Lessons from a Big4

On setting a better impression & being of a better help

Photo by Burst on Unsplash

There are so many things that I learnt, but these are what I felt were the essential skills that an underling should have:

#1. Put a structure/form over ambiguity

For most of the time, you will receive assignments with similar problems attempted previously by another project team. But if you are so fortunate to be assigned a piece of work that your firm has never attempted before, where do you begin?

Find frameworks to fall back on

With frameworks, you can draw points of reference and develop the key areas to be examined.

a) Authoritative sources (Government or Industry standards)

If you are working on a piece that is somewhat established and regulated, look to the government bodies or industry standards to see if there is an existing structure that you can adopt. Find the key organisations making the call for these developments and explore their articles and publications.

b) Aggregation of credible research bodies or competitors

If the work is in an infancy phase, and there are no governing bodies, look to the thought leaders of the industry. For a start, look at what are the key areas of concerns outlined, what are the new areas of innovation on the way, and the outlook of the industry.

c) Letter of engagement (outlines the scope of work)

If things are still in a blur even after you do your due diligence, go back to the letter of engagement and look at the what are the key areas you promised to deliver. Build a case from there.

If all else fails, find a structure used by the firm for a similar problem and adapt accordingly.

You ought to be creative, but you should also be familiar enough with the industry/firm standards to explain to your stakeholders why are you ignoring those standards and coming up with your own.

#2. Format the output well

This is an obvious one, but it is often overlooked when you are so obsessed with the work itself that you leave little regard and time for the presentation. How the idea is communicated is often more important than the content — granted that the content doesn’t suck too bad. Often times, quality content gets discredited due to its presentation.

Apart from your reports and decks, what is often neglected is the presentation of your workings. Always work with the intention of having to present on how you derived at your conclusion. This will help you a lot when being grilled by the reviewers or your audience.

#3. Proper organisation system

You are likely to be on multiple assignments and each at a different phase. Between task switching and presentations, you need to establish a system to retrieve the required items quickly. Do the following:

• Have a consolidated list of your projects with status indication against each work task.
• Label your files well. Drop the ‘Final final final’ or ‘Draft Final v2’ labels and version your documents well.

#4. Things to say during meetings

There are way more update meetings now given that remote work arrangements are becoming common. A lot of bosses want to make sure that their employees are not idle, and this often comes in the form of excessive catch-up calls/ meetings.

The obvious answer is to have output to show, but that is not readily available, especially when they are work-in-progress. In such instances, always have something to talk about in these meetings. Explore the following:

• Provide status updates on your current piece.
• Ask follow-up questions from the previous meeting.
• Ask questions that require input from another party in the meeting.

In general, show that you are someone who takes the initiative.