Ivana joined McKinsey in March 2006 fresh from the Prague School of Economics, where she majored in international business. During her studies, she gained professional experience at Siemens AG in Munich and Herald Communications in Prague. Ivana is also a great fan of traveling; so far, Cambodia is the most exotic and New Zealand the most remote countries she has visited.

7:30 Time to get up! No, five more minutes, please. I hope a quick shower will wake me up, hopefully. It'll be another busy day today. I have to hurry or I will be late.

9:00 I am currently working on a project for a client in Prague. Because we work from Monday to Thursday at the client site, I go straight there. Early birds that they are, my colleagues are already working. I boot up my laptop and eat breakfast while quickly glancing over my e-mails. Every Monday we have a Jour fix–a dedicated day to meet–for our larger team, which includes the CFO and the head of quality assurance. The purpose of these meetings is to keep everyone updated on our progress, to share opinions on open questions, and to agree on next steps.

9:30 I agree with my engagement manager on outstanding questions that we need to clarify before the meeting. Then I team up with the two client team members who have prepared the relevant analyses. The results look promising. It will be a fruitful discussion.

10:30 I polish up the meeting document, prepare two more charts on the basis of the results of the analyses, and send handwritten versions by fax to our team assistant, who will transfer them onto PowerPoint slides.

12:30 I go to lunch with my colleagues Robert and Michal and a few of the client team members. We mention that it would be great to plan a team social event so that we can get to know each other better under less professional circumstances. We have quite a big team, including four more people from the client. We agree to go bowling next Wednesday evening.

13:00 I have just received an answer to my research request from the Corporate Finance Practice of our firm. They sent me a couple of documents relating to the meeting topic as well as names of McKinsey experts who have done similar studies before. I scan the documents for useful info and e-mail three of the experts. A corporate finance expert from Denver replies almost immediately. He suggests discussing the issues during a teleconference tonight.

14:30 Our team director, who will join today's Jour fix, has just arrived, so I brief him on the key issues on the agenda.

15:00 Everybody is present, so we can start the meeting. I moderate the discussion and the client team members present the results of their analyses. The participants provide a number of useful comments. After the meeting, we have a short discussion with the team and agree on next steps and follow-ups.

17:30 There is almost nobody left at the client. We are hungry and thirsty, but the canteen is closed, so we decide to move to the McKinsey office. I order a taxi, and we all hope there will be no major traffic jam on the way back. I make a cup of coffee right after reaching the office; I think we have the best coffee machine in the world! And there are even some sandwiches left–we're rescued!

18:30 I hold the teleconference with the expert from Denver. We discuss best practices in performance-management systems, and he promises to send me some additional documents as well as examples from two other companies.

20:00 After a quick break, I team up with Mirek, Michaela, and Tomas to discuss our upcoming recruiting presentation at the University of Economics. We agree on a format for the presentation and decide to enrich it with a problem-solving case to make it more interactive for the students.

21:00 Last glance over my e-mails before rushing to a squash match with a friend of mine...until tomorrow, good-bye.