Blog post by Joshua Lodestro, GMBA '20
For a team of four MBA students with no consulting experience the last four months have been nothing short of challenging and rewarding.
In January, sixteen classmates and I learned that we would be going to Hong Kong for our Consulting Abroad Program (CAP). Our three teams would be working with two different clients, Click Ventures and Regal Hotels. Click Ventures is a venture capital fund. One group would be working on a way to analyze investments in blockchain companies, and the other team would be working on a pitch deck for an upcoming fund. The Regal Hotels team, my team, would be working through a marketing and competitive analysis of the hotel industry in Hong Kong.
Again, my team had no consulting experience. We brought together a diverse range of backgrounds: human rights, public service, finance, and customer service. For us, everything was new. We quickly learned how to set expectations as a team as well as set expectations with the client. With the challenge of working with a time zone thirteen hours ahead, we found ourselves on 9pm WebEx calls with the client. However, we found WeChat to be the most effective way to catch our client.
We learned a few different methods for active consulting engagements, the first being Team FOCUS, and the second being design thinking. My team would adopt design thinking due to its stress on empathy. As we were working on a marketing project, having empathy with the target customer and their needs would prove crucial to execute our project successfully.
We were fortunate to be working in Hong Kong insofar as cultural barriers are minimal for typical Western business norms. We did not find that there was a language barrier with our client and they were open to our questions and ideas. We were fortunate to have a friendly and funny client!
We wrapped up our semester’s work in two significant events. First was the storyboarding session where we presented our research and findings to a group of second-year students for feedback. Their feedback was helpful and set us on the right track for creating a successful final product. Two weeks before we were to leave for Hong Kong, was the Panel Presentations Day with industry experts from consulting heavyweights like PwC and Booz Allen in attendance. While their feedback was tough, it was the last guidance we would receive before we flew to Hong Kong to meet with our client face-to-face.
With packing done and a long flight ahead of me, I look forward to getting to Hong Kong and meeting our client in person!
