Almost every firm has “activities” or “extracurriculars” that are nearly mandatory for every practitioner. Not to be ignored, they can boost your network, probably apply toward year-end reviews and may weigh heavily in consultant ratings/compensation. In short, don’t ignore firm activities.
New consultants are often thrown a slew of new activities in which to become involved. Firm events generally fall into three categories:
- Recruiting
- Firm Events (quarterly meetings, education days)
- Friday Fly-back Seminars
Then there are the hand-shaking events, generic industry or service-line dinners, cocktail events, etc. I don’t have to elaborate any further – you’ve seen them.
Now, what to look for and what to avoid.
Choosing the Right Firm Event
The experienced consultant will know that picking the right firm activity is a lot like finding a job: It should be sustainable, interesting, career-enhancing, and should provide you a solid role. Experienced practitioners only pick one or two big events to get involved with rather than applying the “peanut butter” method and spreading their efforts too thin.
The irony of participating in most firm activities is that they don’t offer what firm activities are supposed to in the first place: visibility, career enhancement or a solid role. Often one-off events, unless you are leading the thing, you won’t get anything out of it.
Firm Activity Warning Signs:
- Activity is not in your local office.
A very basic, but often overlooked first step in selecting. Often, someone will be on a project with lots of people from another office who will invite them to help with a firm event. Not having anyone from your local office involved will not help you at year end. This is a pretty solid rule, unless there is visibility from senior leadership regionally or nationally.
- Invite is sent out to a broad group by a non-senior practitioner.
Often, this will be from a person a year or two ahead of you sending out a wide net to see what they will catch. Unless it’s recruiting related, or you feel you’ve been specifically selected to receive the email, don’t fall in to the trap. This also applies to the next one…
- Once-off event with a low-visibility role
Avoid those little, one-off events with a substandard role. Nothing is worse than a one-off event where you’re taking notes or running the powerpoint. Unless it’s a small group with very senior people, or the event will continue throughout the year, steer clear.
- Activity does not offer anything new or different
This applies less to very new consultants and moreso after your first year. Are you doing/learning anything new? Are you building skills usable outside the firm?
Hard to think about when you’re just starting, but time passes quickly in consulting, and the truth is most people leave after two or three years. Too many fluffy, generalized activities give you the essential skills of a highly-skilled admin assistant.
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Avoiding the above point, a simple metric I use to valuate firm activities is this: the higher the visibility/career-enhancing nature and the lower the impact to me, the better.
Preferable activities include those I would have a speaking opportunity, those with exposure to senior people from my home office, and those where I’m learning/doing something new or groundbreaking (think resume material).
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Attributes of a Solid Firm Activity
- Activities with those from my local office.
This is pretty much essential unless the activity is really high-visibility (read: national level). As with most things, your looking for someone to speak to your abilities at year-end.
- Events with lots of senior visibility.
While events with lots of peers won’t help me, those where I’d be working closely with senior personnel would. These are likely the folks that will be speaking at year-end. The closer you are working with senior people, the better.
- Public Speaking opportunities.
Exposure is an obvious advantage to public speaking. Almost as important is the practice. It is rare for most people to gain practice speaking publicly (outside of Toastmasters, which you should also look in to). The more practice you get speaking publicly, the better.
- Long-term events with role-progression.
It takes a bit more effort, but within a year you could be owning a major firm event. Executing this correctly can mean early promotion, a high score at year-end, and recognition firm-wide. This approach is recommended for those far more driven and hard-working than myself.
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