I spent most of the summer working with John Parker, who had just been hired and was planning to start the Chicago office of Katzenbach Partners. The two of us were helping a financial services firm think about how to develop more innovative products and also how an IT department there could deepen its engagement and motivation. It was the closest thing to an apprenticeship that I could have imagined. We had brainstorming sessions whenever he was in New York, and he gave me feedback when we checked in at the end of every day. Initially I was doing research and sending him raw notes, but eventually I learned how to cut right to the “so what” and generally got up to speed as a consultant. When I was developing case studies on innovation, John encouraged me to contact companies directly to find out how it worked. Since I’m not a native English speaker, this really helped me to develop confidence in my formal verbal communication skills. As we walked into one meeting, he said, “This is your meeting. You’re going to lead it.” And he made it clear that I was the point person. “Anything you need, just talk to Raja.”
John also taught me that companies can always benefit from outside perspectives, and that the biggest success you can have is for your client not to need you anymore – and that the consulting relationship really begins at that point, when it’s a matter of trust, not information. That’s why John wasn’t afraid to brainstorm about creating an internal consulting group for our client, and why our clients became thought partners in figuring out the connection between innovation and the Relative Value of Growth (RVG) – a powerful new metric that Senior Fellow Nat Mass was then developing.
Once, John brought me and another associate out to Chicago just for a work session – it was part of his excitement about establishing Katzenbach Partners in Chicago. It was the firm’s first office there, the kind you reserve for however many hours a day. When the Chicago office was inaugurated after I returned to the firm, it felt very special that I had been there at such an early stage.
Office space was also something I had given a lot of thought to during the summer and subsequent academic year, through a research project that I began through the firm’s “Idea to Market” initiative and continued as an independent study at Harvard. The New York office was undergoing construction at the time, and half the people were in an open space and half were in traditional offices, and I took the opportunity to study the effects of these different work environments. It was extremely compelling to have both practical and more academic involvements with the firm.
A few of the summer interns this year have similar stories to mine – of having been drawn to Katzenbach Partners not as a starting point but a unique destination. I had never ruled business out, but I had jumbled it all together. It’s not consulting that brought me to Katzenbach Partners, but Katzenbach Partners that brought me to a version of consulting that I find very compelling. A lot of what actually factored into this was the social experience in and out of the workplace. There are very few places where friendships emerge in this way, or where there’s less concern about how you’re perceived. It flows naturally from the people we recruit and the selective atmosphere and the value the firm places on transparency. I notice it especially at offsite and town hall meetings – everyone, at every level, speaking their minds.
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