“Arnaud, are we using you in the right way?” I joined Accenture’s strategy group right out of grad school and was assigned to my first project for a large petrochemical company. It was a huge project, and the engagement team had…
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Working for Accenture had its ups and downs, but one great, great up was a simple idea: help others be successful. Thinking about it after so many years, there are a couple of instances that stem out: – In my…
One handy tip I picked up at Accenture: If you have a meeting with your boss, a client, or just about anybody else higher than you in the food chain, take a few minutes beforehand to prepare the agenda. In the…
If you’re in charge of a team, your ability to get the best out of your people can mean the difference between failure and success. We talked about how you should adapt your leadership style to your team’s skills and confidence. Here…
Teaching my course in problem solving I realized that many people face the same business problems. Although you should design each issue tree with your specific situation in mind, you shouldn’t have to start it from scratch. This is what…
All problems are not equal: some can be solved only with facts while others require assumptions. Adapt your confidence accordingly. Problems are not all alike Morgan Jones’ The Thinker’s Toolkit separates problems according to their complexity. The simplest problems—deterministic and…
The first step in the problem solving process is to identify precisely the problem you want to solve. That entails synthesizing the relevant information. Building a problem identification card can help you do so. We already discussed in another entry the…
You might have done an excellent analysis, but you won’t be successful unless you can convince your stakeholders of the value your recommendations. This requires you to assemble a compelling story and deliver the answer. So let’s talk about communicating…
When confronting a challenging problem, we tend to think that we know what the problem is and we move straight into “solving mode,” what my colleague Albrecht Enders calls jumping to solution. However, for complex problems, this perceived problem seldom…