Bringing structure to uncertainty

PA Consulting Group is a global innovation and consulting firm. I joined its “Information Systems Implementation” practice after completing an internship with the company during my degree.

My first experience of PA came a year earlier, when I joined the Training & Development team as an intern. Originally hired to maintain the department’s internal websites, I quickly found myself delivering training to consultants around the world and working alongside teams tackling complex client problems. By the time I returned to university to complete my degree, I already knew I wanted to come back.

When I joined as a graduate consultant, much of my time wasn’t spent on traditional consulting engagements. Instead, I worked on PA’s internal venture projects, helping small teams explore, shape and launch new products and businesses.

They were effectively startups inside a consulting firm.

Those projects gave me an early appreciation for working in uncertainty. Ideas evolved quickly, priorities changed regularly and success depended as much on asking the right questions as having the right answers.

Alongside that, I learnt the consulting disciplines that have stayed with me throughout my career: structured thinking, systems thinking, stakeholder management and the art of helping people work through complex problems together. Barbara Minto’s The Pyramid Principle and the discipline of top-down thinking still influence how I structure ideas and communicate decisions today.

The job titles have changed over the years. The underlying work has been remarkably consistent. Whether I’ve been designing software, building products, founding startups or leading discovery, I’ve found myself applying the same consulting principles to a different kinds of problems over and over again.

Curious how experiences like this have shaped my approach?

People often describe my style as consultative. They’re right. Long before I worked in Product, I learnt how to help teams make sense of ambiguity, build a shared understanding of the problem and make thoughtful decisions together. Many of the principles on my Approach page have their roots in those early years.