Learning to Lead
A Young Consultant’s Trial by Fire
Many cases discussed by MBAs require students to project themselves into CEO-level situations that could be a number of years away. The opposite is true of “Tim Keller at Katzenbach Partners LLC,” which chronicles the dilemmas faced by a junior consultant in his first assignment out of HBS. Authored by Assistant Professors Boris Groysberg and Chris Marquis, the case is taught in the first-year course Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD).
After just a few days on the job, Keller (MBA ’05) is taken off one project and thrown into another involving a telecom client who wants a forecast model that will predict how its competitors will react to changes in pricing. “I felt completely clueless,” he recalls in the case.
The dynamics of the project team are equally demanding. Keller, who launched and ran a company in Cambodia prior to HBS, initially butts heads with a younger associate who is senior to him; he must produce the model in conjunction with an outside consultant based in London who does not want to collaborate with him; and the project is being overseen by one of the firm’s founding partners, a man coworkers describe as “intense” and having a “strong personality.”
“The interdependency of the work environment is a challenge for many recent graduates,” says Marquis. “This case illustrates the importance of managing relationships with peers and senior managers. Getting work done is primarily about that, and secondarily about what you independently do on a spreadsheet.”
The situation comes to a head when Keller is faced with a difficult decision. A Sunday meeting is scheduled in preparation for an important client presentation. On the same Sunday, he has plans to attend a long-anticipated college football game with friends. Keller is not invited to the meeting, although he’s overheard that his model will be used in a competitive dynamics simulation. When he inquires if he should attend, Keller is told by his boss that it’s not necessary. Should he show up anyway?
“Managing relationships involves reading between the lines,” Groysberg comments. “Students try to figure out what it means when someone tells you, ‘Go to the game.’ Are they trying to see if you’re really loyal to the firm? Or are you going to look funny when you show up uninvited? That’s the organizational reality our students will enter after HBS.”
In subsequent “B” and “C” cases, we learn that Keller forgoes the football game for the Sunday meeting — and that his presence is indispensable in deciphering the implications of the model he’s helped create. The moment marks a shift in how other team members treat him. “From that point on, my work was central to the project,” he reports in the case. “All of a sudden, when I had questions or spoke, the team was very interested.”
“In Tim’s case, it’s a question of how you learn to lead people over whom you have very little authority,” observes Groysberg. “That’s when you use your influence more than anything else.”
Marquis notes that in addition to its focus on managing relationships, the case introduces the concept of career management, with exhibits that include Keller’s analysis of his career options after HBS, an overview of his life plan, and copies of his perfor-mance evaluations. “It’s not often that people are willing to be open enough to share this level of information,” says Marquis. “It’s great for the students to see that even though Tim has achieved a great deal relative to his peers, he still has a number of doubts and quandaries.”
— Julia Hanna
