I started my journey with Oliver Wyman as a graduate exactly a year ago. I still vaguely remember how nervous I felt on the first day I started as I moved to a new city, for a new firm, that I have never interned nor worked with before. Luckily, I had a very supportive, diverse, and welcoming cohort. I was able to meet new graduates from all around the Asia Pacific in my first week of training and soon became close to the people at my office.
While I have worked and interned throughout my university degree, I still felt like a blank slate on day one of my first project. Before I started at Oliver Wyman, I thought consultants were just people who were good at charts and PowerPoint, but working with the top consultants here made me realise that there is a deeper set of skills and wisdom that are required to perform the job well. Today, I will share two key learnings that I have picked up from the best consultants at Oliver Wyman.
Temper your confidence with humility
According to Socrate, epistemic humility is an intellectual virtue as human wisdom is often derived from one’s ability to recognise the limitations of their knowledge. Joining consulting, I took the default stance that I had to pretend I knew everything as I always thought consultants needed to “fake it till they make it”. Nevertheless, this changed rapidly as I started my first project at Oliver Wyman. What I have realised is that it is impossible to have all the answers to every issue that arise during the project, even for the principals and partners. Therefore, it is important to actively listen and learn from those around you.
On every project, I have spent countless hours discussing different ideas with client SMEs, internal experts and others from my team before I could discover new insights. Although the day-to-day experience of this was sometimes frustrating as teammates would always find ways to challenge my analysis and way of thinking, I have naturally learnt to become more skeptical of my data and analysis overtime and could eventually pick up on my own mistakes. While modesty is the key to discovering more knowledge, confidence is what gives a consultant charisma.
As a first year, I had many opportunities to build self-confidence through client engagements. One of the most important things that I have learnt is to always have an ingoing view to the questions that your team is trying to answer. This does not only enable you to seem credible in front of the client, but it also facilitates discussions in key meetings and helps the team expediate the problem-solving process. Ultimately, it is vital to have a balance of confidence and humility as you progress through your career in consulting.
Learning to be patient with yourself
“Be patient with yourself” was one of the key advice a partner gave me on one of my first coffee catch-ups at Oliver Wyman. While I overlooked this comment at the time, I later realised how important this was.
As consultants, we can be highly self-critical as we frequently receive feedback and development objectives. In my first year, I have experienced times where I became frustrated at myself, especially during times where I made the same mistake twice by accident or didn’t know something that seemed to be so obvious. Fortunately, I had very supportive teams at Oliver Wyman who reassured me every time I became too fixated on a mistake and helped me get through my personal challenges in cheeky ways. One of the most vivid examples I remember was a senior consultant who jokingly said “you should shout ice-cream if you do that again” when I made the same mistake several times. Rather than choosing to be angry at me, she has chosen a light-hearted way to remind me to take on feedback and I really appreciated that. I never had to shout “ice cream” because I never made the same mistake since (even after moving onto a different project).
I really value the supportive culture at Oliver Wyman where people are more focused on progress rather than achieving immediate perfection. Throughout the year, I have learnt to be less self-critical and focus more instead on the improvement opportunities that I have been provided with moving forward.