Developing Consultancy Skills

What the client wanted

The client, a global multi-service HR business, was looking for a challenging strategic consulting skills workshop to stretch their highly experienced and capable senior consultants working in the investment banking sector. The objective for this consulting and HR solutions organisation was to bring even greater effectiveness to their client engagements.

What we did

Impromptu worked in very close partnership with leading global learning solutions organisation, AchieveGlobal – www.achieveglobal.com – to deliver a focused, targeted and practical solution. Impromptu developed bespoke role play scenarios that wove in the learning themes, developed by AchieveGlobal, centred on strategic consulting skills.

Each of the three very detailed case studies was based on a fictitious but realistic investment banking organisation and each contained multiple characters to give the participants, who represented different service lines, a choice about which of the stakeholders they would meet.

The role players took up the challenge of learning these detailed briefs which required them to take on very senior roles, such as FD or CEO, and to credibly discuss strategic HR related issues (such as global pensions provision and strategic people development) in the context of the investment banking sector.

The seamless partnership of AchieveGlobal facilitators and Impromptu role players produced a climate in which individual consultants were able to really stretch themselves against highly individualised learning needs in a safe and supportive environment.

The outcomes

Participants took away a range of learning outcomes that will be built on over the coming months through a combination of internal and external support. Individuals have a clear understanding of their areas for development and have identified personal strategies for embedding these back in the work place.

The layering of increasingly sophisticated interpersonal and consulting skills will clearly have a transformative effect on the performance of the consultants and, therefore, the organisation.

This comment is typical of the feedback received from participants.

“I particularly liked the role play and it was done to such a very high standard. The examples were really realistic, high quality and clearly showed that there had been a lot of research. The role players were entirely feasible as were the client situations.”