A Business Workout

Riding back to the hotel from the client site, I got to have a one-on-one conversation with the partner on my project. He asked how I felt about the project, and I told him that the most fascinating day on the project so far was listening our private equity client talk about their strategy. They just seemed so brilliant because of how easily they articulated a viable action plan moving forward that could revolutionize the business. As a new associate consultant, I just listened in awe.

At the same time, I knew that their seeming brilliance was actually pattern recognition. These guys had so many more years of experience than I had, which meant that they had seen many of these situations before. They could identify patterns emerging because they had experienced them before, and therefore they knew what to do.

The partner agreed. He said that when he first started out, he thought the managers at Marakon were so smart. But once he got to manager level, he realized that these guys weren't necessarily more intelligent than he was - they had just seen more. Once he got the experience, he was operating at the same level.

He said that this pattern recognition was like doing reps at the gym - a business workout. The more business reps you do, the stronger insights you get. He said that what you want to do is reinforce experience with book learning. In addition to doing the job, get a subscription to Harvard Business Review (academia) and BusinessWeek (pop business) - the combination will supercharge your insights. These reps are also what make business school so valuable. Business school is about looking at dozens of cases and debating them with intelligent peers. The patterns become more clear and when the situations arise, you already know what to do.

I think he's right about the combination of experience and book knowledge. The best doctors go home every day and crack open medical journals to keep up on the latest. I think the best businessmen do the same.