Description

In Chapter 7 of 12, business analytics expert and behavioral economics PhD Ken Rona shares the challenges of leaving academic research to join McKinsey working in client services as a management consultant. McKinsey, known for hiring people from non-tradi

Transcript

Erik Michielsen: What was the greatest challenge in leaving Academia after a earning your PhD to work in client services as the management consultant. Kenneth Rona: The explicit deal with Mikenzi at the time was that they would take people with none traditional backgrounds and train them in business and that transition from being with academic who was interested in the right answer. Really the— 95% conference it was hard to understand that in the business world the conference and rules are lower, the world is dirtier I mean I spent a lot of as academic specially I was in experimental that rights so I spend a lot of time designing experiments that’s cleanly test something. In the business you have guesses, you have hopefully have hypothesis. Sometimes you have data that may lead toward direction but the ambiguity there where your talents you need to be able to tolerate ambiguity as much greater and you know Mikenzi you really— because you have seen a lot of people like me and knew that and I think actually give really a nice foundation to make that transition. Erik Michielsen: Well Mekenzi can that, how did your peers shape your progression? Kenneth Rona: So it’s really hard work I mean we work very, very hard. So if you could not really do it and environment that was not critical right it would be I mean I guess you could I am sure that there are environment where it is not in you and you work 60, 70, 80 hours that would have been I would do that. So you really do look on each other for support for and somebody just understanding the experience where there is a very singular experience that if you go through one of those high performance, high demanding jobs like I invest in banking. So if you didn’t have your peers going to talk through what was going on and help you make sense of the and what was happening to you I think that would be very challenging and even more than it was. The other thing was you know you really had the desire to keep up with the pack right. If some of you will perform because your peers were performing those are a lot of effort in just keeping up right? Which sounds like a little weird right, it’s not like the kind of self actualizing that you want to do but that’s the reality of it that there was some self comparative stuff so I wouldn’t say that we are too you, do it to really, to really be leaders we really were focus on just in our own individual performances and they help each others to the experience probably like while in the school I would guess.