buying condition, I want five questions answered:

• What commercial outcome has changed?
• Who is experiencing the consequence?
• Which part is observable, and which part is only plausible?
• Why can the internal team or incumbent supplier not resolve it?
• What evidence would disqualify the hypothesis?

This distinction matters. If the trigger is treated as the diagnosis, the proposal arrives before the problem has been established. The first weeks of the engagement are then spent discovering that the issue was never agreed internally, is not urgent, has no sponsor or has no viable purchasing route.

Signals are easy to collect. Judgement starts when you refuse to turn them into certainty.

Where do you draw the line between a legitimate reason to investigate and a prospecting story?

As a Senior consultant working in AI & Data in UK, I’m finding it difficult to break into Head of roles or land significantly higher-paying industry positions.

For those who’ve made the move, do the big opportunities come when you leave as a Manager or Senior Manager? Is it better to exit at Manager, or does making it to Senior Manager open more doors?

What’s the best level to exit at if maximising salary and long-term career opportunities is the goal?

My boutique consulting firm has worked for certain clients as a subcontractor for another primary firm for over ten years. That primary firm asks my firm to increase our rates by 20% on the standard billable rate we charge to directly-contracted clients, and they then take that 20% premium as a commission for the person who originated the contract at the primary firm - even when that original contract was over a decade ago.

My firm is doing most of the work on some of these contracts. My firm is struggling. I have asked the other firm to reduce or end the commission especially for the long-term projects and projects that my firm is the principal biller. The primary firm refuses to do so. They told me to contract separately but I’m pretty sure they don’t mean to tell me to contract separately with clients we already share. I have increased my company’s rates but it does not stop the sense of unfairness that some of these primary company team members are making money off of my team’s hard work for doing next to nothing. Would you tell the client they would save money by going with you directly and then you could raise rates as needed but both the client and you save money? Or would you play along with this seemingly unfair long-term disadvantaged situation?

Note: I have read this post so I understand there is often a subcontractor premium commission but should it really last forever and can I really not get out of this? A lot of our shared clients work with us because of my firm - not the other firm.

I'm considering a fundraising-heavy role at a startup that only uses Google sheets and slides on MacBooks. I'm genuinely concerned that I'll come in and make a bad impression by being very slow with modelling/working on the data room and building investor-facing pitch decks. I had an on-site case interview where I had to make a model and deck using Google tools, and it probably took me 2-3 times as long to make these materials using Google + a MacBook as it would have in ppt and excel on my thinkpad. Am I overreacting here or is this an issue that others have faced before? For those who experienced an issue, do you have suggestions for how to make the transition smoother?

Hi! As the title says, I worked at McKinsey (analyst, then got to sr associate) for three years and last year I moved into industry. (Energy trading)

I must say - I was so nervous to leave; you are in such a small bubble and it truly feels like this is all there is. I thought I'd be giving up the greatest opportunity I ever had to leave.

Since leaving, I can't explain how wrong I was. I've learned more in one year in industry than over three years at Mck. Mck was an incredible learning experience but I felt like I was always touching the surface. Being in industry there are so many small things you think insignificant because they don't align with the strategy deck, they are game changers.

To get to the main part for me: work life balance. I can't stress enough the word balance. I feel completely challenged, intellectually stimulated but I sleep 8 hours a night, I workout daily and I have discovered new hobbies and, honestly, a whole new sense of self I forgot I had.

I felt like I had lost myself - all I was was work and catching up on sleep and partying. Now I have literally delved into so many hobbies and I feel like I have completely found who I was again. If anyone is struggling - I was burnt out (medically) and depressed (medically) by the end, I can promise there is an end to this, and you are worth it. Any questions or comments are welcome

(Edits: spelling mistakes because I've had a few glasses of wine)

Hi all, I am a junior and I am wondering how do you organize yourselves to follow your to-do list, your processes and so on. Nothing shared with anyone, just a rigourous daily agenda.

I used to use a basic Excel sheet but I know some are using Notion or Obsidian.

I am curious to know how you keep yourselves up to date with everything.

Hey is it normal that the higher ups bidding and winning work are way less technically competent that the people actually doing/delivering the work? For context i'm an engineer in a really small risk consultancy, but mainly within the insurance industry. My boss knows insurance pretty well, but engineering poorly. I guess of course this is normal in some sense, however lately its been bugging me, as it really just creates more stress and pressure when you have to play catch up actually delivering what the client wants. Sick of reading half-assed proposals after the fact and shaking my head...

I currently work for a mid sized consultancy that places a massive emphasis on doing activities outside your client work. I’m 4 months into the job, probation is going to end soon and I have come to the conclusion that I have signed up to too much.

I support with an affinity network at my firm and the lead is incredibly rude to me and today confronted me in the office at my desk because I didn’t align on something on time despite it being midday by that point without giving me any grace given my client priorities that I have communicated to her. But even more so, I’m not the only person taking on this role, I work with two others but she doesn’t speak to these people like this (we share priorities so the ‘something’ in question is a joint effort).

This is a pattern of behaviour and has gone on for weeks and I don’t know what to do, stepping back wouldn’t reflect well on me, communication wouldn’t either. I’ve just moved to this firm from a larger firm that was incredibly toxic. How should I approach this? I’m pretty junior so will always be seen as being in the wrong as that’s workplace politics. Any insight or non insight, upvotes or downvotes are helpful.

A lot of very accomplished people have personal logos. Tiger Woods has the iconic “TW.” Tom Brady has TB12. Even LeBron James has his initials under a crown.

I always assumed this was reserved for world-class athletes—until I logged onto Teams.

I’ve noticed some resources have turned their initials into full-blown logos for their Teams profile pictures. And these aren’t boring logos either. They’re beautifully formatted, have great color schemes, and honestly look like something you’d see embroidered on a Nike hat or polo.

Not sure if this is a new trend, but I can only assume that if you’re in the same company as Tiger Woods, Tom Brady, and LeBron James, you must be one of the greatest quality engineers to ever pick up a keyboard.

Moved to a small boutique from BCG. KM is shit show, with things all over a 100 different sharepoints, little to no organization and discoverability. I have access to everything so using copilot to search across for things I want to find. But, this isn't the case for everyone. Are there good KM solutions out there that teams can throw cleaned up proposals, project content at, it ingests and saves all of this, makes it easy to search and discover content and past work when needed, idealy providing a summary, but also links to the original file for someone to take a look at? Thinking with AI this should be possible and someone must have created it- any one have any good experiences? Bonus would be if it can integrate with an mcp or something with claudegpt&co, and some ind of slide making addin.

How many of you are actively using or considering using AI artifacts for deliverables or presentations? Any specific use cases willing to share?

Understandably if something will be handed over to a client it makes sense to keep it in a more ubiquitous format like word or ppt, but we are starting to more frequently build live or dynamic artifacts to use in delivering information.

Example: I have a basic assessment and benchmarking run through, and with the right intake and inputs it’s a fraction of the time spinning up the visuals in a live demo or printable format via a claude artifact vs pulling and populating ppt templates.

10yr XP strategy consultant looking to go solo soon (US-based). I want to know what tools/subscriptions you use. Here are some high level categories but welcome others. Ideally I want to start low-cost, but want to get a sense if I happen to land a few projects already in the works.

1) Invoicing / accounting

2) Digital signatures

3) MSFT office vs Google (docs/sheets) -- anybody using HTML for deliverables (via Claude)?

3a) zoom/WebEx/meet/Teams

3b) notion/obsidian for note taking

3c) AI transcription?

4) Claude / OpenAI (do you pay for the $20 or business premium/pro $100 x mo. subscription)

4a) if you some AI work, VS Code/Cursor/n8n?

5) CRM? Calendly?

6) LinkedIn for lead gen/posting reaching out

7) domain / website hosting (simple web with custom domain for email address)

8) document transfer/storage service? (How do you keep docs secure, but also allow collaboration) - any issues with security requirements from a tech/cyber angle as a contractor?

9) CPA (will find a local person, but how much should I pay, did you go s-corp early on?)

10) any bank / cc recs? Looking at Amex business banking

11) laptop recs? Haven't bought a personal laptop in 13 years :) thinking thinkpad

12) any tips on SOW T&C worth mentioning?