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波士顿咨询集团想用钱来阻止我告诉你们的故事 来源: 方依嶶笑的日志 波士顿咨询集团BCG是咨询业界最有名的咨询公司之一。本文的作者是MIT校报Tech的专栏作者。作者是MIT原子物理专业毕业的高材生,毕业后就被BCG聘用去迪拜分公司工作,直到不久前迪拜泡沫破裂离职。作者在校报Tech上写了四篇连载,讲述他的这段经历,向读者介绍了他在迪拜的真实体验和公司的内幕。选择了他四篇连载中的第三篇,原文标题是The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell同系列四篇文章的链接:1. The city of tomorrow2.Welcome to your caste3.The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell4.Dispatches from the collapse=The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tellByKeith YostThe city was strange and the society was unnerving, but what disturbed me most about my Dubai experience was my job as a business consultant for the Boston Consulting Group. I really had no idea what to expect, going in. In my mind, consulting was about answering business questions through analysis. It was supposed to be Excel sheets and models, sifting through data to discover profit and loss, and helping clients make decisions that would add the most value for themselves, and by extension, society. It was worrisome to enter a new job without any guarantee that I would be qualified. I assumed BCG would train me, and that as it had been with MIT, intelligence and hard work would prove sufficient. Still, I wondered what I would do if for some reason it turned out that I couldnt get my head around the analysis? In hindsight, analytical skills should have been the least of my worries. Stretching reality The first clue that my mental picture of consulting was off came with “training” in Munich. I expected instruction in Excel programming, data analysis, and business theory. Instead, Munich turned out to be little more than a week long social outing with other recently matriculated consultants and analysts within the BCGs European branches. We donned name tags, shook hands, and drank often. Classes were fluffy, and mostly consisted of discussion of high-level, almost philosophical topics. I got along well as both an American and a member of the Dubai office, I was doubly foreign and therefore double the curiosity. After a pleasant week of pseudo-partying, I returned to Dubai and was assigned to writing case proposals. In the consulting business, it is standard practice for clients to write requests for proposals, describing the question they would like answered. The consulting firm in turn writes a case proposal: We will answer A by having Consultant B do X, Y, and Z. A well written case proposal promises much, but is deliberately vague about what concrete things the consultants will produce. Case proposals were despised by the rank and file one had a dozen bosses, unclear objectives, and virtually no coordination with co-workers. But in one sense, the proposals were good practice for real case work. Both involved stretching reality to fit whatever was assumed the client desired. Despite having no work or research experience outside of MIT, I was regularly advertised to clients as an expert with seemingly years of topical experience relevant to the case. We were so good at rephrasing our credentials that even I was surprised to find in each of my cases, even my very first case, that I was the most senior consultant on the team. I quickly found out why so little had been invested in developing my Excel-craft. Analytical skills were overrated, for the simple reason that clients usually didnt know why they had hired us. They sent us vague requests for proposal, we returned vague case proposals, and by the time we were hired, no one was the wiser as to why exactly we were there. I got the feeling that our clients were simply trying to mimic successful businesses, and that as consultants, our earnings came from having the luck of being included in an elaborate cargo-cult ritual. In any case it fell to us to decide for ourselves what question we had been hired to answer, and as a matter of convenience, we elected to answer questions that we had already answered in the course of previous cases no sense in doing new work when old work will do. The toolkit I brought with me from MIT was absolute overkill in this environment. Most of my day was spent thinking up and writing PowerPoint slides. Sometimes, I didnt even need to write them we had a service in India that could put together pretty good copy if you provided them with a sketch and some instructions. Burning out I worked hard at MIT. I routinely took seven to ten classes per semester and filled whatever hours were left in the day with part-time jobs and tutoring. It was a fairly stupid way of going about my education, and I missed out on many of the learning opportunities that MIT offers outside of classes. I dont recommend what I did to anyone. But as stupid as carrying double course loads was, it had one advantage: After all the long hours I put into MIT, I believed I was invincible. If MIT couldnt burn me out, nothing else ever could. It took roughly three months before BCG disproved my
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