Made it back to the hotel early tonight, around 8:30.  It’s weird being so busy and all of a sudden feeling like you have all this free time.  So what better way to spend it than to blog down a couple thoughts.

The vital task weighing down on us this week is the big meeting scheduled for next Monday morning.  Since we always fly back to NY on Thursday night, we try to finish all our work before leaving the client site.  What we have to prepare for this meeting with the big shots of the organization, is a summary of what we’ve done so far and where we’re heading.  So yes, our work is essentially preparing a PowerPoint presentation for our client (who will continue this project) after we consultants leave.

So how is making a presentation so time consuming and how is that considered real work?  Well, I had this conversation with our project leader yesterday.  While the medium is PowerPoint, the deliverable is actual data and know-how.  The deliverable is a set of slides that act as documentation.  And in the process of making it, we gather information, crunch numbers, and persuade various groups to do their jobs and hand over the necessary information.

On a side note, I am experiencing first hand how scarily competent my colleagues are at PowerPoint and Excel.  I saw it in action in b-school, but these folks put me to shame.  I feel slow like molasses when I operate, compared to these guys working their shortcuts, macros, and personalized toolbars.  My analogy from b-school to here is like learning the Dark side of the Force, powerful, sinister, and no turning back.

Now about our client, I’ve made one observation, specifically the person in charge of the program we’re putting in place, who will be delivering the presentation, is a perceived lack of interaction.  The consultants were in the office until midnight yesterday while the client clocked out around 6.  The result is that we make a lot of decisions about what to present and how to present it.  Not only that, but I’m gaining a lot of on hand experience that will be essential after I leave.  It leaves me scratching my head a little.  After all, should they risk taking the chance of not learning everything that’s necessary to sustain the project?

Again, I asked my project leader and he said most of the clients are slightly more interactive, but not by much.  They have to lead their own lives, whereas our day (and night?) job is to be in the office for countless hours.  And it’s a shame that we do a lot of things they’ll never learn, but that’s their choice.  I secretly wonder if that’s a result of my client’s industry, one whose culture is comparatively conservative and slow moving.  For certain, Silicon Valley start-ups can’t run this way.  Then again, it’s not clear to me how many high-tech start-ups hire consultants.  I would imagine that they would expect the consultants to work in parallel, probably working on market strategy or customer analysis.