!m Willemstyn Week 6

After finally presenting our deliverables to our program sponsor, personal mentors, service practice leads, and even the CFO, I can look back at this internship experience with a full appreciation for all I have learned. I took the lead on our group project, and I was really proud of the playbook I put together, since I know it was what everyone was most excited to use. My presentation showcased my entire process, from understanding the need at Impact Makers for such a tool, to interviewing everyone I could find, to finally building it.

!m wanted playbooks because that’s what all the other consulting firms and top tier business companies do when they have a clear understanding of their processes and how they execute engagements. That fact was not stamped on my project objectives – I had to figure out, after dozens of interviews, that !m idealized playbooks for a future state that they were not operating in yet. What I mean by this . No one told me what that should look like so in my research, I realized that a playbook could capture methodologies at any period of the engagement lifecycle (from marketing to sales to delivery). After seeing an Agile delivery playbook, I realized the data practice was too young to have defined delivery processes that could be standardized like Agile, and I had no experience in delivering data to a client. For a while, the second part made me feel obsolete, and it was mentor that pointed out it was more of a recommendation for the company than a personal failure on my part. The purpose of building the playbook was not just handing off an end deliverable, but also understanding the capabilities of the current state. Data was too young, and required too much expertise to build a useful delivery-minded playbook: that was fine, so what were my other options? It was really cool to pivot in this way, and recognize that consulting requires some level of comfort in these gray areas. So, I decided to build a sales-ended playbook, and met another roadblock almost immediately. The sales guys at !m are notoriously difficult, and they really didn’t want to take the time to explain how sales work. So, I decided to understand the sales process through the Data Practice Lead, knowing that his way of selling data might not line up with how the sales guys go about selling data (or anything else at the company for that matter). The point in this exercise, was to highlight the sales process discrepancies throughout the company to senior leadership, and get the conversation started at that high level to fix it – not for me to fix it myself.

My mentor Dan only gave out one “Exceeds Expectations” in our evaluations and it was for my Willingness to Learn. Going forward, I’m going to capitalize on that quality of myself, and apply it to his recommendation for me, which was to expand on my technical knowledge. I’m going to start this independently in the fall, and get several AWS Certifications and Accreditations, hopefully getting the B-School to pay for it. With these under my belt and the connections I’ve made at this internship, I’ll either work for !m post-grad (if they decide to open associate positions for the first time, which I’ll know in the next 10 days), or I’ll be a much more qualified candidate for any other consulting firm.