Bend, Don't Break: Succeeding as a Consultant

A major part of our training at the data school is client projects. We have a total of 8 client projects through the latter half of our training, where we are matched with a client to help them solve any problems/needs that they may have. We work with each client for a week, with kickoff calls on Mondays and presentations on Fridays. It's a great opportunity for hands-on experience that is hard to find elsewhere. Since we are training to be Tableau/Alteryx Consultants, these projects usually include working with these programs (especially Tableau) to build dashboards. However, sometimes they don't. As I quickly came to realize, client projects are also here to help us with a completely different skill—one equally as important for consultants to have: adaptability.

Going into client projects, I was expecting to only really be using the skills that we had been developing in the classroom (i.e. Alteryx data prep and Tableau dashboard building). And for our first client project, that's exactly what we did. While there were definitely some things that we, as a team, could have done better, I think it went relatively well overall. I came into work the next Monday feeling ready as ever to tackle our 2nd project. However, as we began the kickoff meeting with our 2nd client, I became very confused. The client (TIL internal) started talking about creating "how-to" videos for the TIL Youtube channel. The concept itself was easy enough to understand, and sure, this was definitely valuable for the company as a whole; however, I remember wishing that it was a more "normal" client project. Regardless, a good consultant takes what is presented to them and makes it work. We spent the week learning how to use OBS Studio for screen recording, audio equipment for audio recording, and DaVinci Resolve for video editing and I was able to make a video that I was proud of. Here's the link if you'd like to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trES9DTVDv4&t=2s.

By the time the 3rd project came around, I was EAGER to sink my teeth into a "normal" project (using Tableau and/or Alteryx). And then the kickoff meeting started. The client (TIL internal again) wanted us to create dashboards... but on Power BI. I couldn't believe it. I remember thinking to myself, "Why would they train us for weeks on Tableau and Alteryx and then NOT let us use it in practice?" I spent the week teaching myself how to use Power BI, but to be honest, I was pretty frustrated. What I didn't yet understand at the time was that this was their way of training us for other (just as essential) skills—consulting skills. Again, a good consultant takes what is presented to them and makes it work. Luckily, the next 5 client projects that we had were "normal" projects, and I got the hands-on Tableau/Alteryx experience that I was looking for.

It wasn't until my first post-training project that I realized: in the real world, there is no such thing as a "normal" project. As a consultant, you must expect the unexpected. If you were to ask 10 different people what consultants do for work, you would probably get 10 different answers—but they would all be correct. The broad answer would sound something like this though: consultants offer advice and expertise to clients in order to help them improve their business performance/solve problems. Now whether that's with finances, marketing, operations, etc... who knows? And who cares? The problems that you face will be different every time, so it doesn't matter. It really all boils down to this: you take what is presented to you... and you make it work. Bend, don't break.

Author:
Tyler Ha
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