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&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;9:30 AM:&#160;&lt;/strong&gt;Get into the office on a Friday morning and check&#160;voicemail and email. You’ve got a message from the head of the&#160;energy practice, asking you to put together a few discussion slides on&#160;your practice area’s new sales initiative for an internal conference call&#160;later in the day.&#160;You’re happy to be included in this business&#160;development work, as it’s a great opportunity to get some face time&#160;with a few senior partners.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;10:00 AM:&#160;&lt;/strong&gt;Settling in at your desk with a cup of coffee to wake you&#160;up from a week of heavy travel and less-than-optimal sleep, you dig in&#160;on incorporating comments from yesterday’s conference call into a&#160;PowerPoint presentation that’s due to the client next week. The partner you are working with is 3 time zones west of you, so you have&#160;an hour and half before you’re scheduled to show him your work. The&#160;project is heavy on the financial modeling, supporting a $1 billion&#160;environmental compliance decision by large utility: should they install&#160;scrubbers, or buy SO2 credits?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;11:40 AM:&#160;&lt;/strong&gt;Conference call with your project manager and partner to&#160;review the current version of the draft presentation—the partner only has half an hour, and is running 10 minutes late, so it ends up being a&#160;hasty 20-minute call. However, you agree on next steps, and have&#160;your marching orders for completing the deck over the weekend.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;12:00 PM:&#160;&lt;/strong&gt;Today is knowledge-sharing day, and one of your&#160;colleagues is presenting findings from a recently-completed M&amp;amp;A&#160;valuation project in the conference room. You grab an office-sponsored free sandwich from the kitchen and listen in on the talk.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;12:45 PM:&#160;&lt;/strong&gt;The receptionist calls you out of the knowledge sharing&#160;session to take a client call.&#160; The client team leader is upset with the&#160;performance of one of their other vendors on the current project, and&#160;asks your firm to help get the task done. You assure him that you will&#160;bring it up ASAP with your partner, and figure out a game plan. You&#160;leave a voicemail for the partner that you need to talk this afternoon.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1:00 PM:&#160;&lt;/strong&gt;Spend some time working on the financial model for the&#160;environmental compliance decision project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3:00 PM:&#160;&lt;/strong&gt;Sit on the conference call for which you prepared the&#160;discussion slides this morning.&#160; It’s good that you prepped for it, as&#160;the call was quick and efficient. Your group is trying to leverage&#160;success on a recent regulatory risk assessment project to create a&#160;packaged offering to other energy companies. The partners agree on&#160;a split of which prospects each one will call and by when. The upshot&#160;of the call for you is that you are to centrally coordinate this new&#160;initiative and create all the presentation materials.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4:15 PM:&#160;&lt;/strong&gt;Walk downstairs to Starbucks for a quick coffee. You&#160;could get some from the office kitchen, but you feel like taking a short break and getting some air.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4:30 PM:&#160;&lt;/strong&gt;The partner calls you back in response to your earlier&#160;voicemail. You fill her in on the client’s issues with the other vendor,&#160;and the two of you collaborate on a plan to get the extra work done&#160;without blowing your budget. You conference in the vendor team and&#160;share the plan with them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5:00 PM:&#160;&lt;/strong&gt;You agreed with your partner that you would fly down to&#160;the vendor’s offices to manage their work product issue. So you&#160;spend a few minutes thinking through the logistics of how best to&#160;blend in that trip with your other client travel next week, and then&#160;make plane, car, and hotel reservations accordingly. Given the&#160;complexity, you decide to just do it yourself, rather than loop in your&#160;shared assistant.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5:45 PM:&#160;&lt;/strong&gt;Riding the subway home, you read through an energy&#160;magazine—industry knowledge is extremely valuable to you as a&#160;consultant, and there is always more to learn. After unwinding for a&#160;while, you meet up with some friends for dinner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;8:00 PM:&#160;&lt;/strong&gt;Spend a couple hours iterating next week’s presentation—it’ll take several more hours over the weekend to finish it up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;10:00 PM:&#160;&lt;/strong&gt;The client calls to follow up on what your&#160;resolution is to their problem with the other vendor. You try to&#160;conference in the partner, but she’s on another call. Fortunately you&#160;are able to successfully reassure the client that you are going to fly&#160;down and work directly with the vendor firm, and the work will get&#160;done. With the client satisfied, you’ve done a good day’s consulting&#160;work. Before going to bed, you check email and voicemail; you&#160;reply to one message from a consultant who is updating a financial&#160;model you built for another project and had a question about one of&#160;your macros.&lt;/p&gt;

Laura Chung Walker

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