Management consultant meetings: from client interviews to findings

Where meetings fit in the work

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics describes management analysts, often called management consultants, as people who recommend ways to make organizations more efficient. Many work on contract, and they travel often because so much time is spent with clients.

Several of the duties BLS lists happen in meetings:

• Interviewing personnel to learn what methods, equipment and people a change will need.
• Presenting recommendations to management in presentations or written reports.
• Conferring with managers to make sure changes are working.

Client interviews: plan for evidence

Write down what the interview must answer before you book it. Three or four questions are enough. Ask about recent, specific events: "Walk me through the last time an order was delayed" yields evidence. "Are orders often late?" yields opinions.

Interview several roles about the same process. Where their accounts differ, you've found something worth investigating.

From interviews to findings

Each finding in a readout should point to who said it, or what data shows it. Keep a simple table as you go:

• Finding, in one sentence.
• Evidence: which interviews or data support it.
• Counter-evidence, if anyone disagreed.
• What it means for the recommendation.

Steering meetings and readouts

Send the key findings before a readout, so the meeting is spent on decisions rather than first reactions. End by restating what the client agreed to, who owns each next step and when you'll check progress.

Use follow-up check-ins for the last duty BLS names: confirming the changes are working. Bring the original finding, so everyone can see whether it has moved.

An illustrative engagement

Say a consultant is asked why a distributor's orders ship late. They interview a customer-service lead, a warehouse supervisor and a planner. All three describe the same daily cutoff differently.

The finding is "the order cutoff isn't defined in one place". The readout recommends one written cutoff, and a check-in four weeks later reviews late shipments against it.

Run client meetings in Bridge

Bridge keeps each engagement's meetings together and searchable:

• Host interviews on Bridge, where client staff join as guests without an account. Or capture Zoom, Meet and Teams calls with Bridge Agent, or record on-site interviews in the room.
• Get a speaker-labeled transcript and structured notes, and use a custom recap template that matches your findings table.
• Put each client's meetings in their own space. Invite client stakeholders as guests to view them; they need a Bridge account, and guests can't add meetings or use the Space Assistant.
• Before a check-in, open the client's Company profile in Memory to see its people. Each person's Activity timeline lists your meetings with them.