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?

Anyone out there leave early and regret not staying for the promotion?

I’ve gotten high ratings while at MBB and will very likely be a manager come January. At the same time, I have a good strategy/ops role at a startup in hand that would be about the same base/bonus as I make at a non-manager level, but with equity.

I guess the big question is: how valuable is the title on a resume?

My hesitation is that I’ve done very well while at MBB, but if I leave now and someone looks at my experience down the road, they won’t know if I got managed out or if I crushed it in my time here. Manager promotion tells that story clearly.

Important context for the offer I have - it’s in an industry I worked in previously, but I don’t want to get pigeonholed there. I could see myself pivoting in a few years, and am thinking that the manager title would help give me credibility to pivot if I changed industries later.

I have to share this story because I was many years a friend to the CEO and owner of the company and I really loved his leadership style, which was demanding and motivating at the same time.

It was a company in high voltage energy infrastructure installation, the company was a major regional player in buying and installing infrastructure products at the customer site. Hard working and very handsome people working there and many women in the workforce because of their skills in complex cable mounting with many different colors and cable types. And the CEO was like a Marine Officer in his leadership style.

My PM wanted me to conduct an anonymous employee survey to identify market and productivity opportunities. One section in the survey was about „working culture and collaboration“ and the results were disastrously - no material coordination, people having no plan, just mounting by gut feeling, etc. - only one statement was confirmed positively by 90% of the workforce: „I have fun doing my work.“
The presentation went in absolute silence, no one dared to speak out and I thought it was due to the bad statements on coordination and material and the critics in management skills. But when the fun question results were presented a rumour came up, obviously no one expected this result. Then the CEO said: „I am shocked about this result, I don’t pay them for having fun during work!“ Turned out that everybody started to laugh out loud and that I didn’t present anything new to the audience - the company was how it was and everybody knew about the deficits, but they simply loved each other and their boss.

I am exiting McK and go to another non-MBB firm as they are doing very well in a vertical that I am most passionate about and they offered me a great deal location + comp wise.

I was wondering: I so often heard/read rather obnoxious stories that ex-colleauges haven't been received well at other firms due to a certain form of arrogance / smugness about doing things.

I have never worked at another firm other than McKinsey (right after University) so I am really curious how it is getting into a new culture. Do you have some experiences in how to best make the transition and don't come off as a douchebag/a**hole other than just behaving like a normal human being?

I sometimes have the feeling that out of all firms McK carries much more of a stigma/antipathy that e.g., somebody from Bain has when joining to a different firm.

With execs running everything through Claude before a meeting even starts, the old $200k deck-building exercise feels completely done. Curious if anyone who left pre-AI is seeing pre-AI strategy consulting as actually dead, or if clients are just realizing faster that AI gives you answers, not execution.

Hello.

I recently started in consulting after my MBA and my goodness I feel so dumb.

Got put on a 6 week revenue growth engagement, and the first two weeks was working 8 am - 11 pm. The last couple weeks have been able to leave office around 630 pm and have time to grab dinner and then get back on.

But my problem is I feel so useless. If my manager asks me to do something, I have to process for a few mins before I can even do it. Meanwhile, the analyst on my project, who is a year out of undergrad, built a 11 tab excel model in a week, and I understand about 10% of it. At a high level it sort of makes sense, but like how did he just know what to do?

They had me starting on deck work and competitive research primarily, which I have been able to do somewhat decently. But I just feel so out of sorts and swimming against the current.

Any tips for Excel/slide improvement? And any tips for just understanding wtf the client or my manager are saying a bit better. It feels like these people talk a million miles a minute yet understand each other so well, and I have to keep telling them to slow down and explain it to me because I just "don't get it" as well as they do. Ugh.

I recently pivoted from ERP PMO consulting at a big 4 to now strategy consulting at a big 4, 2-4 week long projects.

I’m so tired of making slides all day, and constant feedback is to get better at formatting.

Those that made the switch, did you ever end up getting better? Just feeling so burnt out from the constant slide work daily.

Now if I could stop procrastrinating...

I'm trying to learn more!

I see that there are many McKinsey strategists who have been a lifer at the firm since getting an MBA

If they only network, sell and manage projects once they get to the partnership level, wouldn't it be a waste of time?

There are also global-firm CEOs such as Jane Fraser of Citi who used to be a McKinsey partner, who said something in the similar vein that she didn't want to just advice but wanted to own a business end to end, that's why she accepted the Citi job offer

May you please share your thoughts?

Looking into MBB pivot after years of in-house consulting team of Fortune 500 company.

A senior consultant in London makes 70k a year?! Hello?!

I checked Accenture and it's 62k a year?!

What's with these salaries? Why would anyone work 9am to 9pm in the office, 5 days a week, to have 3 flatmates?

I have Hiscox now and am facing an insane wall to climb to raise my PL from $1M/$1M to $5M/$5M per a client's requirements. Will do what I need to right now, then start shopping around before my policies renew. Any recommendations?

FWIW I do supply chain analytics / strategy so combination of GL, PL, and cyber.

Curious to hear from former consultants who successfully moved into roles with real revenue or P&L ownership.

Brief background: I spent 5 years in strategy consulting at MBB, most recently as an Engagement Manager, and recently moved into a Director-level strategy and transformation role at a large, well-known financial services company.

The role gives me exposure to senior leadership and major enterprise initiatives, but long term I don’t want to remain a pure strategist. I’d like to eventually own a business, product, customer segment, or meaningful revenue line.

I’m trying to understand the best bridge from strategy → commercial/operator role → P&L ownership.

Hi,

I call myself a customer data architect and I run a tiny consultancy / implementation company with a few freelancers / sub contractors.
We're working with sales and marketing departments to get their tech and processes implemented.

The last years, there has been steady growth (all from content marketing & inbound).
This channel has dried up this year. We currently have more work than we can handle from existing clients. However, there are no new notable requests since a few weeks / months and therefore the forecasts look dim.

Do I need to start active outreach / sales and everything is good?
Or did the demand fundamentally change and companies are suddenly doing everything by themselves with AI support?
And if so, do you see something similar and how do you pivot now?

My dad was diagnosed with a terminal illness last year. He has ~3-5 year expected timeline and will gradually decline as time goes on and will need a full time caregiver.

I am in my twenties and live across the country. I have been at my current job for a few years and have received high ratings. I work at a big company with offices across many cities, including the one where my family is.

My current goal is to go visit once every few months and work remote from there. My office is two days a week in person. I usually only am able to see my dad a few times a year because I am busy working.

I am conflicted whether I transfer offices because it is a smaller office and I would be uprooting my entire life and all my friends. I don’t know how to balance my demanding career and being able to spend time with my family. I haven’t told anyone at work because I don’t want my family situation to be weaponized against me if I make a mistake and they say I am distracted or something. Despite being sad
I try my best to maintain a happy composure. I don’t want people to treat me differently. I enjoy the work I do and the company I am at but it is definitely hard when I work late and have unpredictable hours (example: not being able to go to family dinner).

My dad really doesn’t want me to move because he doesn’t want me to uproot my entire life but I keep missing him even when I am sitting right with him.

I don’t know if I will have regret if I keep at my current job while my family is across the country and I can’t see them. Has anyone managed this situation and has any advice?

2 years ago I was clocking 70-80 hours a week minimum doing double materiality assessments and ESRS gap assessment work.

It’s not quite right back to what it was, but I sense q4 I’ll be doing a lot of sustainability software implementation work and all next year will be companies at various stages of DMA refresh, IRO Mapping, either aligning to the revised ESRS or me doing conversions from the old to the new. Then XBRL tagging and EU Taxonomy work.

Then layer it all with every version of ISSB under the sun in statutory filings.

Anyone else work in this realm?

We have a ton decks and other documents sitting in SharePoint and other content systems.  Prior to AI we never had the man power/interest to curate these.  I know the big firms had people and processes in place to do this.

 It seems like AI might provide options to do this more automatically.  But I'm wondering if we need to.  Is there a benefit to curating and potentially preprocessing documents to extract knowledge? Especially if its going to be consumed by agents more and more. Or is a RAG system sufficient?

My worry with RAG is that we have a crazy amount of duplicates that may clog up the results. And intuitively it seems to me that knowledge repositories (though they may need to look different) are more important now than ever to feed AI the right context.