Tips from Top: Corporate roles and career in consulting - a key perspective, Mr Himanshu Verma (Lead HR, IT Consulting Services, KPMG)

“How to become a ‘leader- across all levels’? How to generate confidence for providing solutions to a myriad of problems? And not only that, how does one proactively simulate problems, solving them even before they occur, and step ahead in the learning curve?” These are some of the intriguing questions that were raised and were very efficiently answered today, by a very young and dynamic persona; Mr. Himanshu Verma (Lead HR, IT Consulting Services, KPMG) when he delivered an enlightening seminar on ‘Corporate roles and career in consulting, a key perspective’ while addressing an audience of MBA students at IIT Kanpur.

Mr. Verma began by defining the two terms: ‘consulting’ and ‘consultant’. He stated that consulting can be understood as a process of not only giving solutions but also creating (simulating) problems proactively, in order to get efficient solutions beforehand. According to sir, a ‘consultant’ is not just a job role; it’s a breed of people with relevant domain knowledge, with a mindset to analyse thoughts and with a capability to arrive at useful conclusions. In that sense we are surrounded with consultants, including our parents, doctors, lawyers and people from all walks of life. The key for success here being, the ability to perform the role, perpetually and progressively; learning and innovating at every stage.

Sir candidly listed and lucidly explained few key traits that budding managers can inculcate in order to achieve unprecedented success in not only the field of consulting, but across various fields. First and foremost being the ‘Theory of Questioning’, the zeal towards asking relevant ‘self-questions’ and finding the answers via introspection. Sir emphasized the importance of this by giving an example of children below the age of 6 years, who ask more than hundred questions per day and as a result their learning graph is very high as compared to the elders. According to sir, the power of questioning can help in increasing one’s experience and knowledge base. When performed on a daily basis, this has the potential to provide all answers in life!      

Moving forward, Sir talked about the golden concept of 'polymorphism'. In the context of consulting, it can be understood as the ability to provide what is actually good for clients, but in a manner that also looks good to them. This according to sir can be achieved by developing a flexible mindset and ability to connect the dots, which in turn are attained by asking relevant self questions and categorizing the thoughts sequentially. Sir advised students to improvise and evolve continuously because nobody is perfect and it’s always a pursuit to perfection!

Last but certainly not the least, Sir talked about the significance of effective time management.  According to him, and rightly so, this is the soul of all concepts for managers. Sir suggested that performing SWOT analysis on an individual level and allocating a good part of time daily for self-development can help in structuring the valuable resource of 24 hours productively. This when followed with an ardor to think different, can provide a vital edge and can indeed lead one to become a ‘leader all across’!  The breed that doesn’t follow trends but sets them!