Brooke, an associate in Dallas, shares a glimpse into her daily life by describing her role helping a client with an organizational change.
6:30am: wake up in the hotel. My team travels in on Monday evening or Tuesday morning to match the client's schedule. I usually travel Monday night and go to the grocery store so I am ready to go, with breakfast in hand, Tuesday morning.
7:45am: after showering and getting ready, checking email and texting with some of the team – mostly about who worked out this morning and who slept in – I meet my teammates in the lobby. We drive to the client site together, usually stopping for coffee on the way.
8:00am: we check in to revisit our priorities and deliverables for the day and week and resolve any issues that have come up. Today, we also talk about our dinner plans. We’re celebrating our engagement manager’s promotion to associate partner tonight.
8:30am: I spend a couple hours in a problem solving workshop with some of my team mates and our clients to discuss what daily operations will look like after our project. We’ve prepared some recommendations for issues the client raised last week and the client adds a few more questions to consider.
12:00 noon: we gather for lunch with other McKinsey teams serving this client. It’s great to spend time with colleagues who aren’t on my core team. It’s a fun break in the day and we talk mostly about what we did during the weekend.
2:00pm: we meet with a client group to discuss how we can best communicate the upcoming changes to operations with employees. Our clients are focused on making sure everyone understands how they can participate in the transformation and strive to answer questions from their employees as proactively as possible.
3:30pm: I spend a couple hours putting together a deployment plan to address the change management challenges, including communications, which came up in the workshop.
5:30pm: check in with my team on a few topics, get input on my plan and prep for a Wednesday morning meeting.
7:00pm: have dinner with about 25 McKinsey colleagues to celebrate our engagement manager’s promotion. We’re all proud of her and have been planning this for a while. We chose her favorite seafood restaurant and all have a really great time. We orchestrated a funny presentation and gave her a gaudy 1960s style frame for her new office. We’ll see if she really uses it.
10:00pm: back at the hotel, check a few emails and watch Law & Order SVU before turning in for the night.