IMCI-Delhi-39th-ABCeMag-151110.161211442

de-limiting excellence
Institute
of
Management
Consultants
of
India,
Delhi
Inter-Campus Paper Presentation Competition
November 27, 2010
Dear Readers,
No heavy talk.
Straight actions.
Over to the youth brigade.
Ready with rapt attention.
Post-festivals, fireworks begin…
Cheers,
Rajiv Khurana
CMC, FIMC
Editor
Yo! Partner
in this issue…
November
1-15, 2010
Event Announcement
11 Tips for New Consultants
Tips for Consultants
2
3-5
6-8
Certified Management Consultant TM
T h e i n t ernational credentials of a
professional management consultant,
reciprocally recognised by global members
of the International Council Of Management
C o n s u l t i n g I n s t i t u t e s [ I C M C I ]
Join ‘IMCI DELHI’ on
LIFT quotes
About IMCI & Code of Ethics
Misc.
8
9
10

de-limiting excellence
Institute
of
Management
Consultants
of
India,
Delhi
November
1-15, 2010
2/10
On November 27, 2010, teams from
various management schools of NCR
will compete to present their ideas
through a 12 minutes PowerPoint
projection and face a short volley of
questions from judges.
The theme:
CWG2010: Lessons
for Corporate
Managers
The team must consist of three
management students duly sponsored
by their Institute.
Some of the key aspects that may be
considered for inclusion are:
Leadership, Corporate Governance,
Project Management, Planning and
Execution, Financial Discipline, People
Engagement, Culture Building, ROI
from Stakeholders perspective, Brand
Management, Media Relations etc.
What do the IDEA BALL game players
get?
•Marksmanship exposure before the
Corporate Elite.
•Experts’ inputs on Ideas and
Presentations
•Certificates for all
•Trophies for the winning team
We have set the ball rolling. Come and
play your ideas.
Write to imcidelhi@gmail.com for
participation.
Nov. 27
10 am onwards
JIMS, Kalkaji,
New Delhi
Yo! event partner
Alag Tewar,
Alag Flavour
[This concept is the intellectual property of IMCI Delhi]

de-limiting excellence
Institute
of
Management
Consultants
of
India,
Delhi
November
1-15, 2010
3/10
Alag Tewar,
Alag Flavour
1. Set up Google Alerts for your client and its competitors
This is an absolute must. Google Alerts feed you the latest online
information (collected primarily from news sites and blogs) related to
keywords that you specify.
Setup these alerts for your client and its top 3 competitors.
This will help you stay current on client and industry developments, which
will come in handy through the project. Many people are too pre-occupied
to do this regularly, and it’s a quick win for new consultants to add value.
2. Know basic financial data for your client
I can’t tell you the number of times basic questions like “What’s Client X’s
total annual revenue?” have come up in internal discussions.
You want to be the one that can provide an accurate answer, as opposed
to “Oh, I think it’s something like $10-20 billion…let me check.”
Some key numbers include:
-Market cap
-Overall revenue
-Gross profit
-Margins (profit and operating)
Memorizing them doesn’t take long. It will come in handy.
3. Familiarize yourself with the client CEO and senior management
There are many stories of newbie consultants having a casual
conversation with an employee in the company cafeteria, only to realize a
week later that it was an Executive VP. Don’t let this happen to you. You
can find most executive profiles on the client website. Read them
thoroughly and become familiar with the faces. Not only will it prevent
foul-ups like the above, it will also help you understand and manage
client relationships.
4. Familiarize yourself with the competitors
This shouldn’t take more than a few hours. Simply have a grasp on the
following:
-Who are the top 5-10 competitors
-Relative sizes (eg, number of employees, overall revenues)
-Key products/services (especially what differentiates each competitor
from the client)
-General grasp of their strengths and weaknesses
Good ways to get a quick handle on this include:
-Internal firm research reports (if available)
-Analyst reports (eg, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, etc)
Periodically review this information to make sure you’re fresh. While it’s
important to know this info, it’s even more important that you don’t
confuse one competitor with another.
Don’t ignore the small, innovative guys. The best way to identify them is
to scour Google and Techcrunch for your client’s name and industryrelated
keywords. Staying current on innovative practices is one way to
be a thought leader

de-limiting excellence
Institute
of
Management
Consultants
of
India,
Delhi
November
1-15, 2010
4/10
Alag Tewar,
Alag Flavour
5. Store the contact information for all people on your team,
especially partners
Available through your firm intranet/database. Program the
following into your Blackberry for all involved parties, from
interns to senior partners:
-Cellphone number
-Office number (if available)
-Email address
-Secretary email and direct line (if applicable)
Some of you may think this is overdoing it. But on every 2-month
project, there will be at least 2 times where a client meeting is
about to start, the partner can’t be found, and no one has
immediate laptop access. This is when having all those numbers
programmed into your phone comes in very handy.
It’s especially likely when you have multiple partners, visiting
“experts”, and rotating teams.
6. Thoroughly review previous client-related work
Most consulting firms have internal “knowledge libraries” that
store information about past projects and the firm’s latest
thinking.
When you’re starting a project, you should mine that library for
information related to your client, its competitors, and even
functionally similar projects (eg, if this is your first cost-reduction
case, you’ll find plenty of introductory material on running a
cost-reduction project including examples of analyses, suggest
output, etc).
Pay very close attention to the work that’s been done before –
this will help your team avoid re-creating the wheel (which can
happen surprisingly often).
You should also review the “sales documents” that led to the
project, including the project proposal and preliminary research
7. Know a few good places for team events and dinners
As the newbie consultant, the responsibility of planning team
events(such as dinners, team-bonding activities, etc) will fall on
you.
Take the opportunity to demonstrate your diligence and attention
to detail. It helps if you have an idea – particularly in unfamiliar
cities – of the fun/popular things to do. Ask your friends and do
internet research. The more familiar you are, the better prepared
you’ll be.
While a poorly planned team dinner at the city steakhouse won’t
kill your performance review, people will notice. It’s not your fault
that the food wasn’t amazing, but it is your fault that the taxis
arrived late, you didn’t invite the partners, and forgot to make the
reservation.

de-limiting excellence
Institute
of
Management
Consultants
of
India,
Delhi
November
1-15, 2010
5/10
Alag Tewar,
Alag Flavour
8. Build a knowledge hub of client/project-related
documents
Sometimes this will already be started by your
manager/teammates. If not, take the lead and create a shared
hub for project-related documents. Things to put in it:
-Annual reports
-Analyst reports for client and competitors
-Documents and presentations from previous client-related work
-Primers on the industry and function
This will be an invaluable resource. Organize it
well. Continually update as the project progresses with new
reports, presentations, and so forth.
9. Pack extra supplies
The Scout Motto is “Be Prepared”. If the previous 8 tips haven’t
taught you the value of contingency planning, this one should
put you over the top.
Be reasonable – no one’s asking you to bring 4 laptops. But
have backups of small, necessary equipment that less prepared
team mates may forget.
Examples include: power cords, ethernet cables, USB drives,
mouse
It’s not fun stepping into your new team room on a Monday
morning, and realizing that you have no power cord.
10. Proofread all client-ready documents
Do this even if you’re not asked. The day/night before a client
meeting, review the final version of the documents carefully.
You’re looking for small mistakes like misspellings, syntax
errors, and misaligned charts. Do a quick sanity check on the
analyses.
Partners and clients can become unreasonably focused on
typos and other nits. You want the discussion to be about the
synthesis, not the syntax.
11. Build a strong working relationship with the team
assistant
At the beginning of each engagement, introduce yourself to the
team assistant. This person is absolutely critical to a highperforming
team.
Not only do they coordinate the frenetic schedules of all parties
involved, they often help on things like proofreading and basic
research.
As the new consultant on the team, you may interface with them
frequently. Earning their respect is important to getting things
done promptly. After all, team assistants have busy calendars
too. You want your requests to have top-priority.
Source: http://managementconsulted.com

de-limiting excellence
Institute
of
Management
Consultants
of
India,
Delhi
I spend a fair amount of time online, with
a lot of time attending to social media,
email, web-based or database research
and quantitative analysis. Most of this is
presumably productive, but what is a
"right amount?"
There is no "right" amount because each of
these activities may be highly productive for
your particular consulting practice. It is easy
to feel like any one of these is "too much"
because, compared to the past, you are
spending much more time on that activity.
How much time did you spend 15 years ago
on email? Is what you spend now too much
or too little? New web applications, new
distractions, and new resources can skew
our appreciation for what is really most
useful.
Consider RescueTime, an application that
intelligently tracks what applications you
spend your time with, including where you
spend most of your time surfing. It has a
really clever feature, called Focus Time," in
which you set a time during which it will warn
you if you stray off your chosen task (to, say,
respond to that "urgent" instant message, or
"quickly" look up something on a website -
that lasts 15 minutes).
November
1-15, 2010
Tip: Before tracking your time, estimate how
much time you spend throughout the day on
various activities and adjust to what you think
is an appropriate proportion for each. Once
you get your usage data, you can see what,
based on your own criteria, is too much (or
too little) time spent in a given activity.
6/10
Alag Tewar,
Alag Flavour

de-limiting excellence
Institute
of
Management
Consultants
of
India,
Delhi
November
1-15, 2010
7/10
I get it that people receive a lot of emails and can't
always answer them right away, but what's the
difference between an email that gets opened right
away and one that is saved for later attention?
Assuming the recipient is in an email reading mood, there
are probably three things that most determine what gets
opened right away:
The return address. Let's face it, we are more likely to act
on emails from family and friends than ones from a
complete stranger. Furthermore, the "display as" text in the
return address (over which you have some control) can
send your email to the junk folder (by an automated
process) or the deleted folder (by the recipient). If your
"Display As" return address text includes provocative
words (e.g., "sales," "offer," or "free"), you might consider
whether this is the reason your emails are not being
opened.
The subject line. Usually the second thing a recipient
looks for, but sometimes the first. Make it crystal clear what
you want from the reader. Also, consider writing the subject
line first, before the body of the email, when you are not
deep into the details of your offer or request. Ask yourself
what you want the reader to think, feel or do after reading
and put that in less than 50 characters. If you limit yourself
to this length, this can make your emails themselves
crisper (less time to write and less time to read - everyone
wins).
Get to the point - quickly. Many people use email
readers that have a reading pane that show a few lines of
body text. If the reason why I should be interested is not
clear, and I have other things on my mind, your email is
going into the "later" pile, which may mean the "never" pile.
Tip: If you have gotten this far, don't blow it by making the
reader think they didn't receive your full attention when you
wrote it. Impersonal and oddly formatted emails send
subtle clues that the reader's time was not being
respected. Finally, if the body is too long, you risk a "later"
decision that may never be fulfilled. It is often better to use
a short email and attach the longer content, which
increases the chances that your core message will be
received.
Alag Tewar,
Alag Flavour

de-limiting excellence
Institute
of
Management
Consultants
of
India,
Delhi
“Today is your day!
Your mountain is
waiting. So... get on
your way.”
- Theodor Seuss
Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
I've heard the phrase, "Don't boil
the ocean!" from time to time, but
I am not clear on its meaning.
November
1-15, 2010
Leaders establish
the vision for the
future and set the
strategy for getting
there; they cause
change. They
motivate and inspire
others to go in the
right direction and
they, along with
everyone else,
sacrifice to get
there.
- John Kotter
“Reason and judgment
are the qualities of a
leader.”
- Tacitus
The phrase "boil the ocean" refers to
the act of "over-scoping" a project,
trying to solve too large a problem,
or too many problems at once),
thereby making your success at
effectively solving it unlikely. It can
describe an attempt at achieving
something that is too large in scale
or way too ambitious. Finally, it often
means making an effort that, even if
successful, would have marginal
value to a client. Attempting to "boil"
the ocean is not a practical task to
take on due to its sheer magnitude
(and, given the Earth's oceans
contain about 1.4 billion cubic
kilometers, that's a lot to boil!)
Tip: Consultants can run the risk of
attempting to "boil the ocean" when
scoping their projects and must work
with their clients to set realistic
expectations and successful and
timely delivery of results.
8/10
Leadership Ideas For Today
Alag Tewar,
Alag Flavour
Extracts from the gift book- LIFT,
pending print, by
- Rajiv Khurana, CMC, FIMC

de-limiting excellence
Institute
of
Management
Consultants
of
India,
Delhi
November
1-15, 2010
9/10
Alag Tewar,
Alag Flavour
ICMCI
The International Council of
Management Consulting Institutes
is the global association of national
management consulting institutes
from around the world. These
national institutes administer, in
accordance with world class
standards, the international "CMC"
certification Certified Management
Consultant earned by individual
professional management
consultants.
More details: icmci.org
IMCI
The Institute of Management Consultants
of India (IMCI) is the apex body of
management consulting professionals,
being the only registered institute of
established management consultancy
firms and practicing individuals in the
country.
Constituted in 1991, IMCI was formerly
known as the Management Consultants’
Association of India (MCAI), which was
founded in 1963.
In 1989, IMCI became the first Asian
organisation to be accepted for
membership of the International Council
of Management Consulting Institutes
(ICMCI), the global apex body of
Management Consulting Institutes. ICMCI
has 46 member countries in the world.
The Executive Secretariat of IMCI is
located in Mumbai. The Institute has
regional Chapters in Ahmedabad,
Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai (Madras),
Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai (Bombay) and
Pune.
CMC Designation
IMCI endeavors to raise the standards of
management consulting by awarding
Certified Management Consultant (CMC)
designation to individual members who
have passed a qualifying examination
and have met the profession’s standards
of competence and ethics. The CMC
designation implies international
recognition to worldwide standards.
More details: imcindia.co.in
Code of
Professional
Conduct for
IMCI members
Minimum Guidelines
Confidentiality
A member will treat client information as
confidential and will not take personal advantage
of privileged information gathered during an
assignment, or enable others to do so.
Unrealistic Expectations
A member will refrain from encouraging unrealistic
expectations or promising clients that benefits are
certain from specific consulting services.
Commissions / Financial Interests
A member will neither accept commissions,
remuneration or other benefits from a third party
in connection with recommendations to a client
without the client’s knowledge and consent, nor
fail to disclose any financial interest in goods or
services which form part of such
recommendations.
Assignments
A member will only accept assignments for which
the member has the skill and knowledge to
perform.
Conflicting Assignments
A member will avoid acting simultaneously (in
potentially conflicting situations) without
informing all parties in advance that this is
intended.
Conferring with Clients
A member will ensure that before accepting any
engagement, a mutual understanding of the
objectives, scope, work plan and fee arrangements
is established and any personal, financial or other
interests which might influence the conduct of the
work are disclosed.
Recruiting
A member will refrain from inviting an employee of
a client to consider alternate employment without
prior discussion with the client.
Approach
A member will maintain a fully professional
approach in all dealings with clients, the general
public and fellow members.
Code of Professional Conduct
A member will ensure that other management
consultants carrying out work on the member’s
behalf are conversant with and abide by the Code
of Professional Conduct.

de-limiting excellence
Institute
of
Management
Consultants
of
India,
Delhi
Visit
Join group
‘IMCI – Delhi’
on linkedin.com
http://twitter.com/imcidelhi
Imagine
The Client says “Take me as
your apprentice. I will learn
from you and come back.”
What does it take?
We await your
ideas,
suggestions,
contribution,
support …
November
1-15, 2010
10/10
Alag Tewar,
Alag Flavour
Patron:
Dr. M.B.Athreya
Mentors:
Dr. S.R.Mohnot
Mr. Shashi Budhiraja
Dr. Sunil Abrol
Past Chairmen:
Mr. Ashok Kumar
Mr. Ramesh Tyagi
Chairman
Rajiv Khurana
Dy. Chairman
Sumit Chaudhuri
Hon. Secretary
Vijay Nagrani
Hon. Treasurer
M S Sridhar
Executive Members
S A Khader
Anand Chhabra
Regional Rep.
S A Khader
IMCI – Delhi
imcidelhi@gmail.com
This eMag is meant for free electronic circulation amongst members & friends of IMCI - Delhi