Projects to do

Consultants often jump to solutions before agreeing on the problem, and a busy shack owner's worries about staff, licences and slow nights are easy to misread.

Studios and clients often misunderstand each other because the early conversation skips basics like who uses the space and what must not change.

Club meetings drift because nobody decides in advance what the group must leave the room having agreed.

A cafe owner says fewer people are walking in, but 'fewer customers' is too vague to fix until it is split into smaller questions.

Real consulting begins with listening, but students rarely practise asking open questions and writing up what they heard fairly.

Small offices lose time on tiny tasks that pass through too many hands, and nobody draws the steps to see where.

Students know accountants keep books but rarely see how a small firm's work is shared among partners, juniors and clients.

A small tailoring shop wants to grow but the owner does not know which of ten ideas to try first.

After most meetings nobody remembers who agreed to do what, so the same topics come back next week.

The word 'audit' sounds scary, yet the idea is simply a stranger checking that the numbers can be trusted.

Slides titled 'Overview' or 'Market' tell the reader nothing, so people skim past the real message.

Phrases like 'low-hanging fruit', 'deep dive' and 'circle back' confuse new joiners, who are afraid to ask what they mean.

Consultants are often asked 'how big is this market?' with no data, and must reason it out step by step in the open.

Students apply to firms without understanding that analyst, associate and trainee roles can mean quite different work.

Many students hear about firms like McKinsey, Bain and BCG but cannot say what a consultant does on an ordinary day.

New freelancers often name a price on a hunch, then discover they worked far more hours than they were paid for.

Filing season looks like a mystery to students, though the work is a repeatable chain of collecting, checking and submitting.

People who contact a law firm often wait without knowing what happens next, which makes the firm feel distant.