Jirka participated in a McKinsey Internship while finishing his Ph.D. in Physics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, and at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle, Germany. After 3 successful months in the Prague office, he joined as a full-time consultant. As a student, Jirka was a chief organizer of the correspondence competition in physics (Fykos) and a member of the Czech Railway Passengers Association.

7:30 Another morning in a hotel in Berlin. After getting out of bed, I head to the hotel restaurant to eat up - I'm going to need my energy this morning. When I'm done, I walk to the client site, which is not far from the hotel. I prefer walking in the morning to get some physical exercise and to think through my plan for the coming day.

9:00 At the client, a bank in Berlin. I meet up with the rest of our team: another associate, Ales, the engagement manager, Michal, and an associate principal, Martin. Two team members from the client organization, Marcus and Annegret, are present as well. Up until now they have been dealing with their own regular duties, as they are not assigned to our project 100 percent. My plan for the morning is clear: I need to prepare for a meeting with the payroll manager. Martin, Annegret, and I discuss our ideas, Annegret contributing her deep knowledge of the client’s organizational processes, Martin his experience from other organizations.

10:30 Team problem solving is finished, so Annegret and I leave to meet the payroll manager. The beginning of the meeting is tough. He’s not sure that our suggestions will improve payroll processing. However, after we explain the reasoning behind the ideas we’ve put on the table, he gets more cooperative. Apparently, he likes the way we approach the problem. Suddenly, he starts pulling out additional ideas, and by the end of the meeting we reach agreement. A great success!

12:30 After such a successful meeting, we deserve a lunch! The bank’s canteen is the most convenient place around, so we go there. Today I’m lunching alone with Annegret, as the other team members are running late with their meetings.

13:30 Again in the team room – all of us together. As this morning’s meetings were quite important, Michal has decided to hold a short team meeting so we can inform each other about how things went. I let Annegret present the results of our meeting to give her a chance to practice her top-down communication skills a bit. After she finishes, Ales informs us about the progress of his work stream. He is fairly new to McKinsey, and he is doing great job! It looks like we have a good foundation for the progress review with the CEO, which will take place next Monday. Michal goes next, briefing us on his meeting with one of the project leaders from the client side. The most important takeaway is that we need to evaluate more carefully the feasibility of all our ideas. This should not be a big deal for us.

15:00 Preparing for a meeting with the legal department. As none of us is an expert on legal in banking, we contact a McKinsey expert, who gives us some useful hints over the phone on how to assess the relevant issues. After the 45-minute teleconference, we are ready to meet with the legal department manager.

18:00 All the other afternoon meetings went well too. I summarize our progress in each department and design a PowerPoint slide for each. We will show the whole slideshow to the CEO next Monday.

20:30 The workday ends. Normally, we don’t all finish work at the same time, but today we do. Since it is still not too late in the evening, we decide to have a team dinner — and to go for something typically German at a nearby restaurant.

22:30 Who says German cuisine is not interesting? The food was excellent! We all head back to the hotel, where I finish a couple of emails and prepare a bit for tomorrow before getting some well-deserved sleep.