Future at FTI

Intro

It is crazy how quickly 10 weeks can pass. I had a great summer interning for FTI Consulting in their health solutions practice, improved on and learned new skills in working with data and people, and learned a lot about the healthcare industry. My internship at FTI helped me to meet the learning outcomes that I set out for myself and hoped to gain over the course of the summer. In addition, I used my knowledge from my leadership studies classes to analyze the leader-follower environment within the office among colleagues.

Achieving my Summer Goals

Prior to starting my internship, I set out several goals and skills that I wanted to gain. In my personal plan paper, I outlined my desire to develop a variety of both soft and hard skills including, stronger communication, proficiency in Microsoft Excel, enhanced networking abilities, a deep understanding of the healthcare industry, and the skill to work both as independently and as a part of a team. Looking back, I can say that I accomplished all of these goals. A lot of my day to day work involved analyzing big data and working in software like SQL and Tableau to do so. I definitely improved my Excel skills as well and learned more about Excel in a week at FTI than I have in the past several years of working in it. Working here this summer definitely taught me that sometimes the best way to learn something new is by doing it. In my personal plan paper, I recognized that there would be a bit of a learning curve to programs like SQL, and there was. It took me a few weeks to adjust, but I now have a new skill and can manipulate large data sets.

I also made it one of my summer goals to learn more and absorb as much as I can about the healthcare industry. As I discussed in my plan paper, I have been interested in healthcare for a long time and initially saw myself on the other side of it working as a doctor one day. Interning at FTI gave me the opportunity to take my interests in business and leadership and utilize them in the healthcare space. Prior to this summer, I had a little bit of background in healthcare but had never taken a class. I feel like I was able to develop an even deeper interest when learning about the complexity of the healthcare industry and respective investigations, disputes, and litigations that our clients face. Coincidently, in my personal plan paper I talked about wanting to learn about high prescription costs and the opioid crisis, and I was able to learn a lot about these issues during the first project I was assigned to, as this was the focus of my first project.

One of my favorite parts about my internship was getting to know people at the company whether they were in the Health Solutions practice that I worked in, or in another practice (the office I worked at has several practices including forensic accounting, data analytics, economics, and is the corporate HQ). On the 2 projects that I worked on during my 10 weeks at FTI, I worked on two different teams comprised of full time consultants, directors, and even senior managing directors. Being immersed in a conference room among more experienced full time employees taught me about professionalism and got to learn from full time employees. I learned to work under the pressure of deadlines and also developed my skills working in small groups. Outside of the office, FTI did a great job of setting up intern events throughout the summer such as going to a Nationals game, setting up tours of the US Capital and White House, and organizing happy hours in order to interact with people outside of the office setting. I really appreciated getting to know colleagues outside of the office and feel that the high attendance at these events spoke to the organizational culture at FTI. At these events I improved on my networking skills and had the opportunity to talk to employees from different backgrounds and experience levels about their career paths, but mainly got to know them on a personal level.

Leadership Studies Application

During my time at FTI, I was able to see different aspects from my leadership studies classes come into fruition in the office. As I discussed in a previous reflection, the practice is set up in a hierarchy of different roles and levels of experience and teams assigned to a project are made up of colleagues from different levels. While this tends to be the general structure for the way projects get assigned, in the team setting, the relationships among directors, consultants, and interns are more informal. Within the team setting, directors at FTI definitely practice adaptive work and situational leadership. This may be due to the nature of litigation consulting, because the projects revolves around the schedules of our clients, and therefore it is important for leaders in FTI to be adaptable to adjust to new request and meet unexpected deadlines. One of the directors that I worked with on my first project demonstrated strong situational leadership in order to adapt to last minute requests from our clients. While the work in SQL and Excel involving data is work that I would do individually, the team-oriented setting fosters a collaborative environment and helps with overall problem solving to meet client needs.

My theories and models class helped me recognize the different types of power that some of the senior managing directors exhibit in the company. I had the unique opportunity to sit in on a meeting with two of the SMD’s to discuss a project we were working on involving a health insurance provider. In my interactions with colleagues, I recognized that the top people at the company exhibit legitimate, referent, and expert power. Their expert power really stood out to me in this meeting, as they have been working in the healthcare industry and a part of the company for over a decade- they were instantly able to recognize trends and patterns that I personally did not see because of their previous experience on similar projects. In that meeting, I saw that they can quickly think on their feet and instantly find trends in the client data demonstrated their expert skillsets. Perhaps the strongest kind of power they have is referent power. This stems from their trust in their subordinates to work towards the client needs. In addition, they themselves demonstrated this through example.

Last, my leadership classes helped me to work well in a team setting. During the last week of my internship, four other interns and I presented “The intern project” to the practice. Throughout the summer, our intern class had been working on this project that involved researching into new areas of business in the healthcare space for FTI. Heading into the project I thought back to my theories and models class about when we discussed that people tend to be either task-oriented or relationship oriented. I see myself as a combination, but higher on the relationship-oriented side, where as some of the other interns were more task oriented. We balanced each other out and were able to set goals and create deadlines for each other in order to set ourselves up for success. Looking back, this showed me the importance of cohesiveness when working towards a group goal. We all were at the same level and split up the project in different parts. The group dynamics of us getting a long and trusting each other led to our success and good feedback on the project. Furthermore, after we presented, we received good feedback and questions from several of the directors. One of the ideas behind our market research in the healthcare space is that the practice might use the work recommendations that we (the interns) provide. This shows how the leaders in the company, even at the most senior levels, value the opinions of their followers (down to the intern level).

All in all, I had a fantastic internship experience, and truly appreciate the new skills and relationships I’ve gained. I learned a combination of technical skills such as working in programs like SQL, Tableau, and Excel. Even more importantly, I got a sense for the office culture and improved my skills interacting with people on a more professional level, whether this was through teamwork on projects, or even just getting to know employees at a happy hour or work event. Furthermore, through working alongside my peers on our final intern presentation we were able to meet a deadline and enhanced our public speaking and powerpoint skills. Overall, I see FTI as a great place to work because of the supportive and collaborative team-oriented environment. Leaders in the practice give employees (even us as interns) agency and the ability to make key decisions and recommendations. I’m fortunate enough to have received an offer to join the firm full time after graduation and could see myself fitting in, continuing to learn and grow, and bring new insights about leadership studies into the workplace.