A Consultant's Entrepreneurial Approach

After graduating with my MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, I joined the management team of Pariveda Solutions, a management and technology consulting firm based in Dallas. I work out of Chicago but spend a lot of time in Dallas. We help our clients with a variety of information technology projects.

My specialty is IT strategy -- helping CIOs run their organizations more effectively and build technology plans to support their business strategy. In addition to participating in and overseeing client projects, I'm responsible for selling new projects, recruiting new employees, building our training and intellectual capital, mentoring our employees, and helping with many other nonclient activities.

People often ask me how my job now differs from the work I've done at large IT- and strategy-consulting firms in the past. The biggest difference is that I feel more like an entrepreneur than a consultant. A big part of my job is building our company. The client work we do tends to be different as well -- we handle smaller projects, which I like because I can see them from start to finish.

My schedule on a typical day depends on whether I'm working on a client project. Some days I spend 10 hours straight at a client site. Others, I work on activities like networking, sales, and recruiting.

Here's a snapshot of a recent workday:

6 a.m. -- I wake up and head to the gym for a workout. I'd rather sleep, but I know I won't have a chance to work out later.

7:45 a.m. -- I meet James, one of our employees, over breakfast. James is leading an internal project to revamp our Web site, and I am his sponsor. He gives me an update on his team's progress, and we talk about how I can help him get input and approval from the rest of the management team.

9 a.m. -- Back at home, I check e-mail and see that Bruce, my CEO, has sent me some feedback on a client report. I make some changes based on his comments and call him to discuss a few of his points. Then, I clear out the other messages in my in-box and check my to-do list for the day.

10:30 a.m. -- I spend 30 minutes reading blogs. I read about 15 blogs on a regular basis, on a range of topics including IT management, technology news, industry trends, and general business news.

11 a.m. -- I drive to meet one of my clients, the CIO of a midsize retail company. I recently gave him a proposal for a project, and I am hoping for approval today. He signs off on it, and we discuss how we are going to kick off the project.

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