General Information
Description
In this course students will be able to gain a pragmatic understanding of diverse and innovative consulting approaches and to apply core consulting skills to various real-life problems. The nature, scope of consulting and the role of consultants are quickly evolving to meet the clients’ changing needs in this digital age (e.g., ‘Traditional strategy projects’ now only accounts for 25~40% of projects, even for some of the major global ‘strategic consulting’ firms). In order to expose students to the most recent key trends, this course will touch on various approaches and topics of consulting with an emphasis on consulting related to digital/analytics/agile transformations and capability building – All being priority issues for clients across sectors these days.
The course will have a mix of case analysis and discussions, team-based project on a chosen topic and a few guest lectures. It is designed to provide students with a practical understanding of the consulting process, problem-solving, and communication skills that will help to bring clarity and structure to a business predicament and identify appropriate solutions. A number of lectures, guest speakers and class discussions are aimed to showcase different consulting topics/paths/profiles as well as client’s perspectives on the expectation and value of consulting and of consultants. This course is meant to be a practical, application course where the specific skills of consulting are developed in more depth, especially through a real-life project experience.
The key backbone of the course is organized around the phases of a typical consulting engagement (problem definition and structuring, data gathering and analysis, collaborative and integrative team-problem-solving, recommendations development and presentation.). Students will have a chance to go through these steps using a combination of cases, team breakouts, team project as well as interactive discussions with guest lecturers.
Target Audience
The course is intended both for students interested in management consulting as a career, as well as those students interested in corporate problem-solving more generally. The learning objectives of the course include:
- Gain a pragmatic understanding of various consulting approaches & topics, especially in the context of data and digital technology advancement
- Hone advanced problem-solving skills, including interactive problem solving
- Build team-work capabilities including providing and receiving feedback
- Develop a clear understanding of the value and expectations for impactful consulting projects and consultants
Format
In 2022-2023, this course is will be offered as a full semester course in the Fall, with 2-hour weekly classes over 12 weeks. However, note that in order to accommodate the time required for all of the team project final presentations where the ‘client’ members of the team project will join to listen to each team’s presentations, the class for this final presentation will be a double class (i.e., 4 hours instead of 2 hours) and instead there will be no class on one date to compensation for the double class.
The exact dates will be confirmed regarding these two classes in the syllabus but tentatively, the presentation (i.e., the 4-hour class) will likely be on November 22.
Evaluation and Grade Breakdown
| Component | Weight |
|---|---|
| Class Participation (Individual) | 20% |
| Team Project Interim Assignment (Group) | 15% |
| Final Team Project Presentation (Group) | 25% |
| Feedback To and From Peers (Individual) | 20% |
| Final Assignment (Individual) | 20% |
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