|
Monday, November 23, 2009
|
volume 1
issue 1
|
|
“a-connect guided us skillfully on the project, the back office team gave us the support we needed and I especially appreciated the feedback after completion of the project.” —R.B., IP since 2003
|
10 Questions for IP Mark El Baroudi
by Marcel Kucher
Mark is a financial services guru with a strong track record in process design and operational effectiveness. After finishing his career in management consulting as a partner at Monitor, he ran a start up company and went independent in 2002. Right after Mark’s acceptance into the a-connect talent pool he started to work with an a-connect insurance client in Cape Town, South Africa. His main responsibility is supporting the client in implementing a company-wide transformation program. Mark manages and coaches several client teams on a day-to-day basis in executing lean operations techniques and methods, and applying tools according to the transformation plan already in place.
As you can see from the picture, he is treated well! The photo was taken looking out of his house, which has three bedrooms and is on the beach. The client provided the house as accommodation for his stay. Mark usually lives in Canada with his family and children.
10 questions for… Mark El Baroudi
You have been working on a project in Cape Town, a very cool city but 10,000 miles away from your home in Canada, for four months. What’s your take on the project and being so far away from home?
The project is going very well. Obviously, I miss my family but as a consultant travel is virtually mandatory to get the best work. As an IP with a-connect I can choose when I want to travel. In my previous life at a global strategy consulting firm I simply had to travel 4-5 days a week every week. There was never much of a break. After this project I may choose to wait for opportunities at home or much closer to home for a while, so in fact my net travel time and the amount of time I’m away from home over a given year is probably less. It helps to be in a great city and working with the right kind of people. Cape Town is fabulous and a-connect Talent Partner Sascha Schmidt was very helpful in giving me as much information as he could as to the nature/culture of the client.
How did you decide to take this project? What were the key criteria?
My key criteria were:
- Work that was operationally focused but carried a significant responsibility and was close enough to senior management to retain strategic relevance
- Specific focus on Lean/Six Sigma/BPR, as that is an area of expertise that I want to stay “leading edge” on
- Specific focus on financial services as this is a sector in which I want to continue to develop depth in
- Top management commitment to driving real change
- A sense that this is the kind of culture and team that I could work with
- Located in a geography that I could work for an extended period of time
What do you think is the biggest value an independent professional can bring to a client (in particular compared to more traditional consulting companies)?
IPs obviously bring better value for money. McKinsey, Monitor, Bain or BCG would charge much more (orders of magnitude more) for somebody with my experience on a full-time basis. Most a-connect IPs bring real management experience to the table and therefore have a greater respect for the challenges which younger, less experienced consultants sometimes have little patience for. I have significant depth in strategy, operations and technology and can use that experience to add value in different ways.
Moreover, IPs have fewer “mixed motives” to sell follow-on business for the sake of selling follow-on business. Obviously, we all want a steady flow of work with the right kind of client, and longer-term relationships are more profitable, but a-connect seems much more oriented towards letting the quality of the IPs speak for itself and let the client have more space to decide when they are interested in extending.
How do you ensure impact with a client? Any particular techniques or experiences you can share?
Clarify deliverable and goals up front. This sounds obvious but often the client can get busy with other things and you have to be proactive to help set the direction and keep things on track.
Spend the time at the coal face. Operational work is really all about the details and while I and a-connect can certainly bring a wide variety of methodologies/leading edge thinking to the table, the difference lies in our joint willingness to get dirty with the details to make sure that any solution really works.
Last, understand the client culture, organizational structure, and individual behaviors that drive change in the particular organization you are working in.
How do you stay fresh and up-to-date? What sources can help you continuously renew yourself?
It is critical to stay fresh. I have subscriptions to most (if not all) of the major sources of strategic and operational thinking, be it McKinsey Quarterly, HBR, the Operations Council, the six sigma newsletter, the consulting news, etc. I attend one or two conferences a year; mostly financial services or operations related. The content is not necessarily too enlightening but it’s the people you meet. I have a North America-based financial services networking group that gets together either via conference call or via a one-day trip every now and then to chat over a lunch. Every five years I try to go through two to three weeks of formal training in a variety of disciplines. I am due next year! Finally, I provide consulting services to two venture capital funds in California. This keeps a steady stream of leading edge/emerging business models in all sectors flowing across my desk.
How and when did you know a-connect?
I found out about a-connect when I was assessing competitors for the consulting partnership that I ran up until last December.
How many and what kind of a-connect projects have you worked on so far? How are they different from the projects you acquire on your own?
This is my first project with a-connect. They are actually quite similar although this one is a little longer than the typical project I would source (two or three months).
How long have you been independent? Do you like the life as an IP? Why? Do you intend to be independent for the coming ten years?
I have been an independent full time for only eight months or so, although I have been in consulting in some form or another for 20 years. If my experience remains as good as this one, being an IP could be the cornerstone of my career going forward.
What are your hobbies outside work?
Collecting wine, playing golf, tennis, fishing, reading. I am an avid sports fan, particularly rugby. I love to travel, and I have been around the world at least three times.
Can you recommend one or two interesting books you have read to other IPs?
“Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell for interesting view on why “instinct” can sometimes be better than in-depth analysis. “Snow” by Orhan Pamuk. Beautifully written fiction about life in modern day Turkey. “Catastrophe” by Jared Diamond, the follow-up to “Guns, Germs and Steel”. Some interesting insights with an environmental determinism focus.
> printer friendly version
|
|
|  |
|
|
|
letters
|
|
There are no letters for this article. To post your own letter, click Post Letter.
|
|
> post letter
|
|
|
|
Published by
Copyright © 2006 a-connect (group) ag. All rights reserved.
|
|
|
|
|
a-connect (schweiz) ag
Seefeldstrasse 293
CH-8008 Zürich
Switzerland
Phone: +41-43-266 77 77
Fax: +41-43-266 77 27
|
a-connect (US) Inc.
470 Atlantic Avenue
4th Floor
Boston, MA, 02110
USA
Phone: +1 617 946 33 33
Fax: +1 617 956 07 01
|
a-connect (China) Ltd.
18/F One International
Finance Centre
1 Harbour View Street
Central, Hong Kong
China
Phone: +852 2526 6766
Fax: +852 3006 2766
|
| |