From High Dive to Boardroom: Melanie Kansil's Leadership Lessons as CSO and Founder

If McKinsey made you exceptional at problem solving, what did it not prepare you for? One of them is the people side of truly landing execution. So there is a lot of stakeholder management that you learn in consulting and that is an extremely good skill to have. But the bit which is kind of driving execution in a larger organization is there are so many competing demands that you have to balance and be quite pragmatic about your approach to problem solving and your approach to how you are going to execute. I'm Anika Stokes, co-founder of Oak Tree Talent Group and Future State Consulting. Welcome to the Strategy Bites podcast. Oak Tree Talent Group and Future State Consulting are specialist strategy, transformation and management consulting recruitment agencies, specialising in both permanent and interim management consultants. The Strategy Bites podcast brings you career stories from some of the markets most experienced executives, most who have started their career in management consulting. We aim to give you a glimpse of what their roles look like now, how they got there, plus share some of the best bits of advice they've ever been given. Today I am joined by Melanie Cancel, Chief Strategy Officer at Mecca. Melanie started her career at McKinsey and then went on to build startups, lead strategy in large organization and now sits at the centre of strategy for one of Australia's most loved consumer brands. So in this episode we talk about what the CSO role really actually looks like day to day, what consulting really prepares you for and what it doesn't and the messy reality of moving from advising to owning strategy. So Melanie thank you for joining me on this Strategy Bites podcast. For anyone who hasn't come across you before, would you mind just giving us a bit of an overview of your career history to date please? Absolutely, thank you so much for having me. It's a delight, a little bit of an overview. I'm currently the Chief Strategy Officer at Mecca and my career has started in management consulting so maybe like many in your audience. And then since I have done this mix on two ends of the spectrum, one end has been the startup side where I've founded two customer facing tech startups and the other end is the corporate side where I've done a range of corporate roles in traditional kind of strategy, M&A and commercial roles but also very operational. So it's sort of been a mix of everything and quite a few different industries as well, though all customer facing. Amazing. And obviously you said you started your career at McKinsey. Yes. Do you recall back then what drew you into consulting in the first place? Okay, yes, I do. And I confess it was not some grand life plan. So I studied physics for my undergraduate degree and I realized I didn't want to be a physicist for a number of reasons and I didn't really know what to do. To be honest, I also didn't even really know what jobs existed in the world and so when it came time to think about what was next, investment banks and management consulting firms did quite a bit of recruitment on campus at my university and those seemed like good options if you didn't know what you wanted to do. So that was I suppose my thinking and going through the recruitment process. The choice of McKinsey though in the end became one where through the interview process, I loved the people and I loved the approach to problem solving. And so it seemed like a great fit for me which in the end it was, but prior to going through the recruitment process, I'm not sure I could have even told you about the existence of management consulting. Yeah, totally. I hear that a lot actually. People had just a bit of a crossroads not knowing what to do. The campus recruitment seems to work. So when you join McKinsey, was it more as a generalist and you continue to be a generalist? Yes, that's right. I joined McKinsey in New York and it was there for just under three years as an analyst totally loved it. This mix of industries was sort of driven by the geography I would say in New York. So quite a bit of financial services, a few other bits and pieces, but I didn't specialize in industry. I returned to McKinsey after business school and there I didn't specialize in an industry, but I did a reasonable amount of operations work that always enjoyed operations and particularly in service operations. But again, I was not an actually still, I'm not a particular industry specialist sort of a person. I'm more driven by the people and the problem solving and I am mostly motivated by industries that are consumer facing. Yeah. So thinking back at that time, what was it that actually sort of drove you to leave McKinsey? What was your thought process back then? Yeah, great. So I had rejoined McKinsey and my initial plan was I had sought that I would sort of stay for a while. But once I was back at McKinsey, my view changed and I think I realized that I wanted to move from being an advisor to a principle. In the end, I was finding the sort of leaving my clients before really implementing unsatisfying. I wanted to be able to see things through. So that was really the primary driver for me and I realized I had become a manager and I realized like this was the time to make the step because otherwise you're sort of joining the partnership track. So I felt really good about that and wanting to make a real sea change. Yeah. And obviously you mentioned you worked across a lot of different sectors. So what was the catalyst for what to do after McKinsey? Well, amusingly enough, my plan after leaving McKinsey was to start a business, which is in fact what I ended up doing. The actual original conception was I was going to start a chain of nail salons. I began this process of looking into that business and even went to TAFE and got my certificate to a nail technology while continuing to serve one of my clients part time at McKinsey. I'd say the catalyst was really around moving from advisor to principle and I sort of had this business idea in mind. That was what I immediately pursued after leaving the firm. In the end, I didn't end up starting that for sort of a number of different reasons and ended up starting quite a different business a couple of years later. But it was sort of a funny journey of I'm pretty sure was like the only McKinsey consultant also attending TAFE part time at night for nail technology. And I actually mentioned you've had the privilege of working across many different sectors in your career media. Obviously startups are now obviously retail. If there was one thing that McKinsey taught you that you've used in every single role that you've been in, what would that be? I mean, absolutely problem definition and structuring. That has really been the core of everything that I've done, both in McKinsey of course, but also post McKinsey. And I would say kind of from problems large to small that sort of discipline about what is it that we are really trying to do and what are the component parts of what we're trying to do? It has been something that I learned in consulting and has been something that has served me well throughout any number of different roles that I've had. So if McKinsey made you exceptional at problem solving, what did it not prepare you for? I think that in consulting, there are two things that it's very hard to do while in consulting just very naturally. So there is a lot of stakeholder management that you learn in consulting and that is an extremely good skill to have in house as well. But the bit which is kind of driving execution in a larger organization is there are so many competing demands that you have to balance and be quite pragmatic about your approach to problem solving and your approach to how you are going to execute and ideally to be able to execute in a way that you can learn quickly and change tax because I think in consulting you often have like a beautiful deck or a presentation or a workshop that's your end product and you don't have to temper so much your recommendations with pragmatism and kind of maybe even scaling back some of your analytics and focus during the time. Totally, I would 100% agree with that. And I'd have to go back into your role right now, so CSO and a lot of people have opinions around what a CSO does or where it should sit, etc. But day to day, what does your job look like? So I'm sure it is different at different companies and it was for me and the couple of different similar roles that I've had. But I think about it in a few different sort of layers. One layer is the enterprise leader layer and that part of the job is participating in decisions for the enterprises part of the executive team that might look like in practice joining meetings on particular decisions, running workshops on things, leading teams, leading the teams themselves. Then I think that there is a layer which is around supporting the team on the things that we do in strategy, so that might be particular projects, having one-on-ones or meetings with the teams that are working on particular things to toss ideas around to try and un-pick something that's a little bit tricky, etc. And then there is this third component that it's probably, maybe kind of a third and fourth component, the third component that's probably less than you might know. hope or desire is that kind of deeper work and deep thinking that I always imagine that I'm going to have this lovely Nirvana time where there are no meetings and I get clear time to think deeply and it's always just so much less than I would like. Because the kind of the final component that's not as apparent when you are within consulting as it is when you are within a firm is the amount of time that you're spending driving alignment understanding decision. So it's less about commitment to the strategy so much as really unpicking what is going on understanding different perspectives and deciding how you are going to make something happen and it just takes the time it takes. Yeah and so what parts of consulting do you think really translate beautifully into like the CSO role and what parts maybe not so much? The bit that translates is this spit around problem solving that I mentioned earlier which is problem definition and problem solving and problem structuring specifically are so important and the practice of it because I think in consulting you have the discipline that every meeting every problem you are thinking about what is it that we're really trying to solve and what are the component parts and that translates super well no matter what the function is and actually people are often you know very happy to sort of say oh yeah let's actually consider what it is that we're trying to do because it can simplify work it can remove unnecessary work through the pace. The things that don't translate so well is the kind of commitment to perfection especially in PowerPoint checks I mean I remember early in my career getting feedback after quite a good meeting with the client that I had forgotten to put semi-colons in my footnotes on the document and that was certainly a case but that is not something that is particularly required when you are within a company and trying to get things done that level of detail in the actual PowerPoint product is less relevant. Well I'm glad you said that because obviously when we're trying to recruit for strategy teams group strategy teams or for CSOs directly some people worry about strategy or group strategy becoming a proud point department if you like so how would you avoid that within a strategy team within a business? Yes I think it is a risk and I have seen it in some clients when I've been serving them when I was kind of within the consulting and my approach to that is a couple folds the first is to keep the team small so that we can are sort of forced to prioritize routine ruthlessly what we do and what that means is that by definition you end up kind of working on the things that are most important to the enterprise which is where I hope what I think we should be doing and where I think we can add the most value so that's part one and the second is to really actively engage on what the problem is and what is the deliverable by which I mean are we leading up to a meeting where we are putting forward a couple of options for decision are we leading to a workshop where we kind of flushing out ways to execute things X and the reason for that is is to not move immediately to a PowerPoint pack the practice of moving quickly to a hypothesis is a practice that I have retained from consulting the thing that I have had to stop doing is the practice of moving directly to like doing a skeleton deck because often in the kind of real world within an organization the end product does not a PowerPoint pack it's often a discussion it might just be an email it might be a short memo yeah absolutely so you obviously there's a lot of things that you've taken from a Kinsey and use day to day but what other experiences have really prepared you for your role now I think all of the things that I've done and I'd say that particularly being in operational roles both in my startup world and also kind of an operational role as an executive have really helped me to be better in this role because I've had to practice more and more of the pragmatism and understand the sorts of questions that division heads are dealing with the volume and variety that are before people and the lack of time often that we have because there's so many things going on and so that has really helped me in terms of how I engage on what are the most important things that we should really delve in on and how do we set those things up for success so that we get to an answer that really helps shape the business and then the people leadership side is sort of in a way self explanatory which is leading people through challenging circumstances transformations in large corporates big deal at corporates and then also the highs and lows of a startup world have certainly helped me build my emotional resilience and continue to improve my people leadership skills which is always a journey and you mentioned you've been a founder and now you're an executive how has being a founder changed the way you approach strategy a very different environment I think about a startup is having an almost infinite number of variables to the equation and when you're within an organization the great benefit is that you are in a business that by definition has customers and a product that is a value to people and so therefore the kind of field of problem solving is a lot more manageable because it is you know some things about what you do and your time and attention is not you know as a startup founder you're having to consider like absolutely everything and kind of doing all things so that level of focus is really different the thing that has kind of helped me is probably a lot of the resilience piece which is being in a startup everything feels pretty like and death you really don't know a lot I mean it's the definition of ambiguity in the sense that you're not quite sure what your product is not quite sure who your customer is you're not quite sure what your company is going to be like or even if you are going to make it and what that cement is that within an organization it has made me I would say a lot more resilient and calmer because there isn't that sense of existential crisis all the time and now a lot of ex consultants do become founders do you think that many underestimate how messy and ambiguous startups can be yes definitely but I think it's true for everybody because the experience I mean I don't think it's limited to ex consultants I think the real feeling of being in a startup and how challenging and messy it is and how little you really know is sort of hard to really imagine until you felt it hmm so thinking back to those days when everything was a bit messy and ambiguous was there something you had to very quickly unlearn from being a consultant was there something else you had to quickly unlearn that wasn't serving you as an operator well I would say within the start of world like definitely the power point almost no power point was being done but I think it's about sort of just moving very quickly to what is the next thing we are going to do to try and get clearer and to try and move forward so I'm not sure it's so much of an unlearning as much as this speed issue of just getting to the best next answer because you don't have the time nor frankly the resources to get to an answer that feels deeply well informed you have to do the next thing and you're getting constant information back from customers or team members or your technology team or investors and having to sort of adjust approach quite consistently and constantly is a very different practice obviously then the luxury you have of consulting of working very deeply on something over a period of time hmm I often think founders maybe don't talk enough about the really tough bits and I've had a few ex consultants that are founders on the podcast and I've asked them to try and recall what their hardest day was or messier situation that they had to sort out can you recall what that might have been for you back in the day I'll talk about the hardest day and there's actually two that come to mind from two different startups the first was when I was raising funds for my first startup and I had gone over to the US to have a bunch of meetings just to sort of start to build relationships and it was the feeling of being very alone because I'm out there selling fundamentally myself and my business idea and I remember just this feeling of being alone in sort of quite an unpleasant motel in Mountain View which is near Silicon Valley and just feeling you know just very kind of on the precipice I had this feeling while being a startup that I was often on the kind of high dive diving board with everybody looking at me but just all alone up there in my bathers so it was kind of that feeling of I've just got to get up and get out there and be brave and accept that I will often get rejected that feeling of getting rejected a lot is the feeling of being a startup founder because you are selling yourself to everyone from investors to potential customers to potential team members and it can be very stressful and sometimes disheartening having to get yourself up and do that I remember that moment in particular because I really had to force myself to be like, "Actually, tomorrow I've just got to get out there and put on the best face I can to sell myself." So that's sort of one example. And I think that it kind of points to this feeling of, you know, from the outside in, you could think things that seem exciting and interesting and fun, and they are. But they also come with moments of genuine self-doubt and fear and needing to kind of find wells of resilience and courage that I didn't really know that I had in me. Mm, goodness. So when you had those, what really helped you push through that doubt? Were there moments that you wanted to quit or.? I never felt that, maybe this is the benefit of committing to other people, including team members and investors. I never felt that I could quit. You know, I never felt this feeling, "I've got to leave it all behind." But there were certainly moments of feeling pretty overwhelmed and challenged. And I think the things that got me through that are really people around me, meaning my team members in particular, on the startups I've worked in, and certainly my husband as well, who has always been a wonderful cheerleader and source of confidence, and able to provide a little bit of perspective because I often am very hard on myself of what could I have done better, what would the ideal world look like? And so it's always good to have somebody who provides a bit of that cheerleading and support and perspective, and then having a great team. I was always particularly with my second startup, very transparent the whole way through about where we were and trying to make sure that we were on the same page about what was going well, what wasn't, where were we with fundraising, et cetera. So I felt that I wasn't alone in the sense of I was supported, and we were all trying to make this a success. Yeah, and it's interesting. A lot of the executive clients we deal with, who hire for C-Sweet, love the sort of McKinsey-esque background, love people who've gone and done a startup and been a founder, and maybe gone on to do something else, because they've got real war wounds, and the biggest MBA you can have in business is actually getting hands on as a founder, isn't it? It's like learning from the ground up. Absolutely, absolutely. There's nothing quite like it, and it certainly may be better at everything I've done since. Yeah, amazing. And I want to go circle back to Mecca now. Sure. Mecca, love Mecca. Mecca has an incredibly loyal customer base, me being one, my whole team of the females anyway, being others. We had all our makeup done for the Christmas party in the Mecca store, so we're very big fans. It's obviously already got a very loyal following. So how do you protect that while still pushing for innovation and change? It's such a great question, because I think that balance is one that there isn't some perfect answer to. And I think about that as this sort of, there's always a macro question about how much do you continue to do what has served you well in the past versus looking ahead to the future. And I think about that in probably two different ways. One is the more traditional strategy way of thinking about what's coming down the pipeline, how do we build up from the customer insights we have to understand our customer more, what they are asking for, what different types of customers we have. So that's one thing, which is the traditional understanding our customer base, understanding what we need to do, and then the traditional strategy, kind of looking ahead down the horizon about what trends are we seeing, particularly in technology, influence on customer behaviors, and changes in the competitive landscape, et cetera. So I think there's that piece. The other piece is something that at Mecca, we call this mix of magic and logic, because I think that this question about how much you continue to do the things that your customers love today, while innovating on things that they will love tomorrow but don't know exist yet, is one that where there isn't a bright line. And in some cases, you have to use the magic, which is the feeling and seeing ahead and innovating. And Mecca does that incredibly well, and there are people within the organization, in particular Joe, but others within the organization who have this ability to see what might be next, and imagine what the next frontier of the beauty customer experience would be. So I think it's having a mix of foundations, as well as ensuring that people in the organization are pushing thinking and asking questions and innovating, and our Berks Street flagship, which I don't know if you've got any chance to go to yet, is an example of really trying to push what that beauty customer experience might look like. Yeah, I did a Melbourne visit last year with my colleague, and we managed to get a trip into Mecca. It's not long enough though, but I think it's been hours in that shop and a lot of money. And yes, exactly. It is a beauty wonderland, and it definitely has a potential to be a full-day experience. Yeah, totally. And I love that you talk about the magic, but how different is strategy when the brand is emotional, not so rational? I think really all brands are emotional, and I think the downside of like a kind of traditional rational view of the world that I probably grew up in in my career is missing that all brands have an emotional component to them, and definitely all consumer brands. Fundamentally, people and consumers are making judgments based on their emotional reaction to a brand and an experience. So I think that is a universal thing. We had a class at Stanford last year, where the professor was talking about the front brand versus the backbrain, and that our mistake can be to be kind of trying to make everything logical and neat when what we need to do is be thinking about how is the consumer feeling? What emotion are you seeking to create in the consumer? And is that consistent? I think that idea of a brand having an emotional connection is universal and I think it is critical to have that understanding in strategy. The strategy is not just about business models and P&L, but actually kind of the broader landscape about your relationship with your customer now and over time. So in a business like Mecca, is it harder to set the strategy or get the organization to genuinely adopt and commit to the strategy? Well, I think that strategy is both of those things and I'm not sure which is harder because the first is to have enough time to deeply understand something and understand multiple perspectives. And the second about commitment, I think of as less about commitment as about deep understanding, multiple perspectives and then really specifically what is it that we are going to do about this? Because I think the challenge can be, you know, you might have people look at a strategy and agree with the concepts and principles, but it is always done a challenge to say, what does that mean for that team, for that person, or how are we going to address that, how are we then going to measure our progress against it? Who is the lead? All these really critical tactical things, which are what makes strategy successful? Because I think it is a mistake to view strategy as a thing that just exists in a sort of perfect piece of paper because strategy does need to be ever evolving and quite dynamic and living. And the only way that it is living is if it is held throughout the organization and that the execution behind it is clear. And so then you can't adjust along the way. I think of it as building the strategy and then kind of executing a plan and sort of making sure that you've got a feedback loop throughout that process. And I suppose it depends on the organization and how committed the C-suite are to strategy and how much they believe in it. Yeah, absolutely. And that it has been created together with those multiple perspectives, right? Because the strategy team on our own is never going to have a full view of the world, of the business, of the customer problem. So it's so critical to have lots of different perspectives and really push and pull because it also means that your execution becomes that much better and that much sharper because people feel that what we are doing is the right thing. And it is almost certainly going to be different than where you might have started from a kind of more conceptual or theoretical basis. Yeah. And thinking about holistically over the whole of your strategy career, can you think of a time where a strategy looked amazing on paper but actually fell apart in real life? I think that I have definitely seen that in some of my client work where we might have worked too long, sort of in a little bit of a bubble, kind of within consulting. So I think what that has taught me is not to over-egg strategy. I think it is a mistake to spend too much time on, you know, the pieces of paper and what the theoretical plan is and Gantt charts and all these sorts of things. And to move pretty quickly to something that is relatively simple with clear things that need to be done and then to go do those things because there's no point putting together a beautiful plan if there's no chance that you can execute it, you don't have the resources, you don't have the people, you don't have the bandwidth. So I think that that's been my lesson taken from perhaps some projects that didn't go as well as in consulting is to get out of the work. the tunnel really quickly and keep things very simple and also very short, no long PowerPoint facts. Yeah, absolutely. And thinking about times when you've had the most growth in your career, I'm finding people tend to grow quite exponentially when they've had a quite hard feedback from someone. Is there a time when you can recall having some tough feedback that's actually shaped you as a leader today? Absolutely. I can think of two instances. The first is I had a conversation early on when I was at nine entertainment company with my CEO about a particular decision. And I was saying, oh, you know, on one hand this and on this hand that and duh, duh, duh, duh, you know, kind of really tying myself into knots a little bit. And he said, Mel, stop with the corporate BS. What you really want to do is, I was like, yes, that is correct. And that was really helpful in clarifying to me because it made me realize that within an organization, I am a part of the organization. I'm executing these decisions. I may not be the only decision maker, but I am not just sitting on the sidelines advising somebody to do something. And what is helpful is for me to say, I think we should do thing X. What do you think? So to be open to change and influence, but to be clear about what my view and recommendation is. And that's a practice that I've really tried to take through. And it can be a little nerve wrecking because I think that people coming from consulting are often, I will include myself and this have come from a kind of perfectionistic approach and wanting to do well and be right in all those good things. And it can be nerve wracking to put yourself out there with a very clear view and recommendation. And accept that it might not be right and that you might get shot down. So that was, that was one example that that moment really clarified for me. The second example was when I was in an operational role at the NRAA and I was preparing my budgets and plans for the year. I was part of a big meeting to present my plan and budget for the year. And I said, we're going to take this metric from A to B. And I was asked a question, well, how are you going to do that? And I had three or four different things. And my boss said, well, but what is your plan to do those three or four different things? You know, you've got the number changing from month one of the financial year. What specifically are you doing next month to change that number? And she kept pushing and pushing and pushing. And I realized I did not have a plan. I had a conceptual understanding of how you would affect this metric. But what I hadn't done is the work at the time to say, well, here's how it would happen through the year. Here are the specific activities that we will be taking in July. And here's who is doing them in et cetera, et cetera. So that's sort of both tempering my optimistic plan with realism. And also realizing the magnitude of the challenge to have a fully executable plan and have a large operational team mobilized was also a pretty challenging piece of feedback from me. A realization in that moment, but has been critical to me in my development and how I have learned so much. Since that, thank you for sharing those examples. I think it's critical for people to share those things with especially more junior consultants to really understand, you know, perfect. And exactly don't go into life with that expectation. It's not working. And obviously we've gone some of the hardest stuff that you've had to deal with. But in terms of what you're most proud of thinking back on your career, what can you point to? I think across the things that I've done, whether that's in startups or in corporate, I'm most proud when I've delivered on big transformation. Transiration specifically where I have and my team have helped deliver something that has been beneficial to customers, to the business and to team members as well at mecca. We call it the triple bullseye. But for me, that's been sort of a theme for me is going into a particularly in corporate transformation type situations where I'm tasked with moving things from A to B. I feel quite proud of that, whether it's at nine where we set up Stan to help address the changes in viewing behavior. At the NRA, we were really refocused our road service on first service resolution, you know, or A2 where there was much more about significant kind of commercial deals that we delivered. And so those are probably these things that I've felt really proud of. And then at Mecca, I'm very much loving my work and looking at how we can, which is very much in progress about how we shape what's next for Mecca as an organization. Right. And is there part of thinking back on your career and reflecting was there one role that you found the hardest or most difficult? I mean, definitely the startup for all. Like, that's certainly my first startup because the other context for my first startup is I had this startup. It was very small, you know, and I had raised a small amount of funding. So we were doing everything on the smell of an oily rag. And also at the same time, I had two children under two and my husband was working four days a week out of town, just to be honest. Was it complete nightmare? So those few years were absolutely the hardest of my career by a country mile. How did you stay sane? Was there, there's questions or whether I did. That's a very perfect thing. Number one, I just tried to make it through, you know, I did the best and you know, in retrospect, of course, I think of all these things I could have done better, whether it work or personally, I tried to get as much help as possible. And I think with young kids, it's not something that you can do on your own. But it was an extremely challenging time. And I think that I just tried to keep my focus fairly close in terms of what to do, which is just to put one foot in front of the other, being a parent in terms of managing our household while my husband was working out of town. It was very challenging, but certainly built resilience. Yeah, and that's a great skill to have. So if you were starting your career again today, what would you focus on learning in your first few years? And what would you worry less about? You know, I think that I had such a blessing in my early years to be in consulting at McKinsey. It was an incredible few years. And I think if I were restarting my career now, I would love to do the similar things that I did, which is that exposure to problem solving and rigor and really being pushed early in career. You can learn so much. And it's this unique opportunity to really push yourself and learn from other people. So really encourage people to be brave and put themselves out there and go for challenges because you build this resilience and can learn so much. So I that's something I am very lucky to have had. And if I were restarting again, if for some people, they have a passion for an industry. And I think that is a wonderful thing. And then it makes sense to deepen knowledge in that area if you know that in your heart. But otherwise, I think early career is a wonderful opportunity to get exposure to lots of different industries and lots of different people. And try and work out, you know that Richard's scary book, what is it that people do all day? I can't remember. It's specifically called, but that question because as you then move into your mid and late career, you are doing a thing. And you need to kind of understand what are the people like? What's the industry like? What kind of jobs appeal to me? And the more you can get exposure to technical skills like problem solving and communication and people leadership. But also the sense of what is it that I like to do? Because a career is quite a long time and you're spending a light a lot of your time at work. And if you can learn more about what you enjoy doing and what you are good at, that will really help you make decisions about what is next. And do you think there's something that junior consultants often over optimize for in their early careers? I think it can be natural for junior consultants because consulting does tend to attract a kind of high achievement orientation person is that junior consultants can tend to focus on getting the analysis right and the PowerPoint perfect in order to please their manager and the partners and so on and so forth. Well, I'm not saying don't do that. That would be a mistake. I think it is important to balance that with time on the broader perspective and trying to engage particularly with the more senior people and consulting about what is the client context? What is the nature of the actual specific people that we are serving within the client? Because that will build this understanding that will serve you beyond consulting times on how you develop a process because fundamentally it's problem process and people. And I think that as a junior consultant, it's pretty easy to get just drawn into the problem part and spend less time understanding the process and the people side of the equation. So if there was one skill that you'd recommend a junior consultant, try and gain that's what would that be? I think that one is team leadership and project team leadership. It is a thing that is done in consulting, though not universal, right? You might get some projects where you get to do it. You might not. But it is so important for everything that comes later. How do you get a cross-functional team of people, particularly when a consultant, they definitely do not report to you, right? How do you get them on board engaged with the problem, learn from them, advance the problem solving, and advance kind of execution? So I think that's something that is available within consulting, and I really encourage junior consultants to do that. The second bit is sort of a bit more tactical, which is just take the time to really understand your personal impact and presence. I would say some of the most useful training I have had has been those times when you get videoed running a meeting or in my corporate life having media training that has been super helpful in so many things because it has helped me understand more about the impact I have on others and how they might be interpreting me. The more you can do that the earlier in your career, frankly, the better. The more you understand about your impact, the better you can build that impact over time. Yeah, that's a great piece of advice and people can be quite scared of doing that. Yes, yes, and it can be nerve-wracking. I hate seeing myself on video. And yet it is helpful nonetheless to understand. I'm Malika as a couple of closing questions. I always ask my guess for one is the best piece of advice that you've ever been given. The best piece of advice, I think that it is sort of knowing what you love and what your superpower is. I think that is much easier said than done. And it is something that I have continually evolved and thought about over the course of my career and has the more I have understood myself and my impact on others. The better I have been able to make decisions about my career as well as having impact within the roles that I am in. That's similar to Lear Records' advice, which was, "Do what only you can do and outsource the rest." Yes, that is exactly it. Love that. And then the final question is, I always ask for a read, watch, or listen to recommendation. It might be a podcast you listen to or a book that you've read a couple of times. What can you point to? Okay, I've got a couple. One is, and I'll divide this between business and non-business. Business, I would love the acquired podcast because I love how they go into depth on businesses and really examine and debate what the evolution of business is. So I think that's fantastic. But from a reading perspective, I highly recommend reading fiction and things that have nothing to do with business because so much of what we're actually doing is working with people, working together with other humans to accomplish something. And fiction gives you great insight into others. And some non-fiction does. And one I will recommend, which I am now listening to for the third time, is Robert Carous' biography of Lyndon Johnson. And it is very long. It is, I think, five volumes with the six yes to come out or four volumes with the fifth yet to come out. Very, very long, but just incredible because it is a detailed, researched view of a very complicated person. And for me, it has made me think a lot about how people behave and the mixed ways in which we people are, both good things and bad things. And it is incredible. And I highly recommend listening to it because it is extremely long, if you were to read it on paper. Yeah, thank you. I'll put these in the footnote, so anyone who wants to click on those. But Mel, thank you. This has been such a great conversation. And thank you being so open and vulnerable about your journey. It's been a delight. Thank you for having me. Thanks, Mel. Thanks for listening to the Strategy Bytes podcast. If you liked this episode, please don't forget to share, like or follow to help reach the community. (upbeat music)