What successful consulting output looks like (using a real-world example)

No two advisory projects really look the same. That’s part of the reason why consulting can feel out of reach for some accountants - that, plus the multitude of frameworks, acronyms, and diagrams that bigger firms tout to make the space appear intimidating.

In this newsletter, I’m going to break down a real, but anonymised, advisory project we worked on at flinder, consulting on a client’s finance function (or as a consultant would say “finance target operating model”). The output may have been a 120+ slide deck, but what we delivered can really be boiled down to three key principles.

This example is from the ‘discover’ phase of flinder’s five-stage advisory process. It benchmarks the client’s current context and what better looks like to solve their challenge or make them more effective, with a view to moving into the other stages of the transformation methodology.

Storytelling is a crucial skill in advisory, particularly so in early discovery phases. 

A discovery deck should tell the story of what’s happening in a client’s business today, paint a vision of where they could go, how you’ll partner together to make that future happen, and what the impact of that will be.

It’s the classic beginning, middle, and end of any story arc. 

As I mentioned before, decks like this can often end up going to 100 slides or longer, it all depends on the complexity of the client and the breadth of the work. So how do you make sure those decks are all killer, no filler? 

What has to be included? And how do you present that information in the most meaningful, engaging way, so that your message lands and you present with authority? 

Sticking to a single, clear narrative is key - you can normally feel it yourself if a presentation starts to meander, as you’ll loop back to old points or go off piste to cram something else in. The appendix exists for a reason. Learn how to use it!