consulting problem solving skills

McKinsey Problem Solving: Six steps to solve any problem and tell a persuasive story

The McKinsey problem solving process is a series of mindset shifts and structured approaches to thinking about and solving challenging problems. It is a useful approach for anyone working in the knowledge and information economy and needs to communicate ideas to other people.

Over the past several years of creating StrategyU, advising an undergraduates consulting group and running workshops for clients, I have found over and over again that the principles taught on this site and in this guide are a powerful way to improve the type of work and communication you do in a business setting.

When I first set out to teach these skills to the undergraduate consulting group at my alma mater, I was still working at BCG. I was spending my day building compelling presentations, yet was at a loss for how to teach these principles to the students I would talk with at night.

Through many rounds of iteration, I was able to land on a structured process and way of framing some of these principles such that people could immediately apply them to their work.

While the “official” McKinsey problem solving process is seven steps, I have outline my own spin on things – from experience at McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group. Here are six steps that will help you solve problems like a McKinsey Consultant:

Step #1: School is over, stop worrying about “what” to make and worry about the process, or the “how”

When I reflect back on my first role at McKinsey, I realize that my biggest challenge was unlearning everything I had learned over the previous 23 years. Throughout school you are asked to do specific things. For example, you are asked to write a 5 page paper on Benjamin Franklin — double spaced, 12 font and answering two or three specific questions.

In school, to be successful you follow these rules as close as you can. However, in consulting there are no rules on the “what.” Typically the problem you are asked to solve is ambiguous and complex — exactly why they hire you. In consulting, you are taught the rules around the “how” and have to then fill in the what.

The “how” can be taught and this entire site is founded on that belief. Here are some principles to get started:

Step #2: Thinking like a consultant requires a mindset shift

There are two pre-requisites to thinking like a consultant. Without these two traits you will struggle:

• A healthy obsession looking for a “better way” to do things
• Being open minded to shifting ideas and other approaches

In business school, I was sitting in one class when I noticed that all my classmates were doing the same thing — everyone was coming up with reasons why something should should not be done.

As I’ve spent more time working, I’ve realized this is a common phenomenon. The more you learn, the easier it becomes to come up with reasons to support the current state of affairs — likely driven by the status quo bias — an emotional state that favors not changing things. Even the best consultants will experience this emotion, but they are good at identifying it and pushing forward.

Key point : Creating an effective and persuasive consulting like presentation requires a comfort with uncertainty combined with a slightly delusional belief that you can figure anything out.

Step #3: Define the problem and make sure you are not solving a symptom

Before doing the work, time should be spent on defining the actual problem. Too often, people are solutions focused when they think about fixing something. Let’s say a company is struggling with profitability. Someone might define the problem as “we do not have enough growth.” This is jumping ahead to solutions — the goal may be to drive more growth, but this is not the actual issue. It is a symptom of a deeper problem.

Consider the following information:

• Costs have remained relatively constant and are actually below industry average so revenue must be the issue
• Revenue has been increasing, but at a slowing rate
• This company sells widgets and have had no slowdown on the number of units it has sold over the last five years
• However, the price per widget is actually below where it was five years ago
• There have been new entrants in the market in the last three years that have been backed by Venture Capital money and are aggressively pricing their products below costs

In a real-life project there will definitely be much more information and a team may take a full week coming up with a problem statement . Given the information above, we may come up with the following problem statement:

Problem Statement : The company is struggling to increase profitability due to decreasing prices driven by new entrants in the market. The company does not have a clear strategy to respond to the price pressure from competitors and lacks an overall product strategy to compete in this market.

Step 4: Dive in, make hypotheses and try to figure out how to “solve” the problem

Now the fun starts!

There are generally two approaches to thinking about information in a structured way and going back and forth between the two modes is what the consulting process is founded on.

First is top-down . This is what you should start with, especially for a newer “consultant.” This involves taking the problem statement and structuring an approach. This means developing multiple hypotheses — key questions you can either prove or disprove.

Given our problem statement, you may develop the following three hypotheses:

• Company X has room to improve its pricing strategy to increase profitability
• Company X can explore new market opportunities unlocked by new entrants
• Company X can explore new business models or operating models due to advances in technology

As you can see, these three statements identify different areas you can research and either prove or disprove. In a consulting team, you may have a “workstream leader” for each statement.

Once you establish the structure you you may shift to the second type of analysis: a bottom-up approach . This involves doing deep research around your problem statement, testing your hypotheses, running different analysis and continuing to ask more questions. As you do the analysis, you will begin to see different patterns that may unlock new questions, change your thinking or even confirm your existing hypotheses. You may need to tweak your hypotheses and structure as you learn new information.

A project vacillates many times between these two approaches. Here is a hypothetical timeline of a project:

Step 5: Make a slides like a consultant

The next step is taking the structure and research and turning it into a slide. When people see slides from McKinsey and BCG, they see something that is compelling and unique, but don’t really understand all the work that goes into those slides. Both companies have a healthy obsession (maybe not to some people!) with how things look, how things are structured and how they are presented.

They also don’t understand how much work is spent on telling a compelling “story.” The biggest mistake people make in the business world is mistaking showing a lot of information versus telling a compelling story. This is an easy mistake to make — especially if you are the one that did hours of analysis. It may seem important, but when it comes down to making a slide and a presentation, you end up deleting more information rather than adding. You really need to remember the following:

Data matters, but stories change hearts and minds

Here are four quick ways to improve your presentations:

Tip #1 — Format, format, format

Both McKinsey and BCG had style templates that were obsessively followed. Some key rules I like to follow:

• Make sure all text within your slide body is the same font size (harder than you would think)
• Do not go outside of the margins into the white space on the side
• All titles throughout the presentation should be 2 lines or less and stay the same font size
• Each slide should typically only make one strong point

Tip #2 — Titles are the takeaway

The title of the slide should be the key insight or takeaway and the slide area should prove the point. The below slide is an oversimplification of this:

Even in consulting, I found that people struggled with simplifying a message to one key theme per slide. If something is going to be presented live, the simpler the better. In reality, you are often giving someone presentations that they will read in depth and more information may make sense.

To go deeper, check out these 20 presentation and powerpoint tips .

Tip #3 — Have “MECE” Ideas for max persuasion

“MECE” means mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive — meaning all points listed cover the entire range of ideas while also being unique and differentiated from each other.

An extreme example would be this:

• Slide title: There are seven continents
• Slide content: The seven continents are North America, South America, Europe, Africa Asia, Antarctica, Australia

The list of continents provides seven distinct points that when taken together are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive . The MECE principle is not perfect — it is more of an ideal to push your logic in the right direction. Use it to continually improve and refine your story.

Applying this to a profitability problem at the highest level would look like this:

Goal: Increase profitability

2nd level: We can increase revenue or decrease costs

3rd level: We can increase revenue by selling more or increasing prices

Each level is MECE. It is almost impossible to argue against any of this (unless you are willing to commit accounting fraud!).

Tip #4 — Leveraging the Pyramid Principle

The pyramid principle is an approach popularized by Barbara Minto and essential to the structured problem solving approach I learned at McKinsey. Learning this approach has changed the way I look at any presentation since.

Here is a rough outline of how you can think about the pyramid principle as a way to structure a presentation:

As you build a presentation, you may have three sections for each hypothesis. As you think about the overall story, the three hypothesis (and the supporting evidence) will build on each other as a “story” to answer the defined problem. There are two ways to think about doing this — using inductive or deductive reasoning:

If we go back to our profitability example from above, you would say that increasing profitability was the core issue we developed. Lets assume that through research we found that our three hypotheses were true. Given this, you may start to build a high level presentation around the following three points:

These three ideas not only are distinct but they also build on each other. Combined, they tell a story of what the company should do and how they should react. Each of these three “points” may be a separate section in the presentation followed by several pages of detailed analysis. There may also be a shorter executive summary version of 5–10 pages that gives the high level story without as much data and analysis.

Step 6: The only way to improve is to get feedback and continue to practice

Ultimately, this process is not something you will master overnight. I’ve been consulting, either working for a firm or on my own for more than 10 years and am still looking for ways to make better presentations, become more persuasive and get feedback on individual slides.

The process never ends.

The best way to improve fast is to be working on a great team . Look for people around you that do this well and ask them for feedback. The more feedback, the more iterations and more presentations you make, the better you will become. Good luck!

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll get a kick out of all the free lessons I’ve shared that go a bit deeper. Check them out here .

Do you have a toolkit for business problem solving? I created Think Like a Strategy Consultant as an online course to make the tools of strategy consultants accessible to driven professionals, executives, and consultants. This course teaches you how to synthesize information into compelling insights, structure your information in ways that help you solve problems, and develop presentations that resonate at the C-Level. Click here to learn more or if you are interested in getting started now, enroll in the self-paced version ($497) or hands-on coaching version ($997). Both versions include lifetime access and all future updates.

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The 6 Essential Consulting Skills (Clients Want These)

Do you possess the consulting skills that make clients want to hire you?

Your core expertise — like environmental or sales consulting — form the basis of your consulting business

However, you’ll also need to cultivate a broad range of consulting skills.

Here are the consulting skills that are the most challenging for new consultants (according to our “ How To Start A Consulting Business in 2022 Study “):

• Marketing : generating conversations with prospective clients (33%)
• Sales : turning conversations with prospective clients into paid projects (26%)
• Fees : figuring out what to charge for my services and why (12%)
• Operations : setting up and running the business (accounting, legal, etc) (8%)
• Knowing what to focus on and when (8%)
• Time Management & Organization : getting everything on my to-do list done (6%)
• Emotional : loneliness and frustration with starting a new business (3%)
• Project Delivery : delivering on projects for my clients (3%)

These other consulting skills complement and reinforce your core expertise while dealing with clients and running your consulting business.

In this post, you’ll learn about the 6 essential consulting skills that will turn you into a better, more in-demand consultant.

1. Communication Skills

Consultants engage in a lot of oral and written communication with clients before, during, and after projects. Whether it’s…

• Asking your client meaningful questions during sales conversations
• Presenting your analysis during a project
• Following up and asking for a referral

Your communications skills determine how your clients view you. Whether they trust and like you, as well as whether or not they see you as a real authority and expert.

However, good oral communication skills are not enough.

You also need the ability to communicate your value through your writing skills, including your…

• Marketing and sales materials
• Your consulting website copy
• And blog content

If you can’t communicate the value you bring or the results you’ve created — you’ll have a tough time marketing your consulting business .

How to Demonstrate Your Communication Skills

Learning how to carry on a meaningful conversation with your consulting clients and asking great questions is key to demonstrating your communication skills.

But don’t forget that listening is just as important to your communication skills as the ability to speak and write.

If you don’t listen closely to what your clients are saying, you’ll be focused on just talking and offering ideas — like an inexperienced consultant:

(Chart taken from our article Best Questions to Ask Consulting Clients: Updated Playbook )

Elite consultants let their clients do most of the talking.

As a result, they ask better questions — questions that make their clients think and see different perspectives and opportunities. Questions that position the consultant as an expert and trusted advisor.

How to Improve Your Communication Skills

The best way to improve your consulting skills is to write.

Here’s an exercise Andrew Sobel introduced me to that you can use to improve your writing skills — and create tremendous value for your clients:

• Bring up a blank document. Write a list of 30 of the major topics, problems, and questions currently facing your industry.
• Every day, spend 30 minutes writing a 1-page article on each topic, problem, or question — adding your insight and value to the discussion.
• By the end of 30 days, you’ll have a 30-page document adding your insight to the most important topics in your industry.

Use a tool like Grammarly or Hemingway Editor to help you write with focus and clarity.

Don’t write to make yourself sound smart. Write so that clients easily grasp your ideas, points of view, and insights.

In Momentum, our flagship program for early-stage consultants , we have an entire module on how to write thought-leadership content that attracts clients:

From Momentum , our early-stage program for consultants.

Communication Skills Example

Nancy Duarte , communication expert and CEO of Duarte, Inc, is an expert on giving presentations and using data to tell stories.

Here’s an example of how she communicates suggested actions directly and confidently to a client:

“Some people would say, “The data speaks for itself,” but somebody has to form a perspective around it. Technically, artificial intelligence can read data and tee up an observation from the data. In this case, somebody has to form a point of view about it.

Six-Figure Blueprint

You wanted an example of a point of view. You’re making a claim that if we do this action our data could transform in the future.

Here’s a little example: “changing the shopping cart experience and our shipping policies could increase sales by 40%.”

There’s an action — changing our cart and shipping policies — and what’s at stake is a 40% increase in sales. It’s super tight. It’s one sentence. It’s not super complex but doing it as a tight lockup where it’s like, “Here’s my point of view. Here’s the payoff,” or “Here’s my point of view, and here’s the problem.” It makes it clear.”

2. Observation Skills

As a consultant, you’ll often play the role of the observer .

You’ll be focused on whatever part of your client’s organization you are engaged with. And, you must be able to notice, analyze, and provide feedback on any areas of concern or interest.

It’s difficult for your clients to assess their own business because they are so close to it. They hire you to provide an outsider’s view. You help them make more objective and informed decisions. More on this in #6.

How To Demonstrate Your Observation Skills

Demonstrating your observation skills involves every other skill on this list.

By using your skills in problem-solving, objectivity, and communication skills together, you analyze and present your findings to your client — which demonstrates your skills as a keen observer.

Powerful observation skills highlight areas in the client’s business they’ve never seen or considered before.

How To Improve Your Observation Skills

The more projects, businesses, and clients you work with, the better your observation skills will become.

Practice your observation skills by learning to watch and listen carefully.

Learn how to take smart notes . Note-taking is an essential part of observation, and notes give you material to work with in your consulting projects.

Try and see the “bigger picture.” Connect the dots in the client’s business. Highlight patterns and trends. Communicate them to your client.

Observation Skills Example

Many years ago in Japan, I was sitting down in a design meeting with a design firm and the president of a multi-billion dollar company.

We were discussing how to re-brand the company.

The designers were hurling ideas across the table about how the visual brand should look.

The president was hearing a lot of different ideas and opinions, but nobody was giving him direction .

Leaders value direction — someone who can give them answers based on their expertise.

Even though I was the sole foreigner at the table — and younger than everyone — I decided to speak up.

“If you want to grow the brand in an international market, I would go with this option.”

“ OK, let’s do it.” the president responded.

After a discussion that lasted a few hours, his quick response surprised everyone in the room.

And I learned a valuable lesson: being a keen observer who can observe and suggest action is a fundamental consulting skill.

3. Problem-Solving Skills

Problem-solving is a core part of consulting.

It’s what you do for a living: applying your skills and expertise to a particular problem that your clients have and help them achieve their desired result.

Armed with a high level of skill and experience in your field, your ability to solve your client’s problems is a big part of why they hire you.

How to Demonstrate Your Problem Solving Skills

One of the best ways to demonstrate your problem-solving skills is by writing case studies.

• Pick a successful project that you completed for a client.
• Create four headers for the case study: Overview, The Problem, Actions, The Result
• In the Overview section, describe the situation the client was in, what they wanted to accomplish, and the challenge they were facing. Keep this brief.
• In The Problem section, write a detailed description of the problem your client was facing before they hired you.
• In the Actions section, write a detailed description of how you solved the problem.
• In The Results section, write a detailed description of the outcome your Actions created for the client.

Clients reading your case studies will pay close attention to the problem you helped your client solved.

If it’s similar to the problems they are (or may in the future) experience in their business, they’ll want to have a meaningful conversation with you about how you can help them solve their problem.

How To Improve Your Problem Solving Skills

The best way to improve your problem-solving skills as a consultant is by solving your client’s problems through project work, reading and studying deeply to understand different situations, cause and effect, and gain new perspectives.

The bigger the problem you solve for your clients, the better you’ll get at problem-solving.

There are no real shortcuts to improve your problem-solving skills. Solve difficult problems, study, learn, and you’ll become a master problem-solver — one your clients can’t afford to lose.

Problem Solving Example

Check out our consulting case studies that show how we’ve helped consultants solve problems in their businesses.

• How we helped nonprofit consultant Nic Campbell double her number of clients within a few weeks
• How we helped software consultant Sam Schutte increase revenue by 60% and win a $250K project
• How we helped marketing consultant Donna Bates win 1 1 new clients, 10X her fees, and gain a new sense of confidence

4. People Skills

Developing and sustaining good relationships with your client, their employees, and other key players is paramount. The success of your consulting projects depends on these relationships.

If you have good people skills, people like, trust, and respect you more. When clients like, trust, and respect you, your projects will run smoothly.

How To Demonstrate Your People Skills

One of the best ways to demonstrate your people skills is to practice being empathetic and being someone they know they can trust.

In the context of consulting, one of the best ways to practice being empathetic and gain trust — and thus, demonstrate your people skills — is to add value .

• Do what you say you will do
• Deliver results to your client
• Don’t just meet, but exceed expectations
• Be consistent and show them you understand their situation
• Listen attentively
• Always look for new opportunities to add value

Adding value to client’s lives shows that you are listening to them, understanding them, and are taking time out of your day to make their life better.

How To Improve Your People Skills

Improving your “people skills” might seem like an abstract idea.

To improve your people skills, focus on building relationships.

Here’s something you can do every day to build relationships and improve your people skills.

• Every day, reach out to 1 new potential client.
• Learn a little about them, their business, and their interests.
• When you message them, lead with empathy — make the message more about them, what they are likely thinking about and feeling, and their interests instead of you and your business.
• Don’t pitch. Instead, use this as an opportunity to learn about the pains and desires of this ideal client.
• Once you understand their pains and desires, look to add value to their lives by sharing content to help them.

Not only will this habit help you improve your people skills, but you’ll be “in the flow”: continually connecting with and building relationships with the clients in the industry you serve.

People Skills Example

In our 2021 February Mastermind Group, we invited Jason Bay, founder of Blissful Prospecting.

He gave a talk about prospecting. And for consultants, good prospecting takes good people skills.

Jason Bay teaches the REPLY method :

• Relevant Results. Showing the prospect results you’ve created that are akin to the results they want.
• Empathy. Showing prospects you understand their pains and desires.
• Personalization. Showing prospects that you are not using automated messages, but know a bit about them.
• Laser-focus. Showing prospects that you respect their time with a short, clear message.
• You-oriented. Showing prospects that you’re interested in them, not pitching yourself.

Here’s an example of a real email that successfully landed a meeting using these principles:

Learning to send outreach messages like this requires solid people skills.

The best way to get better at them? Practice.

With good people skills, you’ll have a much easier time winning and completing consulting projects.

5. Organization & Time Management Skills

If you’re a freelance consultant, you’ll wear many hats and have many tasks to accomplish. In the early days, you are the business.

In the morning you might have a sales call. During the afternoon, you’re working on a project. Later that evening, you’re sending invoices and following up with clients.

It’s critical that you learn to manage your time well. Otherwise, you risk falling behind.

By staying organized, productive, and practicing good time management, you’ll be able to systematically and methodically complete your tasks.

How To Demonstrate Your Organization & Time Management Skills

Clients are always assessing you based on how organized you are and how you manage your time. If you are methodical in how you organize your work and your time, they’ll see you as being more organized and therefore, trust you more.

To demonstrate your organization & time management skills…

• Make plans and stick to them
• Use efficient methodologies (ex: Agile, Lean) that allow you to get results in a quicker time frame.
• Be punctual, submit your work on time, and respond quickly to clients quickly.
• When clients need a reminder about specific dates or details, be the one who reminds them.

How To Improve Your Organization & Time Management Skills

To improve your organization skills, don’t rely so much on your memory.

Instead, use note-taking tools like Asana , Evernote , Notion , or Roam to store key details. Keep your notes handy whenever you are speaking with a client so that you always have the key details on hand.

To improve your time management skills, create schedules for yourself and use a calendar.

Make a daily plan for yourself: what you will do, and when. And a tool like Google Calendar will help you organize your time effectively.

Using these tools to keep you organized and manage your time frees up your brain to focus on tasks that demand more attention and focus.

Organization & Time Management Skills Example

At Consulting Success®, we made the shift to using Asana to manage our meetings and various projects.

Prior to using Asana, we used a collection of Google Docs. It took us time to track down the Google Docs we needed.

With Asana, we’ve organized much of the business into a centralized system. This makes it easy for us to see who’s working on what, when it’s due, and how to do it.

It has helped everyone become more organized — and, as a result, frees up time for everyone to focus on deeper, more meaningful work.

6. Objectivity & Independence Skills

Clients need more than just your skills and experience. They need an unbiased and objective analysis of their situation. As a consultant, you are brought in as a third-party observer to provide your unbiased and objective opinions.

Don’t get too personally invested in your projects. What matters most is providing your client with the right solution to their problem. If that means telling them an uncomfortable truth, it’s your duty to tell them the truth.

Your clients are surrounded by “yes-men” and “yes-women.”

You need to be the one who can tell them “no” and given them a sound reason when appropriate.

How To Demonstrate Your Objectivity & Independence Skills

The best way to demonstrate your objectivity & independence skills is to be a source of truth to your client.

When they come to you for help, you need to tell them the truth.

This is easier said than done. Telling the truth often requires you to be harsh, blunt, or even disagreeable.

Being straightforward and telling the truth can also cause some short-term pain.

However, if you are truly looking out for your client, you’ll tell them the truth — or do the best you can to give them an accurate, objective analysis from your point of view.

Short-term pain is worth it if it improves your client’s condition in the long run.

How To Improve Your Objectivity & Independence Skills

To improve your objectivity & independence skills, practice being more direct & honest with your clients.

If they ask you if something is a good idea, and you don’t think it’s a good idea, tell them. Don’t beat around the bush: tell them “no” and give them reasons why.

“No” is an appropriate answer to give your client as long as you think it’s in their best interest.

If you’re afraid of coming across as mean or unpleasant, use the hamburger technique:

Source: The Feedback Burger – How To Give Proper Constructive Feedback

Start your feedback with a compliment. “I like where your head is at with this idea.”

Then, offer your criticism. “However, in this case, I don’t think that would work. Here’s why.”

Finish your feedback with another compliment: “But you’re on the right track. What do you think about doing this instead?”

This technique helps you cushion the blow and guide the client towards a better action.

Objectivity & Independence Skills Example

I was working with a consulting client who understood the importance of marketing — of doing outreach and follow-up — but they weren’t doing it.

They created “busyness” for themselves to avoid the uncomfortable work of growing your business.

During a coaching call with them, I asked:

“When you look back, how will you feel? Will you regret that you didn’t put in the effort? Will you regret not doing a bit more marketing and follow-up? Even though it’s uncomfortable, do you think you might regret it?”

“Yes, I probably would,” the client responded.

Then, I created an action plan to help the client with their marketing.

I could have avoided asking the uncomfortable question and playing it safe. But the client needed a push in the right direction.

Sometimes, your clients will need that same push. But you can’t give them a push in the right direction if you are afraid of telling them the issues that you see.

However, if you are being honest, you’ll have uncomfortable conversations that might hurt in the short-term, but help in the long term.

Imperfect Action: Work On Your Weakest Consulting Skills

Being a consultant requires more than subject matter expertise.

If you want to be successful, you must develop skills in…

• interpersonal relations
• communication
• conflict-resolution

…and more.

Take time each week to work on the consulting skills where you’re lacking

Working on your weaknesses is frustrating, but it’s one of the best things you can do as a consultant.

The more consulting skills you have in your toolbox, the more value you’ll create for your clients — and, as a result, the more value you’ll capture for yourself.

What consulting skills have you found to be the most important?

Which consulting skills are you currently working on?

Leave a comment in the comments section below and join the discussion.

And if you’d like coaching to help improve your consulting skills, we can help. 

In our Clarity Coaching program , we’ve helped over 850 consultants to build a more strategic, profitable, and scalable, consulting business.

We’ll work hands-on with you to develop a strategic plan and then dive deep and work through your ideal client clarity, strategic messaging, consulting offers, fees and pricing, business model optimization, and help you to set up your marketing engine and lead generation system to consistently attract ideal clients.

You’ll learn how to make more money with every project you take on — and how to land more clients than ever before. Learn more about Clarity Coaching and get in touch to talk about your situation and goals .

One thought on “ The 6 Essential Consulting Skills (Clients Want These) ”

Thanks for going over some skills to have for a business consultancy. You mentioned that you should make sure you are good at problem solving especially since you need to be able to apply an objective to a particular problem. It sounds like you should really research different methods to understand what the different options could be.

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Consulting Approach to Problem Solving

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Management consultants excel at solving difficult and complex business problems. How do they do this? Shouldn’t clients know more about their situation than external consultants? Consultants are trained to systematically break down problems into logical pieces, then aggressively pursue answers with data: • Think about the problem broadly; strategy, operations, people, technology • Define the problem clearly; articulate “what does success look like?” • Break the problem into “buckets” so it is easy to understand • Use hypotheses to “guess” your way to the potential answer(s) • Find and clean up messy data; convert the data into useful recommendations

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Problem definition may sound abstract or boring, but it's incredibly important to solve the RIGHT PROBLEM. Like a detective at a crime scene, a consultant needs to stay open-minded; think broadly about the problem and "look around" for obvious (and missing) clues. In practical terms, a clear problem statement helps the consulting manager keep the scope broad enough for flexibility and creativity, while narrow enough that the work can get done within the project time-frame.

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• Scope creep is scary, avoid it • 10 minutes

1 discussion prompt • Total 6 minutes

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Frameworks and Logical Structuring

Using the analogy of a jigsaw puzzle, the prior step of "problem definition" was looking at the picture on the box and defining the edges of the puzzle. This step of "problem break down" is sorting the puzzle pieces into different colors: red, yellow, blue, green. Different business frameworks help to simplify complex problems and identify the key drivers (e.g., 80/20 pareto principle). It also offers the opportunity to get early client feedback and form early hypotheses on what the answer(s) could be. Finally, it helps to organize the work so the team can divide up the work effectively.

2 videos 1 quiz 1 discussion prompt

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• 3.3 Breaking the problems into "buckets" • 12 minutes • Preview module
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1 quiz • Total 12 minutes

• Breaking the problem down • 12 minutes

1 discussion prompt • Total 20 minutes

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Hypothesis-Based Consulting

Unless you are a scientist, the word "hypothesis" will likely seem a little strange. It's the idea that you are making an "educated guess" on what the solutions could be. It's a statement (not a question) that you work to prove through testing. How is this related to consulting? Consultants are often hired to solve the toughest problems in a short amount of time. The only way to accomplish that is by being smart and selective in what they do. This is the secret to how consultants successfully "crack the case" on their clients' problems.

2 videos 1 reading 1 quiz 1 discussion prompt

2 videos • Total 34 minutes

• 3.5 Hypothesis-based consulting • 20 minutes • Preview module
• 3.6 Developing confidence in your solution(s) • 13 minutes

1 reading • Total 15 minutes

• Bulletproof problem solving (Conn and McLean), 2019 • 15 minutes
• Hypotheses and data analysis • 12 minutes

1 discussion prompt • Total 4 minutes

• Optional: Explain "hypothesis consulting" • 4 minutes

Consultants Love Data

Yes, consultants LOVE data. It is the raw ingredients in the cooking of useful recommendations. Too often, the data is messy, biased, old, fragmented, or missing. As a result, one of the first tasks in a consulting project is to identify and collect usable data sets. It's an enormous task - often unglamorous - but also the only way you can test your hypotheses and develop recommendations. Data lends credibility to consultants' recommendations.

4 videos 1 reading 1 quiz 1 discussion prompt

4 videos • Total 37 minutes

• 3.7 Why do consultants love data? • 4 minutes • Preview module
• 3.8 Messy data is an opportunity • 14 minutes
• 3.9 Data lends credibility • 8 minutes
• 3.10 The journey from data to insights • 9 minutes

1 reading • Total 6 minutes

• Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, • 6 minutes

1 quiz • Total 20 minutes

• Why is data so important? • 20 minutes
• Optional: When do you have enough data? • 6 minutes

Data Request and Data Cleansing

Once you've identified the data you need, the journey has just begun. Using a cooking analogy, you've only put together the shopping list. You still need to get the ingredients, check for freshness, get enough, wash / peel / cut them before you can do the cooking. The same applies for data. It takes effort, client engagement, and some wisdom to request data efficiently.

3 videos 2 readings 2 discussion prompts

3 videos • Total 42 minutes

• 3.11 Data request • 10 minutes • Preview module
• 3.12 Client follow up (data request example) • 18 minutes
• 3.13 Data cleansing and structuring • 13 minutes

2 readings • Total 20 minutes

• Data Analytics Basics for Managers (HBR, 2018) • 10 minutes
• Exceljet.net a great way to learn Excel • 10 minutes

2 discussion prompts • Total 12 minutes

• Optional: How much excel do you use? • 4 minutes
• Optional: Do you have a "data challenge" story? • 8 minutes

Get the "Right Data" for the Project

There is too much data out there to analyze it all; you need to be selective. One way to do that is to follow a structured process or methodology. It doesn't have to be fancy or proprietary. It just needs to outline for yourself and the client, what you are going to do when. This project plan is at a high-level and helps you to reorient your efforts to the right data, right analysis, and right timing. The following DMAIC framework is used frequently in performance improvement projects.

3 videos 1 reading 1 quiz 1 peer review

3 videos • Total 27 minutes

• 3.14 DMAIC: A key tool for process improvement • 8 minutes • Preview module
• DMAIC example: Losing weight • 16 minutes
• Congratulations on finishing course #3 • 2 minutes

1 reading • Total 2 minutes

• Please take 2 min and leave a review • 2 minutes

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• Data requests and DMAIC • 30 minutes

1 peer review • Total 45 minutes

• Create a 1-page example of DMAIC • 45 minutes

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How to master the seven-step problem-solving process

In this episode of the McKinsey Podcast , Simon London speaks with Charles Conn, CEO of venture-capital firm Oxford Sciences Innovation, and McKinsey senior partner Hugo Sarrazin about the complexities of different problem-solving strategies.

Podcast transcript

Simon London: Hello, and welcome to this episode of the McKinsey Podcast , with me, Simon London. What’s the number-one skill you need to succeed professionally? Salesmanship, perhaps? Or a facility with statistics? Or maybe the ability to communicate crisply and clearly? Many would argue that at the very top of the list comes problem solving: that is, the ability to think through and come up with an optimal course of action to address any complex challenge—in business, in public policy, or indeed in life.

Looked at this way, it’s no surprise that McKinsey takes problem solving very seriously, testing for it during the recruiting process and then honing it, in McKinsey consultants, through immersion in a structured seven-step method. To discuss the art of problem solving, I sat down in California with McKinsey senior partner Hugo Sarrazin and also with Charles Conn. Charles is a former McKinsey partner, entrepreneur, executive, and coauthor of the book Bulletproof Problem Solving: The One Skill That Changes Everything [John Wiley & Sons, 2018].

Charles and Hugo, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here.

Hugo Sarrazin: Our pleasure.

Charles Conn: It’s terrific to be here.

Simon London: Problem solving is a really interesting piece of terminology. It could mean so many different things. I have a son who’s a teenage climber. They talk about solving problems. Climbing is problem solving. Charles, when you talk about problem solving, what are you talking about?

Charles Conn: For me, problem solving is the answer to the question “What should I do?” It’s interesting when there’s uncertainty and complexity, and when it’s meaningful because there are consequences. Your son’s climbing is a perfect example. There are consequences, and it’s complicated, and there’s uncertainty—can he make that grab? I think we can apply that same frame almost at any level. You can think about questions like “What town would I like to live in?” or “Should I put solar panels on my roof?”

You might think that’s a funny thing to apply problem solving to, but in my mind it’s not fundamentally different from business problem solving, which answers the question “What should my strategy be?” Or problem solving at the policy level: “How do we combat climate change?” “Should I support the local school bond?” I think these are all part and parcel of the same type of question, “What should I do?”

I’m a big fan of structured problem solving. By following steps, we can more clearly understand what problem it is we’re solving, what are the components of the problem that we’re solving, which components are the most important ones for us to pay attention to, which analytic techniques we should apply to those, and how we can synthesize what we’ve learned back into a compelling story. That’s all it is, at its heart.

I think sometimes when people think about seven steps, they assume that there’s a rigidity to this. That’s not it at all. It’s actually to give you the scope for creativity, which often doesn’t exist when your problem solving is muddled.

Simon London: You were just talking about the seven-step process. That’s what’s written down in the book, but it’s a very McKinsey process as well. Without getting too deep into the weeds, let’s go through the steps, one by one. You were just talking about problem definition as being a particularly important thing to get right first. That’s the first step. Hugo, tell us about that.

Hugo Sarrazin: It is surprising how often people jump past this step and make a bunch of assumptions. The most powerful thing is to step back and ask the basic questions—“What are we trying to solve? What are the constraints that exist? What are the dependencies?” Let’s make those explicit and really push the thinking and defining. At McKinsey, we spend an enormous amount of time in writing that little statement, and the statement, if you’re a logic purist, is great. You debate. “Is it an ‘or’? Is it an ‘and’? What’s the action verb?” Because all these specific words help you get to the heart of what matters.

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Simon London: So this is a concise problem statement.

Hugo Sarrazin: Yeah. It’s not like “Can we grow in Japan?” That’s interesting, but it is “What, specifically, are we trying to uncover in the growth of a product in Japan? Or a segment in Japan? Or a channel in Japan?” When you spend an enormous amount of time, in the first meeting of the different stakeholders, debating this and having different people put forward what they think the problem definition is, you realize that people have completely different views of why they’re here. That, to me, is the most important step.

Charles Conn: I would agree with that. For me, the problem context is critical. When we understand “What are the forces acting upon your decision maker? How quickly is the answer needed? With what precision is the answer needed? Are there areas that are off limits or areas where we would particularly like to find our solution? Is the decision maker open to exploring other areas?” then you not only become more efficient, and move toward what we call the critical path in problem solving, but you also make it so much more likely that you’re not going to waste your time or your decision maker’s time.

How often do especially bright young people run off with half of the idea about what the problem is and start collecting data and start building models—only to discover that they’ve really gone off half-cocked.

Hugo Sarrazin: Yeah.

Charles Conn: And in the wrong direction.

Simon London: OK. So step one—and there is a real art and a structure to it—is define the problem. Step two, Charles?

Charles Conn: My favorite step is step two, which is to use logic trees to disaggregate the problem. Every problem we’re solving has some complexity and some uncertainty in it. The only way that we can really get our team working on the problem is to take the problem apart into logical pieces.

What we find, of course, is that the way to disaggregate the problem often gives you an insight into the answer to the problem quite quickly. I love to do two or three different cuts at it, each one giving a bit of a different insight into what might be going wrong. By doing sensible disaggregations, using logic trees, we can figure out which parts of the problem we should be looking at, and we can assign those different parts to team members.

Simon London: What’s a good example of a logic tree on a sort of ratable problem?

Charles Conn: Maybe the easiest one is the classic profit tree. Almost in every business that I would take a look at, I would start with a profit or return-on-assets tree. In its simplest form, you have the components of revenue, which are price and quantity, and the components of cost, which are cost and quantity. Each of those can be broken out. Cost can be broken into variable cost and fixed cost. The components of price can be broken into what your pricing scheme is. That simple tree often provides insight into what’s going on in a business or what the difference is between that business and the competitors.

If we add the leg, which is “What’s the asset base or investment element?”—so profit divided by assets—then we can ask the question “Is the business using its investments sensibly?” whether that’s in stores or in manufacturing or in transportation assets. I hope we can see just how simple this is, even though we’re describing it in words.

When I went to work with Gordon Moore at the Moore Foundation, the problem that he asked us to look at was “How can we save Pacific salmon?” Now, that sounds like an impossible question, but it was amenable to precisely the same type of disaggregation and allowed us to organize what became a 15-year effort to improve the likelihood of good outcomes for Pacific salmon.

Simon London: Now, is there a danger that your logic tree can be impossibly large? This, I think, brings us onto the third step in the process, which is that you have to prioritize.

Charles Conn: Absolutely. The third step, which we also emphasize, along with good problem definition, is rigorous prioritization—we ask the questions “How important is this lever or this branch of the tree in the overall outcome that we seek to achieve? How much can I move that lever?” Obviously, we try and focus our efforts on ones that have a big impact on the problem and the ones that we have the ability to change. With salmon, ocean conditions turned out to be a big lever, but not one that we could adjust. We focused our attention on fish habitats and fish-harvesting practices, which were big levers that we could affect.

People spend a lot of time arguing about branches that are either not important or that none of us can change. We see it in the public square. When we deal with questions at the policy level—“Should you support the death penalty?” “How do we affect climate change?” “How can we uncover the causes and address homelessness?”—it’s even more important that we’re focusing on levers that are big and movable.

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Simon London: Let’s move swiftly on to step four. You’ve defined your problem, you disaggregate it, you prioritize where you want to analyze—what you want to really look at hard. Then you got to the work plan. Now, what does that mean in practice?

Hugo Sarrazin: Depending on what you’ve prioritized, there are many things you could do. It could be breaking the work among the team members so that people have a clear piece of the work to do. It could be defining the specific analyses that need to get done and executed, and being clear on time lines. There’s always a level-one answer, there’s a level-two answer, there’s a level-three answer. Without being too flippant, I can solve any problem during a good dinner with wine. It won’t have a whole lot of backing.

Simon London: Not going to have a lot of depth to it.

Hugo Sarrazin: No, but it may be useful as a starting point. If the stakes are not that high, that could be OK. If it’s really high stakes, you may need level three and have the whole model validated in three different ways. You need to find a work plan that reflects the level of precision, the time frame you have, and the stakeholders you need to bring along in the exercise.

Charles Conn: I love the way you’ve described that, because, again, some people think of problem solving as a linear thing, but of course what’s critical is that it’s iterative. As you say, you can solve the problem in one day or even one hour.

Charles Conn: We encourage our teams everywhere to do that. We call it the one-day answer or the one-hour answer. In work planning, we’re always iterating. Every time you see a 50-page work plan that stretches out to three months, you know it’s wrong. It will be outmoded very quickly by that learning process that you described. Iterative problem solving is a critical part of this. Sometimes, people think work planning sounds dull, but it isn’t. It’s how we know what’s expected of us and when we need to deliver it and how we’re progressing toward the answer. It’s also the place where we can deal with biases. Bias is a feature of every human decision-making process. If we design our team interactions intelligently, we can avoid the worst sort of biases.

Simon London: Here we’re talking about cognitive biases primarily, right? It’s not that I’m biased against you because of your accent or something. These are the cognitive biases that behavioral sciences have shown we all carry around, things like anchoring, overoptimism—these kinds of things.

Both: Yeah.

Charles Conn: Availability bias is the one that I’m always alert to. You think you’ve seen the problem before, and therefore what’s available is your previous conception of it—and we have to be most careful about that. In any human setting, we also have to be careful about biases that are based on hierarchies, sometimes called sunflower bias. I’m sure, Hugo, with your teams, you make sure that the youngest team members speak first. Not the oldest team members, because it’s easy for people to look at who’s senior and alter their own creative approaches.

Hugo Sarrazin: It’s helpful, at that moment—if someone is asserting a point of view—to ask the question “This was true in what context?” You’re trying to apply something that worked in one context to a different one. That can be deadly if the context has changed, and that’s why organizations struggle to change. You promote all these people because they did something that worked well in the past, and then there’s a disruption in the industry, and they keep doing what got them promoted even though the context has changed.

Simon London: Right. Right.

Hugo Sarrazin: So it’s the same thing in problem solving.

Charles Conn: And it’s why diversity in our teams is so important. It’s one of the best things about the world that we’re in now. We’re likely to have people from different socioeconomic, ethnic, and national backgrounds, each of whom sees problems from a slightly different perspective. It is therefore much more likely that the team will uncover a truly creative and clever approach to problem solving.

Simon London: Let’s move on to step five. You’ve done your work plan. Now you’ve actually got to do the analysis. The thing that strikes me here is that the range of tools that we have at our disposal now, of course, is just huge, particularly with advances in computation, advanced analytics. There’s so many things that you can apply here. Just talk about the analysis stage. How do you pick the right tools?

Charles Conn: For me, the most important thing is that we start with simple heuristics and explanatory statistics before we go off and use the big-gun tools. We need to understand the shape and scope of our problem before we start applying these massive and complex analytical approaches.

Simon London: Would you agree with that?

Hugo Sarrazin: I agree. I think there are so many wonderful heuristics. You need to start there before you go deep into the modeling exercise. There’s an interesting dynamic that’s happening, though. In some cases, for some types of problems, it is even better to set yourself up to maximize your learning. Your problem-solving methodology is test and learn, test and learn, test and learn, and iterate. That is a heuristic in itself, the A/B testing that is used in many parts of the world. So that’s a problem-solving methodology. It’s nothing different. It just uses technology and feedback loops in a fast way. The other one is exploratory data analysis. When you’re dealing with a large-scale problem, and there’s so much data, I can get to the heuristics that Charles was talking about through very clever visualization of data.

You test with your data. You need to set up an environment to do so, but don’t get caught up in neural-network modeling immediately. You’re testing, you’re checking—“Is the data right? Is it sound? Does it make sense?”—before you launch too far.

Simon London: You do hear these ideas—that if you have a big enough data set and enough algorithms, they’re going to find things that you just wouldn’t have spotted, find solutions that maybe you wouldn’t have thought of. Does machine learning sort of revolutionize the problem-solving process? Or are these actually just other tools in the toolbox for structured problem solving?

Charles Conn: It can be revolutionary. There are some areas in which the pattern recognition of large data sets and good algorithms can help us see things that we otherwise couldn’t see. But I do think it’s terribly important we don’t think that this particular technique is a substitute for superb problem solving, starting with good problem definition. Many people use machine learning without understanding algorithms that themselves can have biases built into them. Just as 20 years ago, when we were doing statistical analysis, we knew that we needed good model definition, we still need a good understanding of our algorithms and really good problem definition before we launch off into big data sets and unknown algorithms.

Simon London: Step six. You’ve done your analysis.

Charles Conn: I take six and seven together, and this is the place where young problem solvers often make a mistake. They’ve got their analysis, and they assume that’s the answer, and of course it isn’t the answer. The ability to synthesize the pieces that came out of the analysis and begin to weave those into a story that helps people answer the question “What should I do?” This is back to where we started. If we can’t synthesize, and we can’t tell a story, then our decision maker can’t find the answer to “What should I do?”

Simon London: But, again, these final steps are about motivating people to action, right?

Charles Conn: Yeah.

Simon London: I am slightly torn about the nomenclature of problem solving because it’s on paper, right? Until you motivate people to action, you actually haven’t solved anything.

Charles Conn: I love this question because I think decision-making theory, without a bias to action, is a waste of time. Everything in how I approach this is to help people take action that makes the world better.

Simon London: Hence, these are absolutely critical steps. If you don’t do this well, you’ve just got a bunch of analysis.

Charles Conn: We end up in exactly the same place where we started, which is people speaking across each other, past each other in the public square, rather than actually working together, shoulder to shoulder, to crack these important problems.

Simon London: In the real world, we have a lot of uncertainty—arguably, increasing uncertainty. How do good problem solvers deal with that?

Hugo Sarrazin: At every step of the process. In the problem definition, when you’re defining the context, you need to understand those sources of uncertainty and whether they’re important or not important. It becomes important in the definition of the tree.

You need to think carefully about the branches of the tree that are more certain and less certain as you define them. They don’t have equal weight just because they’ve got equal space on the page. Then, when you’re prioritizing, your prioritization approach may put more emphasis on things that have low probability but huge impact—or, vice versa, may put a lot of priority on things that are very likely and, hopefully, have a reasonable impact. You can introduce that along the way. When you come back to the synthesis, you just need to be nuanced about what you’re understanding, the likelihood.

Often, people lack humility in the way they make their recommendations: “This is the answer.” They’re very precise, and I think we would all be well-served to say, “This is a likely answer under the following sets of conditions” and then make the level of uncertainty clearer, if that is appropriate. It doesn’t mean you’re always in the gray zone; it doesn’t mean you don’t have a point of view. It just means that you can be explicit about the certainty of your answer when you make that recommendation.

Simon London: So it sounds like there is an underlying principle: “Acknowledge and embrace the uncertainty. Don’t pretend that it isn’t there. Be very clear about what the uncertainties are up front, and then build that into every step of the process.”

Hugo Sarrazin: Every step of the process.

Simon London: Yeah. We have just walked through a particular structured methodology for problem solving. But, of course, this is not the only structured methodology for problem solving. One that is also very well-known is design thinking, which comes at things very differently. So, Hugo, I know you have worked with a lot of designers. Just give us a very quick summary. Design thinking—what is it, and how does it relate?

Hugo Sarrazin: It starts with an incredible amount of empathy for the user and uses that to define the problem. It does pause and go out in the wild and spend an enormous amount of time seeing how people interact with objects, seeing the experience they’re getting, seeing the pain points or joy—and uses that to infer and define the problem.

Simon London: Problem definition, but out in the world.

Hugo Sarrazin: With an enormous amount of empathy. There’s a huge emphasis on empathy. Traditional, more classic problem solving is you define the problem based on an understanding of the situation. This one almost presupposes that we don’t know the problem until we go see it. The second thing is you need to come up with multiple scenarios or answers or ideas or concepts, and there’s a lot of divergent thinking initially. That’s slightly different, versus the prioritization, but not for long. Eventually, you need to kind of say, “OK, I’m going to converge again.” Then you go and you bring things back to the customer and get feedback and iterate. Then you rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. There’s a lot of tactile building, along the way, of prototypes and things like that. It’s very iterative.

Simon London: So, Charles, are these complements or are these alternatives?

Charles Conn: I think they’re entirely complementary, and I think Hugo’s description is perfect. When we do problem definition well in classic problem solving, we are demonstrating the kind of empathy, at the very beginning of our problem, that design thinking asks us to approach. When we ideate—and that’s very similar to the disaggregation, prioritization, and work-planning steps—we do precisely the same thing, and often we use contrasting teams, so that we do have divergent thinking. The best teams allow divergent thinking to bump them off whatever their initial biases in problem solving are. For me, design thinking gives us a constant reminder of creativity, empathy, and the tactile nature of problem solving, but it’s absolutely complementary, not alternative.

Simon London: I think, in a world of cross-functional teams, an interesting question is do people with design-thinking backgrounds really work well together with classical problem solvers? How do you make that chemistry happen?

Hugo Sarrazin: Yeah, it is not easy when people have spent an enormous amount of time seeped in design thinking or user-centric design, whichever word you want to use. If the person who’s applying classic problem-solving methodology is very rigid and mechanical in the way they’re doing it, there could be an enormous amount of tension. If there’s not clarity in the role and not clarity in the process, I think having the two together can be, sometimes, problematic.

The second thing that happens often is that the artifacts the two methodologies try to gravitate toward can be different. Classic problem solving often gravitates toward a model; design thinking migrates toward a prototype. Rather than writing a big deck with all my supporting evidence, they’ll bring an example, a thing, and that feels different. Then you spend your time differently to achieve those two end products, so that’s another source of friction.

Now, I still think it can be an incredibly powerful thing to have the two—if there are the right people with the right mind-set, if there is a team that is explicit about the roles, if we’re clear about the kind of outcomes we are attempting to bring forward. There’s an enormous amount of collaborativeness and respect.

Simon London: But they have to respect each other’s methodology and be prepared to flex, maybe, a little bit, in how this process is going to work.

Hugo Sarrazin: Absolutely.

Simon London: The other area where, it strikes me, there could be a little bit of a different sort of friction is this whole concept of the day-one answer, which is what we were just talking about in classical problem solving. Now, you know that this is probably not going to be your final answer, but that’s how you begin to structure the problem. Whereas I would imagine your design thinkers—no, they’re going off to do their ethnographic research and get out into the field, potentially for a long time, before they come back with at least an initial hypothesis.

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Hugo Sarrazin: That is a great callout, and that’s another difference. Designers typically will like to soak into the situation and avoid converging too quickly. There’s optionality and exploring different options. There’s a strong belief that keeps the solution space wide enough that you can come up with more radical ideas. If there’s a large design team or many designers on the team, and you come on Friday and say, “What’s our week-one answer?” they’re going to struggle. They’re not going to be comfortable, naturally, to give that answer. It doesn’t mean they don’t have an answer; it’s just not where they are in their thinking process.

Simon London: I think we are, sadly, out of time for today. But Charles and Hugo, thank you so much.

Charles Conn: It was a pleasure to be here, Simon.

Hugo Sarrazin: It was a pleasure. Thank you.

Simon London: And thanks, as always, to you, our listeners, for tuning into this episode of the McKinsey Podcast . If you want to learn more about problem solving, you can find the book, Bulletproof Problem Solving: The One Skill That Changes Everything , online or order it through your local bookstore. To learn more about McKinsey, you can of course find us at McKinsey.com.

Charles Conn is CEO of Oxford Sciences Innovation and an alumnus of McKinsey’s Sydney office. Hugo Sarrazin is a senior partner in the Silicon Valley office, where Simon London, a member of McKinsey Publishing, is also based.

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36 core consulting skills to set you apart from your competition.

There’s a certain halo effect that often surrounds the field of consulting. It’s the alluring idea that a consultant’s job is to walk in the door, sweep everyone off their feet with their brilliant ideas, and then leave with a fat paycheck. Now, while some masterful consultants do make solving cases look like a breeze, there’s much more to their work than meets the eye. Namely, a set of consulting skills that enables them to deliver massive value to their clients every time without fail.

So What Makes a Good Consultant?

The first thing that comes to mind for most people about consultants is that they are deeply knowledgeable. They know their industry and area of expertise inside and out. But knowing about a topic doesn’t necessarily mean being able to share that knowledge and, more importantly, applying it to solve problems.

To be an effective consultant, you need to listen to your clients and analyze what they say. You need to reframe that information and put it into context in order to point out correlations between issues. In the end, you have to take charge of the case and drive the conversation forward, to solve problems collaboratively. And of course, repeat that every time you’re in the meeting room.

People often wonder if you need a consulting certification to do that. The answer is no. You don’t legally require certification to become a consultant , and there are other ways to pick up these important skills. However, a great training program or mentor can definitely make a big difference in your professional development and career.

[ Read: Here’s Exactly How to Become a Certified Life Coach ]

Whichever way you choose, there are some abilities every consultant should possess to deliver results for their clients. Here are the 6 most essential consulting skills that you absolutely need, to succeed in this field.

The 6 Most Important Consulting Skills

Analytical skills.

No matter how many frameworks, cheat sheets, or strategy models you have up your sleeve, great consulting always comes down to analytical skills. What matters is whether you can deconstruct and categorize information effectively, identify new correlations, and draw conclusions from all this.

Analytical thinking requires you to use critical thinking and logical reasoning. You can use a critical thinking test to measure these skills. You will need this to run tons of research on and off cases in your industry and to interpret data points that lead to solutions. Though this may sound a bit dry to some people, analytical thinking actually requires creativity too. It’s being imaginative that will help you link facts to possible opportunities that can be implemented in the future.

Problem-Solving Skills

A solution-oriented mindset is the biggest asset of a consultant. At the time you arrive at your first meeting, your clients have likely thought of all the most obvious ways that their issues could be solved (and of course, none of them worked, which is why they hired you.)

Consulting frameworks will help you map out all facets of a case on the spot and reveal ideas that have not been thought of before. By fleshing out these ideas in detail and drawing a clear comparison between them, you can present solutions to your clients that they can then choose from.

[ Read: 7 Consulting Frameworks That Win Big Clients ]

Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinking is a unique combination of the conceptual understanding of a business situation and grasping its practical applications. Consultants need to have an extraordinary perspective on all layers of strategy, from the more abstract, visionary ideas down to the daily business as usual.

Much of business consulting is zooming in and out of these layers and finding the points where they’re disconnected. This also means being great at observing details that might normally skip other people’s attention.

Effective Communication

As a consultant, you’ll be presenting frameworks and concepts to your clients in real time, either in person or on a call. You need to be able to transmit your ideas and interpret data in a way that it’s clear and understandable for your audience.

Besides presenting your point of view, you’ll also need to interview your clients and ask solution-oriented questions that move the case forward. You need to have great listening skills and be able to collaborate effectively with all your stakeholders, often across multiple functions and in multiple formats, such as online flipbooks and interactive PDFs .

Leadership Skills

Your job as a consultant is to drive the conversation forward and keep it productive, so that it brings the client closer to their business goals. You need to take bold initiative and steer the discussion in the direction that leads to solutions in the fastest way.

If you want to be outstanding in your field, you need to do more than what’s expected of you and strive to constantly outperform yourself, in terms of the results you can bring to your clients. No one’s going to tell you how to conduct a consultation session or what your next steps should be, so this profession calls for an entrepreneurial spirit — especially if you work as a self-employed, independent consultant.

However, employee management is always a lot harder than self-management, as you have to consider more than one personality type. Some of the best solutions for employee management include using software like Monday or Leapsome. Both tools help you plan your own schedule and set goals for you and your team. Plus, their ability to automate tedious tasks allows you to focus more on what you do best—leading a team and consulting.

• Adaptability

On the other side of that relentless drive, lies the ability to adapt to unexpected situations. Issues may arise during a client relationship , and a case might go in a very different direction than what you initially expected.

Clients sometimes change their minds or take a different decision than what you suggested to them, and you need to accept that. You can’t be too invested in a case, because at the end of the day, it’s their business, and they have the right to make the final call (and bear the consequences).

Adaptability also applies to rapidly changing industry trends . You need to be up-to-date with where the market is evolving and bring those insights to your clients. What might have worked a few years ago may not be an effective strategy anymore; you need to keep up with the times.

Key Business Consulting Skills in Your Field

Besides the strengths and soft skills all consultants need, there are some consulting skills that are specific to the business function you’re working with. You need to have industry-specific knowledge to specialize as a consultant and give relevant advice to your clients.

This means being savvy of the key frameworks used in your industry or business area, the most important players in the field, the mechanism of industry relationships, as well as the most recent trends. Here are some important skills you should pick up according to your consulting area.

Strategy Consulting Skills

Strategy consultants are known for their visionary abilities. They can look at the bird-eye view of the company and rise above problems by projecting a better-future trajectory for the business. Not one to build castles in the sky, they are also extremely practical and can turn their ideas into solid plans. To do that, they need to have the following skills:

• Identifying correlations
• Long term planning
• Critical thinking
• Managing complexity
• Unbiased judgment
• Strong listening and questioning skills

Management & Operations Consulting Skills

Management and operations consultants look at the everyday procedures and priorities of a business. They make sure that each function in the company is aligned with the bigger organizational objectives. The following skills are essential for management and operational consultants:

• Systems thinking
• Process optimization
• Attention to detail
• Solving complex problems
• Project management
• Risk management
• Prioritization

HR Consulting Skills

HR consultants focus on the processes of an organization that revolve around employees and team culture. They help advise CHROs, and other decision makers in the human resource department, on employee wellbeing and satisfaction, as well as performance and productivity. Some of their most valuable skills are:

• Communication on a personal and at an organizational level
• Cultivating the right work culture
• Emotional intelligence
• Hiring and interviewing

Marketing & Sales Consulting Skills

Consultants who advise on marketing and sales strategies need hands-on experience in these areas. They have to understand the strategy of each individual promotional channel, as well as the impact they collectively create on brand recognition and revenue. Their most important skills are:

• Application of marketing frameworks
• Creative thinking
• Psychographics mapping
• Market research
• Brand and image management
• Public relations management
• Practical knowledge of social media, SEO, advertising, and funnel strategies

Financial & Accounting Consulting Skills

Financial consultants aim to maximize revenue and profitability for companies. They bring in outside expertise on taxation, investments, and cash flow optimization, so the leadership team can make informed financial decisions. Their most valuable skills are:

• Revenue optimization
• Application of profitability frameworks
• Investment portfolio optimization
• Data analysis

IT Consulting Skills

Consultants in the field of technology bridge the gap between the strategy of the organization and the IT solutions that make them possible. They often need to operate as software engineers and strategists at the same time. To do that, they need to master the following skills:

• Software engineering
• User experience optimization

How To Develop Consulting Skills

By now, you probably have a good idea about your strengths and weaknesses in business consulting. The best way to take a leap forward in your consulting career is to focus on your weaknesses and consciously improve them.

There are several ways you can get better at consulting. You can take training or hire a coach to focus on a specific skill needed for you to grow in this field. You can also join a practice group or take a job at a consulting firm for a while, to learn by observing others.

Above all, you get better at anything by doing it over and over again. So practice as much as you can, and ask for feedback from your mentors and peers to track your progress.

Consulting Skills Checklist

Here’s a summary of the most essential consulting skills once again that will help you succeed in this career.

• Analytical skills
• Categorization and organization
• Summarizing information
• Logical reasoning
• Running research
• Creative thinking and imagination
• Problem solving
• Solution-oriented mindset
• Ideation and brainstorming
• Presentation
• Effective communication
• Active listening
• Questioning and debating
• Conceptual thinking
• Practical thinking
• Observation
• Strategizing
• Interviewing
• Collaboration
• Leadership and taking initiative
• Planning and goal setting
• Time management
• System thinking

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How to improve your problem solving skills and build effective problem solving strategies

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Effective problem solving is all about using the right process and following a plan tailored to the issue at hand. Recognizing your team or organization has an issue isn’t enough to come up with effective problem solving strategies. 

To truly understand a problem and develop appropriate solutions, you will want to follow a solid process, follow the necessary problem solving steps, and bring all of your problem solving skills to the table.  

We’ll first guide you through the seven step problem solving process you and your team can use to effectively solve complex business challenges. We’ll also look at what problem solving strategies you can employ with your team when looking for a way to approach the process. We’ll then discuss the problem solving skills you need to be more effective at solving problems, complete with an activity from the SessionLab library you can use to develop that skill in your team.

Let’s get to it! 

What is a problem solving process?

• What are the problem solving steps I need to follow?

Problem solving strategies

What skills do i need to be an effective problem solver, how can i improve my problem solving skills.

Solving problems is like baking a cake. You can go straight into the kitchen without a recipe or the right ingredients and do your best, but the end result is unlikely to be very tasty!

Using a process to bake a cake allows you to use the best ingredients without waste, collect the right tools, account for allergies, decide whether it is a birthday or wedding cake, and then bake efficiently and on time. The result is a better cake that is fit for purpose, tastes better and has created less mess in the kitchen. Also, it should have chocolate sprinkles. Having a step by step process to solve organizational problems allows you to go through each stage methodically and ensure you are trying to solve the right problems and select the most appropriate, effective solutions.

What are the problem solving steps I need to follow? 

All problem solving processes go through a number of steps in order to move from identifying a problem to resolving it.

Depending on your problem solving model and who you ask, there can be anything between four and nine problem solving steps you should follow in order to find the right solution. Whatever framework you and your group use, there are some key items that should be addressed in order to have an effective process.

We’ve looked at problem solving processes from sources such as the American Society for Quality and their four step approach , and Mediate ‘s six step process. By reflecting on those and our own problem solving processes, we’ve come up with a sequence of seven problem solving steps we feel best covers everything you need in order to effectively solve problems.

1. Problem identification 

The first stage of any problem solving process is to identify the problem or problems you might want to solve. Effective problem solving strategies always begin by allowing a group scope to articulate what they believe the problem to be and then coming to some consensus over which problem they approach first. Problem solving activities used at this stage often have a focus on creating frank, open discussion so that potential problems can be brought to the surface.

2. Problem analysis 

Though this step is not a million miles from problem identification, problem analysis deserves to be considered separately. It can often be an overlooked part of the process and is instrumental when it comes to developing effective solutions.

The process of problem analysis means ensuring that the problem you are seeking to solve is the right problem . As part of this stage, you may look deeper and try to find the root cause of a specific problem at a team or organizational level.

Remember that problem solving strategies should not only be focused on putting out fires in the short term but developing long term solutions that deal with the root cause of organizational challenges. 

Whatever your approach, analyzing a problem is crucial in being able to select an appropriate solution and the problem solving skills deployed in this stage are beneficial for the rest of the process and ensuring the solutions you create are fit for purpose.

3. Solution generation

Once your group has nailed down the particulars of the problem you wish to solve, you want to encourage a free flow of ideas connecting to solving that problem. This can take the form of problem solving games that encourage creative thinking or problem solving activities designed to produce working prototypes of possible solutions. 

The key to ensuring the success of this stage of the problem solving process is to encourage quick, creative thinking and create an open space where all ideas are considered. The best solutions can come from unlikely places and by using problem solving techniques that celebrate invention, you might come up with solution gold. 

4. Solution development

No solution is likely to be perfect right out of the gate. It’s important to discuss and develop the solutions your group has come up with over the course of following the previous problem solving steps in order to arrive at the best possible solution. Problem solving games used in this stage involve lots of critical thinking, measuring potential effort and impact, and looking at possible solutions analytically. 

During this stage, you will often ask your team to iterate and improve upon your frontrunning solutions and develop them further. Remember that problem solving strategies always benefit from a multitude of voices and opinions, and not to let ego get involved when it comes to choosing which solutions to develop and take further.

Finding the best solution is the goal of all problem solving workshops and here is the place to ensure that your solution is well thought out, sufficiently robust and fit for purpose. 

5. Decision making 

Nearly there! Once your group has reached consensus and selected a solution that applies to the problem at hand you have some decisions to make. You will want to work on allocating ownership of the project, figure out who will do what, how the success of the solution will be measured and decide the next course of action.

The decision making stage is a part of the problem solving process that can get missed or taken as for granted. Fail to properly allocate roles and plan out how a solution will actually be implemented and it less likely to be successful in solving the problem.

Have clear accountabilities, actions, timeframes, and follow-ups. Make these decisions and set clear next-steps in the problem solving workshop so that everyone is aligned and you can move forward effectively as a group. 

Ensuring that you plan for the roll-out of a solution is one of the most important problem solving steps. Without adequate planning or oversight, it can prove impossible to measure success or iterate further if the problem was not solved. 

6. Solution implementation 

This is what we were waiting for! All problem solving strategies have the end goal of implementing a solution and solving a problem in mind. 

Remember that in order for any solution to be successful, you need to help your group through all of the previous problem solving steps thoughtfully. Only then can you ensure that you are solving the right problem but also that you have developed the correct solution and can then successfully implement and measure the impact of that solution.

Project management and communication skills are key here – your solution may need to adjust when out in the wild or you might discover new challenges along the way.

7. Solution evaluation 

So you and your team developed a great solution to a problem and have a gut feeling its been solved. Work done, right? Wrong. All problem solving strategies benefit from evaluation, consideration, and feedback. You might find that the solution does not work for everyone, might create new problems, or is potentially so successful that you will want to roll it out to larger teams or as part of other initiatives. 

None of that is possible without taking the time to evaluate the success of the solution you developed in your problem solving model and adjust if necessary.

Remember that the problem solving process is often iterative and it can be common to not solve complex issues on the first try. Even when this is the case, you and your team will have generated learning that will be important for future problem solving workshops or in other parts of the organization. 

It’s worth underlining how important record keeping is throughout the problem solving process. If a solution didn’t work, you need to have the data and records to see why that was the case. If you go back to the drawing board, notes from the previous workshop can help save time. Data and insight is invaluable at every stage of the problem solving process and this one is no different.

Problem solving workshops made easy

Problem solving strategies are methods of approaching and facilitating the process of problem-solving with a set of techniques , actions, and processes. Different strategies are more effective if you are trying to solve broad problems such as achieving higher growth versus more focused problems like, how do we improve our customer onboarding process?

Broadly, the problem solving steps outlined above should be included in any problem solving strategy though choosing where to focus your time and what approaches should be taken is where they begin to differ. You might find that some strategies ask for the problem identification to be done prior to the session or that everything happens in the course of a one day workshop.

The key similarity is that all good problem solving strategies are structured and designed. Four hours of open discussion is never going to be as productive as a four-hour workshop designed to lead a group through a problem solving process.

Good problem solving strategies are tailored to the team, organization and problem you will be attempting to solve. Here are some example problem solving strategies you can learn from or use to get started.

Use a workshop to lead a team through a group process

Often, the first step to solving problems or organizational challenges is bringing a group together effectively. Most teams have the tools, knowledge, and expertise necessary to solve their challenges – they just need some guidance in how to use leverage those skills and a structure and format that allows people to focus their energies.

Facilitated workshops are one of the most effective ways of solving problems of any scale. By designing and planning your workshop carefully, you can tailor the approach and scope to best fit the needs of your team and organization. 

Problem solving workshop

• Creating a bespoke, tailored process
• Tackling problems of any size
• Building in-house workshop ability and encouraging their use

Workshops are an effective strategy for solving problems. By using tried and test facilitation techniques and methods, you can design and deliver a workshop that is perfectly suited to the unique variables of your organization. You may only have the capacity for a half-day workshop and so need a problem solving process to match. 

By using our session planner tool and importing methods from our library of 700+ facilitation techniques, you can create the right problem solving workshop for your team. It might be that you want to encourage creative thinking or look at things from a new angle to unblock your groups approach to problem solving. By tailoring your workshop design to the purpose, you can help ensure great results.

One of the main benefits of a workshop is the structured approach to problem solving. Not only does this mean that the workshop itself will be successful, but many of the methods and techniques will help your team improve their working processes outside of the workshop. 

We believe that workshops are one of the best tools you can use to improve the way your team works together. Start with a problem solving workshop and then see what team building, culture or design workshops can do for your organization!

Run a design sprint

Great for: 

• aligning large, multi-discipline teams
• quickly designing and testing solutions
• tackling large, complex organizational challenges and breaking them down into smaller tasks

By using design thinking principles and methods, a design sprint is a great way of identifying, prioritizing and prototyping solutions to long term challenges that can help solve major organizational problems with quick action and measurable results.

Some familiarity with design thinking is useful, though not integral, and this strategy can really help a team align if there is some discussion around which problems should be approached first. 

The stage-based structure of the design sprint is also very useful for teams new to design thinking.  The inspiration phase, where you look to competitors that have solved your problem, and the rapid prototyping and testing phases are great for introducing new concepts that will benefit a team in all their future work. 

It can be common for teams to look inward for solutions and so looking to the market for solutions you can iterate on can be very productive. Instilling an agile prototyping and testing mindset can also be great when helping teams move forwards – generating and testing solutions quickly can help save time in the long run and is also pretty exciting!

Break problems down into smaller issues

Organizational challenges and problems are often complicated and large scale in nature. Sometimes, trying to resolve such an issue in one swoop is simply unachievable or overwhelming. Try breaking down such problems into smaller issues that you can work on step by step. You may not be able to solve the problem of churning customers off the bat, but you can work with your team to identify smaller effort but high impact elements and work on those first.

This problem solving strategy can help a team generate momentum, prioritize and get some easy wins. It’s also a great strategy to employ with teams who are just beginning to learn how to approach the problem solving process. If you want some insight into a way to employ this strategy, we recommend looking at our design sprint template below!

Use guiding frameworks or try new methodologies

Some problems are best solved by introducing a major shift in perspective or by using new methodologies that encourage your team to think differently.

Props and tools such as Methodkit , which uses a card-based toolkit for facilitation, or Lego Serious Play can be great ways to engage your team and find an inclusive, democratic problem solving strategy. Remember that play and creativity are great tools for achieving change and whatever the challenge, engaging your participants can be very effective where other strategies may have failed.

LEGO Serious Play

• Improving core problem solving skills
• Thinking outside of the box
• Encouraging creative solutions

LEGO Serious Play is a problem solving methodology designed to get participants thinking differently by using 3D models and kinesthetic learning styles. By physically building LEGO models based on questions and exercises, participants are encouraged to think outside of the box and create their own responses. 

Collaborate LEGO Serious Play exercises are also used to encourage communication and build problem solving skills in a group. By using this problem solving process, you can often help different kinds of learners and personality types contribute and unblock organizational problems with creative thinking. 

Problem solving strategies like LEGO Serious Play are super effective at helping a team solve more skills-based problems such as communication between teams or a lack of creative thinking. Some problems are not suited to LEGO Serious Play and require a different problem solving strategy.

Card Decks and Method Kits

• New facilitators or non-facilitators 
• Approaching difficult subjects with a simple, creative framework
• Engaging those with varied learning styles

Card decks and method kids are great tools for those new to facilitation or for whom facilitation is not the primary role. Card decks such as the emotional culture deck can be used for complete workshops and in many cases, can be used right out of the box. Methodkit has a variety of kits designed for scenarios ranging from personal development through to personas and global challenges so you can find the right deck for your particular needs.

Having an easy to use framework that encourages creativity or a new approach can take some of the friction or planning difficulties out of the workshop process and energize a team in any setting. Simplicity is the key with these methods. By ensuring everyone on your team can get involved and engage with the process as quickly as possible can really contribute to the success of your problem solving strategy.

Source external advice

Looking to peers, experts and external facilitators can be a great way of approaching the problem solving process. Your team may not have the necessary expertise, insights of experience to tackle some issues, or you might simply benefit from a fresh perspective. Some problems may require bringing together an entire team, and coaching managers or team members individually might be the right approach. Remember that not all problems are best resolved in the same manner.

If you’re a solo entrepreneur, peer groups, coaches and mentors can also be invaluable at not only solving specific business problems, but in providing a support network for resolving future challenges. One great approach is to join a Mastermind Group and link up with like-minded individuals and all grow together. Remember that however you approach the sourcing of external advice, do so thoughtfully, respectfully and honestly. Reciprocate where you can and prepare to be surprised by just how kind and helpful your peers can be!

Mastermind Group

• Solo entrepreneurs or small teams with low capacity
• Peer learning and gaining outside expertise
• Getting multiple external points of view quickly

Problem solving in large organizations with lots of skilled team members is one thing, but how about if you work for yourself or in a very small team without the capacity to get the most from a design sprint or LEGO Serious Play session? 

A mastermind group – sometimes known as a peer advisory board – is where a group of people come together to support one another in their own goals, challenges, and businesses. Each participant comes to the group with their own purpose and the other members of the group will help them create solutions, brainstorm ideas, and support one another. 

Mastermind groups are very effective in creating an energized, supportive atmosphere that can deliver meaningful results. Learning from peers from outside of your organization or industry can really help unlock new ways of thinking and drive growth. Access to the experience and skills of your peers can be invaluable in helping fill the gaps in your own ability, particularly in young companies.

A mastermind group is a great solution for solo entrepreneurs, small teams, or for organizations that feel that external expertise or fresh perspectives will be beneficial for them. It is worth noting that Mastermind groups are often only as good as the participants and what they can bring to the group. Participants need to be committed, engaged and understand how to work in this context. 

Coaching and mentoring

• Focused learning and development
• Filling skills gaps
• Working on a range of challenges over time

Receiving advice from a business coach or building a mentor/mentee relationship can be an effective way of resolving certain challenges. The one-to-one format of most coaching and mentor relationships can really help solve the challenges those individuals are having and benefit the organization as a result.

A great mentor can be invaluable when it comes to spotting potential problems before they arise and coming to understand a mentee very well has a host of other business benefits. You might run an internal mentorship program to help develop your team’s problem solving skills and strategies or as part of a large learning and development program. External coaches can also be an important part of your problem solving strategy, filling skills gaps for your management team or helping with specific business issues. 

Now we’ve explored the problem solving process and the steps you will want to go through in order to have an effective session, let’s look at the skills you and your team need to be more effective problem solvers.

Problem solving skills are highly sought after, whatever industry or team you work in. Organizations are keen to employ people who are able to approach problems thoughtfully and find strong, realistic solutions. Whether you are a facilitator , a team leader or a developer, being an effective problem solver is a skill you’ll want to develop.

Problem solving skills form a whole suite of techniques and approaches that an individual uses to not only identify problems but to discuss them productively before then developing appropriate solutions.

Here are some of the most important problem solving skills everyone from executives to junior staff members should learn. We’ve also included an activity or exercise from the SessionLab library that can help you and your team develop that skill. 

If you’re running a workshop or training session to try and improve problem solving skills in your team, try using these methods to supercharge your process!

Active listening

Active listening is one of the most important skills anyone who works with people can possess. In short, active listening is a technique used to not only better understand what is being said by an individual, but also to be more aware of the underlying message the speaker is trying to convey. When it comes to problem solving, active listening is integral for understanding the position of every participant and to clarify the challenges, ideas and solutions they bring to the table.

Some active listening skills include:

• Paying complete attention to the speaker.
• Removing distractions.
• Avoid interruption.
• Taking the time to fully understand before preparing a rebuttal.
• Responding respectfully and appropriately.
• Demonstrate attentiveness and positivity with an open posture, making eye contact with the speaker, smiling and nodding if appropriate. Show that you are listening and encourage them to continue.
• Be aware of and respectful of feelings. Judge the situation and respond appropriately. You can disagree without being disrespectful.   
• Observe body language. 
• Paraphrase what was said in your own words, either mentally or verbally.
• Remain neutral. 
• Reflect and take a moment before responding.
• Ask deeper questions based on what is said and clarify points where necessary.   

Active Listening   #hyperisland   #skills   #active listening   #remote-friendly   This activity supports participants to reflect on a question and generate their own solutions using simple principles of active listening and peer coaching. It’s an excellent introduction to active listening but can also be used with groups that are already familiar with it. Participants work in groups of three and take turns being: “the subject”, the listener, and the observer.

Analytical skills

All problem solving models require strong analytical skills, particularly during the beginning of the process and when it comes to analyzing how solutions have performed.

Analytical skills are primarily focused on performing an effective analysis by collecting, studying and parsing data related to a problem or opportunity. 

It often involves spotting patterns, being able to see things from different perspectives and using observable facts and data to make suggestions or produce insight. 

Analytical skills are also important at every stage of the problem solving process and by having these skills, you can ensure that any ideas or solutions you create or backed up analytically and have been sufficiently thought out.

Nine Whys   #innovation   #issue analysis   #liberating structures   With breathtaking simplicity, you can rapidly clarify for individuals and a group what is essentially important in their work. You can quickly reveal when a compelling purpose is missing in a gathering and avoid moving forward without clarity. When a group discovers an unambiguous shared purpose, more freedom and more responsibility are unleashed. You have laid the foundation for spreading and scaling innovations with fidelity.

Collaboration

Trying to solve problems on your own is difficult. Being able to collaborate effectively, with a free exchange of ideas, to delegate and be a productive member of a team is hugely important to all problem solving strategies.

Remember that whatever your role, collaboration is integral, and in a problem solving process, you are all working together to find the best solution for everyone. 

Marshmallow challenge with debriefing   #teamwork   #team   #leadership   #collaboration   In eighteen minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top. The Marshmallow Challenge was developed by Tom Wujec, who has done the activity with hundreds of groups around the world. Visit the Marshmallow Challenge website for more information. This version has an extra debriefing question added with sample questions focusing on roles within the team.

Communication  

Being an effective communicator means being empathetic, clear and succinct, asking the right questions, and demonstrating active listening skills throughout any discussion or meeting. 

In a problem solving setting, you need to communicate well in order to progress through each stage of the process effectively. As a team leader, it may also fall to you to facilitate communication between parties who may not see eye to eye. Effective communication also means helping others to express themselves and be heard in a group.

Bus Trip   #feedback   #communication   #appreciation   #closing   #thiagi   #team   This is one of my favourite feedback games. I use Bus Trip at the end of a training session or a meeting, and I use it all the time. The game creates a massive amount of energy with lots of smiles, laughs, and sometimes even a teardrop or two.

Creative problem solving skills can be some of the best tools in your arsenal. Thinking creatively, being able to generate lots of ideas and come up with out of the box solutions is useful at every step of the process. 

The kinds of problems you will likely discuss in a problem solving workshop are often difficult to solve, and by approaching things in a fresh, creative manner, you can often create more innovative solutions.

Having practical creative skills is also a boon when it comes to problem solving. If you can help create quality design sketches and prototypes in record time, it can help bring a team to alignment more quickly or provide a base for further iteration.

The paper clip method   #sharing   #creativity   #warm up   #idea generation   #brainstorming   The power of brainstorming. A training for project leaders, creativity training, and to catalyse getting new solutions.

Critical thinking

Critical thinking is one of the fundamental problem solving skills you’ll want to develop when working on developing solutions. Critical thinking is the ability to analyze, rationalize and evaluate while being aware of personal bias, outlying factors and remaining open-minded.

Defining and analyzing problems without deploying critical thinking skills can mean you and your team go down the wrong path. Developing solutions to complex issues requires critical thinking too – ensuring your team considers all possibilities and rationally evaluating them. 

Agreement-Certainty Matrix   #issue analysis   #liberating structures   #problem solving   You can help individuals or groups avoid the frequent mistake of trying to solve a problem with methods that are not adapted to the nature of their challenge. The combination of two questions makes it possible to easily sort challenges into four categories: simple, complicated, complex , and chaotic .  A problem is simple when it can be solved reliably with practices that are easy to duplicate.  It is complicated when experts are required to devise a sophisticated solution that will yield the desired results predictably.  A problem is complex when there are several valid ways to proceed but outcomes are not predictable in detail.  Chaotic is when the context is too turbulent to identify a path forward.  A loose analogy may be used to describe these differences: simple is like following a recipe, complicated like sending a rocket to the moon, complex like raising a child, and chaotic is like the game “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”  The Liberating Structures Matching Matrix in Chapter 5 can be used as the first step to clarify the nature of a challenge and avoid the mismatches between problems and solutions that are frequently at the root of chronic, recurring problems.

Data analysis 

Though it shares lots of space with general analytical skills, data analysis skills are something you want to cultivate in their own right in order to be an effective problem solver.

Being good at data analysis doesn’t just mean being able to find insights from data, but also selecting the appropriate data for a given issue, interpreting it effectively and knowing how to model and present that data. Depending on the problem at hand, it might also include a working knowledge of specific data analysis tools and procedures. 

Having a solid grasp of data analysis techniques is useful if you’re leading a problem solving workshop but if you’re not an expert, don’t worry. Bring people into the group who has this skill set and help your team be more effective as a result.

Decision making

All problems need a solution and all solutions require that someone make the decision to implement them. Without strong decision making skills, teams can become bogged down in discussion and less effective as a result. 

Making decisions is a key part of the problem solving process. It’s important to remember that decision making is not restricted to the leadership team. Every staff member makes decisions every day and developing these skills ensures that your team is able to solve problems at any scale. Remember that making decisions does not mean leaping to the first solution but weighing up the options and coming to an informed, well thought out solution to any given problem that works for the whole team.

Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ)   #action   #decision making   #problem solving   #issue analysis   #innovation   #design   #remote-friendly   The problem with anything that requires creative thinking is that it’s easy to get lost—lose focus and fall into the trap of having useless, open-ended, unstructured discussions. Here’s the most effective solution I’ve found: Replace all open, unstructured discussion with a clear process. What to use this exercise for: Anything which requires a group of people to make decisions, solve problems or discuss challenges. It’s always good to frame an LDJ session with a broad topic, here are some examples: The conversion flow of our checkout Our internal design process How we organise events Keeping up with our competition Improving sales flow

Dependability

Most complex organizational problems require multiple people to be involved in delivering the solution. Ensuring that the team and organization can depend on you to take the necessary actions and communicate where necessary is key to ensuring problems are solved effectively.

Being dependable also means working to deadlines and to brief. It is often a matter of creating trust in a team so that everyone can depend on one another to complete the agreed actions in the agreed time frame so that the team can move forward together. Being undependable can create problems of friction and can limit the effectiveness of your solutions so be sure to bear this in mind throughout a project. 

Team Purpose & Culture   #team   #hyperisland   #culture   #remote-friendly   This is an essential process designed to help teams define their purpose (why they exist) and their culture (how they work together to achieve that purpose). Defining these two things will help any team to be more focused and aligned. With support of tangible examples from other companies, the team members work as individuals and a group to codify the way they work together. The goal is a visual manifestation of both the purpose and culture that can be put up in the team’s work space.

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is an important skill for any successful team member, whether communicating internally or with clients or users. In the problem solving process, emotional intelligence means being attuned to how people are feeling and thinking, communicating effectively and being self-aware of what you bring to a room. 

There are often differences of opinion when working through problem solving processes, and it can be easy to let things become impassioned or combative. Developing your emotional intelligence means being empathetic to your colleagues and managing your own emotions throughout the problem and solution process. Be kind, be thoughtful and put your points across care and attention. 

Being emotionally intelligent is a skill for life and by deploying it at work, you can not only work efficiently but empathetically. Check out the emotional culture workshop template for more!

Facilitation

As we’ve clarified in our facilitation skills post, facilitation is the art of leading people through processes towards agreed-upon objectives in a manner that encourages participation, ownership, and creativity by all those involved. While facilitation is a set of interrelated skills in itself, the broad definition of facilitation can be invaluable when it comes to problem solving. Leading a team through a problem solving process is made more effective if you improve and utilize facilitation skills – whether you’re a manager, team leader or external stakeholder.

The Six Thinking Hats   #creative thinking   #meeting facilitation   #problem solving   #issue resolution   #idea generation   #conflict resolution   The Six Thinking Hats are used by individuals and groups to separate out conflicting styles of thinking. They enable and encourage a group of people to think constructively together in exploring and implementing change, rather than using argument to fight over who is right and who is wrong.

Flexibility 

Being flexible is a vital skill when it comes to problem solving. This does not mean immediately bowing to pressure or changing your opinion quickly: instead, being flexible is all about seeing things from new perspectives, receiving new information and factoring it into your thought process.

Flexibility is also important when it comes to rolling out solutions. It might be that other organizational projects have greater priority or require the same resources as your chosen solution. Being flexible means understanding needs and challenges across the team and being open to shifting or arranging your own schedule as necessary. Again, this does not mean immediately making way for other projects. It’s about articulating your own needs, understanding the needs of others and being able to come to a meaningful compromise.

The Creativity Dice   #creativity   #problem solving   #thiagi   #issue analysis   Too much linear thinking is hazardous to creative problem solving. To be creative, you should approach the problem (or the opportunity) from different points of view. You should leave a thought hanging in mid-air and move to another. This skipping around prevents premature closure and lets your brain incubate one line of thought while you consciously pursue another.

Working in any group can lead to unconscious elements of groupthink or situations in which you may not wish to be entirely honest. Disagreeing with the opinions of the executive team or wishing to save the feelings of a coworker can be tricky to navigate, but being honest is absolutely vital when to comes to developing effective solutions and ensuring your voice is heard. 

Remember that being honest does not mean being brutally candid. You can deliver your honest feedback and opinions thoughtfully and without creating friction by using other skills such as emotional intelligence. 

Explore your Values   #hyperisland   #skills   #values   #remote-friendly   Your Values is an exercise for participants to explore what their most important values are. It’s done in an intuitive and rapid way to encourage participants to follow their intuitive feeling rather than over-thinking and finding the “correct” values. It is a good exercise to use to initiate reflection and dialogue around personal values.

Initiative 

The problem solving process is multi-faceted and requires different approaches at certain points of the process. Taking initiative to bring problems to the attention of the team, collect data or lead the solution creating process is always valuable. You might even roadtest your own small scale solutions or brainstorm before a session. Taking initiative is particularly effective if you have good deal of knowledge in that area or have ownership of a particular project and want to get things kickstarted.

That said, be sure to remember to honor the process and work in service of the team. If you are asked to own one part of the problem solving process and you don’t complete that task because your initiative leads you to work on something else, that’s not an effective method of solving business challenges.

15% Solutions   #action   #liberating structures   #remote-friendly   You can reveal the actions, however small, that everyone can do immediately. At a minimum, these will create momentum, and that may make a BIG difference.  15% Solutions show that there is no reason to wait around, feel powerless, or fearful. They help people pick it up a level. They get individuals and the group to focus on what is within their discretion instead of what they cannot change.  With a very simple question, you can flip the conversation to what can be done and find solutions to big problems that are often distributed widely in places not known in advance. Shifting a few grains of sand may trigger a landslide and change the whole landscape.

Impartiality

A particularly useful problem solving skill for product owners or managers is the ability to remain impartial throughout much of the process. In practice, this means treating all points of view and ideas brought forward in a meeting equally and ensuring that your own areas of interest or ownership are not favored over others. 

There may be a stage in the process where a decision maker has to weigh the cost and ROI of possible solutions against the company roadmap though even then, ensuring that the decision made is based on merit and not personal opinion. 

Empathy map   #frame insights   #create   #design   #issue analysis   An empathy map is a tool to help a design team to empathize with the people they are designing for. You can make an empathy map for a group of people or for a persona. To be used after doing personas when more insights are needed.

Being a good leader means getting a team aligned, energized and focused around a common goal. In the problem solving process, strong leadership helps ensure that the process is efficient, that any conflicts are resolved and that a team is managed in the direction of success.

It’s common for managers or executives to assume this role in a problem solving workshop, though it’s important that the leader maintains impartiality and does not bulldoze the group in a particular direction. Remember that good leadership means working in service of the purpose and team and ensuring the workshop is a safe space for employees of any level to contribute. Take a look at our leadership games and activities post for more exercises and methods to help improve leadership in your organization.

Leadership Pizza   #leadership   #team   #remote-friendly   This leadership development activity offers a self-assessment framework for people to first identify what skills, attributes and attitudes they find important for effective leadership, and then assess their own development and initiate goal setting.

In the context of problem solving, mediation is important in keeping a team engaged, happy and free of conflict. When leading or facilitating a problem solving workshop, you are likely to run into differences of opinion. Depending on the nature of the problem, certain issues may be brought up that are emotive in nature. 

Being an effective mediator means helping those people on either side of such a divide are heard, listen to one another and encouraged to find common ground and a resolution. Mediating skills are useful for leaders and managers in many situations and the problem solving process is no different.

Conflict Responses   #hyperisland   #team   #issue resolution   A workshop for a team to reflect on past conflicts, and use them to generate guidelines for effective conflict handling. The workshop uses the Thomas-Killman model of conflict responses to frame a reflective discussion. Use it to open up a discussion around conflict with a team.

Planning 

Solving organizational problems is much more effective when following a process or problem solving model. Planning skills are vital in order to structure, deliver and follow-through on a problem solving workshop and ensure your solutions are intelligently deployed.

Planning skills include the ability to organize tasks and a team, plan and design the process and take into account any potential challenges. Taking the time to plan carefully can save time and frustration later in the process and is valuable for ensuring a team is positioned for success.

3 Action Steps   #hyperisland   #action   #remote-friendly   This is a small-scale strategic planning session that helps groups and individuals to take action toward a desired change. It is often used at the end of a workshop or programme. The group discusses and agrees on a vision, then creates some action steps that will lead them towards that vision. The scope of the challenge is also defined, through discussion of the helpful and harmful factors influencing the group.

Prioritization

As organisations grow, the scale and variation of problems they face multiplies. Your team or is likely to face numerous challenges in different areas and so having the skills to analyze and prioritize becomes very important, particularly for those in leadership roles.

A thorough problem solving process is likely to deliver multiple solutions and you may have several different problems you wish to solve simultaneously. Prioritization is the ability to measure the importance, value, and effectiveness of those possible solutions and choose which to enact and in what order. The process of prioritization is integral in ensuring the biggest challenges are addressed with the most impactful solutions.

Impact and Effort Matrix   #gamestorming   #decision making   #action   #remote-friendly   In this decision-making exercise, possible actions are mapped based on two factors: effort required to implement and potential impact. Categorizing ideas along these lines is a useful technique in decision making, as it obliges contributors to balance and evaluate suggested actions before committing to them.

Project management

Some problem solving skills are utilized in a workshop or ideation phases, while others come in useful when it comes to decision making. Overseeing an entire problem solving process and ensuring its success requires strong project management skills. 

While project management incorporates many of the other skills listed here, it is important to note the distinction of considering all of the factors of a project and managing them successfully. Being able to negotiate with stakeholders, manage tasks, time and people, consider costs and ROI, and tie everything together is massively helpful when going through the problem solving process. 

Record keeping

Working out meaningful solutions to organizational challenges is only one part of the process.  Thoughtfully documenting and keeping records of each problem solving step for future consultation is important in ensuring efficiency and meaningful change. 

For example, some problems may be lower priority than others but can be revisited in the future. If the team has ideated on solutions and found some are not up to the task, record those so you can rule them out and avoiding repeating work. Keeping records of the process also helps you improve and refine your problem solving model next time around!

Personal Kanban   #gamestorming   #action   #agile   #project planning   Personal Kanban is a tool for organizing your work to be more efficient and productive. It is based on agile methods and principles.

Research skills

Conducting research to support both the identification of problems and the development of appropriate solutions is important for an effective process. Knowing where to go to collect research, how to conduct research efficiently, and identifying pieces of research are relevant are all things a good researcher can do well. 

In larger groups, not everyone has to demonstrate this ability in order for a problem solving workshop to be effective. That said, having people with research skills involved in the process, particularly if they have existing area knowledge, can help ensure the solutions that are developed with data that supports their intention. Remember that being able to deliver the results of research efficiently and in a way the team can easily understand is also important. The best data in the world is only as effective as how it is delivered and interpreted.

Customer experience map   #ideation   #concepts   #research   #design   #issue analysis   #remote-friendly   Customer experience mapping is a method of documenting and visualizing the experience a customer has as they use the product or service. It also maps out their responses to their experiences. To be used when there is a solution (even in a conceptual stage) that can be analyzed.

Risk management

Managing risk is an often overlooked part of the problem solving process. Solutions are often developed with the intention of reducing exposure to risk or solving issues that create risk but sometimes, great solutions are more experimental in nature and as such, deploying them needs to be carefully considered. 

Managing risk means acknowledging that there may be risks associated with more out of the box solutions or trying new things, but that this must be measured against the possible benefits and other organizational factors. 

Be informed, get the right data and stakeholders in the room and you can appropriately factor risk into your decision making process. 

Decisions, Decisions…   #communication   #decision making   #thiagi   #action   #issue analysis   When it comes to decision-making, why are some of us more prone to take risks while others are risk-averse? One explanation might be the way the decision and options were presented.  This exercise, based on Kahneman and Tversky’s classic study , illustrates how the framing effect influences our judgement and our ability to make decisions . The participants are divided into two groups. Both groups are presented with the same problem and two alternative programs for solving them. The two programs both have the same consequences but are presented differently. The debriefing discussion examines how the framing of the program impacted the participant’s decision.

Team-building 

No single person is as good at problem solving as a team. Building an effective team and helping them come together around a common purpose is one of the most important problem solving skills, doubly so for leaders. By bringing a team together and helping them work efficiently, you pave the way for team ownership of a problem and the development of effective solutions. 

In a problem solving workshop, it can be tempting to jump right into the deep end, though taking the time to break the ice, energize the team and align them with a game or exercise will pay off over the course of the day.

Remember that you will likely go through the problem solving process multiple times over an organization’s lifespan and building a strong team culture will make future problem solving more effective. It’s also great to work with people you know, trust and have fun with. Working on team building in and out of the problem solving process is a hallmark of successful teams that can work together to solve business problems.

9 Dimensions Team Building Activity   #ice breaker   #teambuilding   #team   #remote-friendly   9 Dimensions is a powerful activity designed to build relationships and trust among team members. There are 2 variations of this icebreaker. The first version is for teams who want to get to know each other better. The second version is for teams who want to explore how they are working together as a team.

Time management 

The problem solving process is designed to lead a team from identifying a problem through to delivering a solution and evaluating its effectiveness. Without effective time management skills or timeboxing of tasks, it can be easy for a team to get bogged down or be inefficient.

By using a problem solving model and carefully designing your workshop, you can allocate time efficiently and trust that the process will deliver the results you need in a good timeframe.

Time management also comes into play when it comes to rolling out solutions, particularly those that are experimental in nature. Having a clear timeframe for implementing and evaluating solutions is vital for ensuring their success and being able to pivot if necessary.

Improving your skills at problem solving is often a career-long pursuit though there are methods you can use to make the learning process more efficient and to supercharge your problem solving skillset.

Remember that the skills you need to be a great problem solver have a large overlap with those skills you need to be effective in any role. Investing time and effort to develop your active listening or critical thinking skills is valuable in any context. Here are 7 ways to improve your problem solving skills.

Share best practices

Remember that your team is an excellent source of skills, wisdom, and techniques and that you should all take advantage of one another where possible. Best practices that one team has for solving problems, conducting research or making decisions should be shared across the organization. If you have in-house staff that have done active listening training or are data analysis pros, have them lead a training session. 

Your team is one of your best resources. Create space and internal processes for the sharing of skills so that you can all grow together. 

Ask for help and attend training

Once you’ve figured out you have a skills gap, the next step is to take action to fill that skills gap. That might be by asking your superior for training or coaching, or liaising with team members with that skill set. You might even attend specialized training for certain skills – active listening or critical thinking, for example, are business-critical skills that are regularly offered as part of a training scheme.

Whatever method you choose, remember that taking action of some description is necessary for growth. Whether that means practicing, getting help, attending training or doing some background reading, taking active steps to improve your skills is the way to go.

Learn a process 

Problem solving can be complicated, particularly when attempting to solve large problems for the first time. Using a problem solving process helps give structure to your problem solving efforts and focus on creating outcomes, rather than worrying about the format. 

Tools such as the seven-step problem solving process above are effective because not only do they feature steps that will help a team solve problems, they also develop skills along the way. Each step asks for people to engage with the process using different skills and in doing so, helps the team learn and grow together. Group processes of varying complexity and purpose can also be found in the SessionLab library of facilitation techniques . Using a tried and tested process and really help ease the learning curve for both those leading such a process, as well as those undergoing the purpose.

Effective teams make decisions about where they should and shouldn’t expend additional effort. By using a problem solving process, you can focus on the things that matter, rather than stumbling towards a solution haphazardly. 

Create a feedback loop

Some skills gaps are more obvious than others. It’s possible that your perception of your active listening skills differs from those of your colleagues. 

It’s valuable to create a system where team members can provide feedback in an ordered and friendly manner so they can all learn from one another. Only by identifying areas of improvement can you then work to improve them. 

Remember that feedback systems require oversight and consideration so that they don’t turn into a place to complain about colleagues. Design the system intelligently so that you encourage the creation of learning opportunities, rather than encouraging people to list their pet peeves.

While practice might not make perfect, it does make the problem solving process easier. If you are having trouble with critical thinking, don’t shy away from doing it. Get involved where you can and stretch those muscles as regularly as possible. 

Problem solving skills come more naturally to some than to others and that’s okay. Take opportunities to get involved and see where you can practice your skills in situations outside of a workshop context. Try collaborating in other circumstances at work or conduct data analysis on your own projects. You can often develop those skills you need for problem solving simply by doing them. Get involved!

Use expert exercises and methods

Learn from the best. Our library of 700+ facilitation techniques is full of activities and methods that help develop the skills you need to be an effective problem solver. Check out our templates to see how to approach problem solving and other organizational challenges in a structured and intelligent manner.

There is no single approach to improving problem solving skills, but by using the techniques employed by others you can learn from their example and develop processes that have seen proven results. 

Try new ways of thinking and change your mindset

Using tried and tested exercises that you know well can help deliver results, but you do run the risk of missing out on the learning opportunities offered by new approaches. As with the problem solving process, changing your mindset can remove blockages and be used to develop your problem solving skills.

Most teams have members with mixed skill sets and specialties. Mix people from different teams and share skills and different points of view. Teach your customer support team how to use design thinking methods or help your developers with conflict resolution techniques. Try switching perspectives with facilitation techniques like Flip It! or by using new problem solving methodologies or models. Give design thinking, liberating structures or lego serious play a try if you want to try a new approach. You will find that framing problems in new ways and using existing skills in new contexts can be hugely useful for personal development and improving your skillset. It’s also a lot of fun to try new things. Give it a go!

Encountering business challenges and needing to find appropriate solutions is not unique to your organization. Lots of very smart people have developed methods, theories and approaches to help develop problem solving skills and create effective solutions. Learn from them!

Books like The Art of Thinking Clearly , Think Smarter, or Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow are great places to start, though it’s also worth looking at blogs related to organizations facing similar problems to yours, or browsing for success stories. Seeing how Dropbox massively increased growth and working backward can help you see the skills or approach you might be lacking to solve that same problem. Learning from others by reading their stories or approaches can be time-consuming but ultimately rewarding.

A tired, distracted mind is not in the best position to learn new skills. It can be tempted to burn the candle at both ends and develop problem solving skills outside of work. Absolutely use your time effectively and take opportunities for self-improvement, though remember that rest is hugely important and that without letting your brain rest, you cannot be at your most effective. 

Creating distance between yourself and the problem you might be facing can also be useful. By letting an idea sit, you can find that a better one presents itself or you can develop it further. Take regular breaks when working and create a space for downtime. Remember that working smarter is preferable to working harder and that self-care is important for any effective learning or improvement process.

Want to design better group processes?

Over to you

Now we’ve explored some of the key problem solving skills and the problem solving steps necessary for an effective process, you’re ready to begin developing more effective solutions and leading problem solving workshops.

Need more inspiration? Check out our post on problem solving activities you can use when guiding a group towards a great solution in your next workshop or meeting. Have questions? Did you have a great problem solving technique you use with your team? Get in touch in the comments below. We’d love to chat!

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Grow Your Business

Top 10 most useful consulting skills and how to improve them, share this article.

If you’re in the business of giving expert advice to other experts, you’re likely to have a strong and very specific skill set.

Regardless of their industry or area of expertise, consultants share a diverse range of skills – including communication, problem-solving, project management and so much more.

The demands of the job mean you have to be able to think on your feet, communicate your ideas clearly and confidently, and manage a project with multiple moving parts.

Whether you’re already a consultant looking to improve your existing skills or you’re starting a new consulting business from scratch, here are the top consulting skills to work on to wow your clients – plus top tips to improve your skills on the job.

Click the links to skip ahead:

Why improve your consulting skills?

Focus on excellent oral and written communication, prioritize positivity, practice active listening, become a planning pro, take control of time management, use project management best practices, get comfortable with delegating, find innovative solutions, be adaptable, learn from the experts, take a consulting skills workshop, find a mentor, stay curious, always ask for feedback.

Whether you’re a coach, creator educator or consultant, improving your consulting skills can help you to provide a better experience to your clients by offering them a clear, cohesive and customized plan to solve whatever challenges they’re facing.

Working on your consulting skills can help you:

• Improve your expertise
• Make an impact when talking to clients
• Increase your earning potential
• Build trust and customer loyalty
• Increase your problem-solving abilities

Here are the top 10 consulting skills you need to level up your consulting game – and win more business.

Top 10 consulting skills to work on

As a consultant, it’s your job to help your clients solve problems and improve specific aspects of their business. To be the best in the game, you need to be able to communicate effectively with your clients to understand their key problems, challenges and needs, as well as conveying your solutions clearly.

If you want to get better at consulting, work on improving both your written and oral communication to build stronger relationships with your clients and colleagues. 

This includes oral communication skills like: 

• Asking meaningful questions
• Communicating ideas confidently
• Presenting your analysis clearly

And written communication skills like:

• Drafting professional emails
• Writing high-impact reports
• Producing engaging content for presentations

By nailing these key communication skills, you can make sure that any ideas and solutions are presented clearly and efficiently – with zero confusion on either end.

Part of being a good consultant is taking a positive approach to problems. Work on being more positive in your communication with clients and colleagues to present yourself as a proactive, solution-oriented individual and win their trust in the process.

If you have a habit of letting your words run faster than your mind, try to take a pause so you can structure your thoughts more carefully. If you’re unclear on how to answer a question or problem, take time to consider your answer and then circle back to your client later. They’d prefer that you answer accurately and with a proactive approach than respond with a knee-jerk reaction that might be inaccurate or misleading. Positivity is key!

The key to effective communication in consulting is being concise. That includes cutting out any filler words, complicated phrasing and jargon. Your aim is to communicate your ideas as simply and clearly as possible, while making sure that your clients can absorb what you’re telling them.

The best consultants are able to summarize key problems and ideas simply and concisely – less is more!

If you want to build closer relationships with your clients, work on your active listening skills. Active listening goes beyond just hearing your clients and instead seeks to understand the meaning behind their words, including asking open-ended questions and summarizing what they’ve said to confirm your understanding.

Active listening gives you the chance to understand your client’s unique situation, including the challenges they’re facing and what they’re looking to get out of their relationship with you. Remember the 80/20 rule. That’s 80% of your time listening and just 20% of the time talking. This can help you be a better consultant who provides tailored advice and solutions to address your client’s needs.

Consultants are master planners. Regardless of your industry or area of expertise, your job will inevitably involve some project management and planning skills, even if you’re working as a coach or Creator Educator .

Whether you’re outlining a presentation, preparing for a call or coordinating a project, planning is a critical skill for consultants. Consultants are capable of coming up with an end goal and breaking the process to get there into bite-sized chunks that will take their client step-by-step towards achieving that goal.

Every project has multiple moving parts so project management software can help you keep track of it all. Project management tools let you assign tasks to team members, keep on top of deadlines, and monitor the process of every deliverable. Your planning skills will ultimately determine whether or not your project is a success – it’s all up to you!

To deliver any project, you need to have a good grasp of time management. The success of your business depends on your ability to structure your time and hit deadlines.

Good project management in consulting includes setting up a clear timeline and hitting the deadlines you’ve promised clients. If you tell your clients you’re going to do something in a certain timeline, you need to follow through if you want to keep their business.

If you struggle with time management, try using time-tracking software to keep tabs on how long you’re spending on different tasks. Time tracking gives you an overview of exactly what you’re doing – including potential time drains and areas where you need to improve efficiency.

If you’re working with a team, get team members to track their time too. This helps you identify areas that need improvement – and monitor and avoid potential burnout too.

The best consultants have a clear project management strategy. To get better at project management in consulting, get studying! There are a wide range of tried and tested methodologies that can help you improve your project management skills and become a better consultant in the process. 

Good project management is a learnable skill – look out for resources that break down project management best practices into an easy-to-follow process that you can implement immediately. 

No business owner is an island. If you want to make your consulting business a success, you need to master the all-important skill of delegating. The best consultants are able to identify tasks that they can trust to other people, freeing up more of their time to consider the big picture and focus on delivering the project.

When you delegate effectively, you’re able to be more efficient – and utilize the diverse skills of your team members too. 

Problem-solving is a core skill that every consultant needs to master. If you’re going to offer real solutions to your clients, you need to be able to solve their specific problems and come up with an actionable plan to help them. 

This starts with having an accurate picture of the problem, including: 

• Which solutions have been attempted before?
• What were the results?
• Which related parts of the client’s business also need addressing?
• How will the solution be applied?

Often the problem that needs solving is larger or more complex than the problem first presented by the client – it’s your job to explore all the factors at work to find an effective, innovative solution.

When you’re working as a consultant, you need to be constantly adaptable to respond to changing problems, challenges and timelines throughout the project. Whenever you’re working with people, you have to be flexible. Be prepared for any scenario that might come your way – be it interpersonal issues, technical problems, or long delays.

If you can take roadblocks and pivots in your stride, you can help to deliver the best possible results for your clients – and secure more work from them in the future.

Related: How to turn your consulting service into a product

How to improve your consulting skills

Try these 5 ideas to improve your consulting skills – and get ahead of the competition.

If you want to get better at any skill, seek out people at the top of their field and learn from them. When it comes to consulting skills, that means consultants who you admire, respect and are inspired by. For example, look out for thought leaders in consulting who are creating content you love, like books, blogs, videos and more. 

The more people you can learn from, the better. Try to find a diverse range of perspectives on consulting to broaden your skills and work on your weaknesses. While you’re at it, why not reach out to other consultants just like you for a chat? Social learning is a really effective way to improve your skills – and meet new like-minded people too!

Online courses and workshops are a great way to improve your existing consulting skills and learn new ones. Thanks to the huge range of online courses on offer, you can find courses for targeting specific skills, industries and job roles.

Look out for online courses that offer interactive elements so you can ask questions, get feedback and interact with your fellow learners too. That’s the best way to get better at consulting, especially when it comes to key competencies like problem-solving, communication and project management.

For an even more personalized approach to working on your consulting skills, try to find a mentor who can show you the ropes and help with your personal career development. This might be someone in your organization or someone working in the same industry.

The right mentor can help you build confidence by giving you advice, encouragement and supporting your professional growth. Mentors can also offer you much needed feedback to help you improve your consulting skills over time. 

Your mentor can even help you build your professional network by making introductions, referring clients, and recommending industry events, as well as offering guidance on key skills like pitching for work and promotions.

The most successful consultants are the ones who are constantly learning. If you want to improve your consulting skills, try to shift your mindset and become a lifelong student.

If you want to stay at the top of your game, stay curious. That includes learning from the people around you, trying out different industries, keeping informed about developments in your field, and getting to grips with new technology that comes your way. Who knows – you could end up coaching people just like you in the future!

If you want to improve your consulting skills, don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. This could be from people in your organization, people in your network, and/or from clients. Find out how you can develop by asking specific, relevant questions that will give you information on your strengths, weaknesses and areas for improvement.

The secret to receiving feedback is being open – listening and absorbing what people tell you, even if you don’t like the answers! Get comfortable with critique to help you become the best possible consultant you can be.

Ready to improve your consulting skills?

Consultants need to provide thoughtful, expert advice to clients – and present their ideas clearly and convincingly. It’s not enough to come up with a plan, you also need to demonstrate to your clients why they should follow your advice.

Get inspired by our case studies from successful coaches, course creators and consultants on how they built their businesses and leveled up their skill sets.

Colin is a Content Marketer at Thinkific, writing about everything from online entrepreneurship & course creation to digital marketing strategy.

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