Been in consulting for 3 years and thinking about making the jump to corporate strategy. Everyone says our skills translate, but I’ve seen ex-colleagues struggle with slower decision cycles and political landmines. What transferable skills actually mattered most in your transition? How do you prove strategic thinking without leaning on consulting jargon? Biggest surprise I’ve heard: one friend didn’t realize corporate VPs hate being handed ‘final recommendations’ from day one. For those who navigated this shift successfully, what pitfalls should we absolutely avoid?
lol ‘transferable skills’ - here’s reality: corps want your slide-making arms but not your brain. biggest pitfall? thinking anyone cares about your framework wizardry. pro tip: learn to say ‘let’s socialize this’ instead of ‘per my analysis’. also, delete the word ‘synergy’ from your vocabulary yesterday.
wait but how do u show ur strategic skills if they dont want recco’s? like do u just hint at ideas indirect? worried my case interveiw style wont work
Three key focus areas: 1) Shift from selling solutions to facilitating decisions - ask more questions early on 2) Build coalitions before presenting ideas 3) Master the art of incremental impact. I trained my corporate team on hypothesis-driven thinking but framed it as ‘rapid alignment workshops’. Patience is crucial - results take 6-12 months to show.
You’ve got this! The fact you’re asking shows self-awareness - that’s 80% of the battle. Corporate teams NEED your structured thinking!
When I moved to a F500 strategy team, I made the mistake of presenting a full deck week one. Got told ‘we don’t do consultant drivesbys here’. Learned to seed ideas in 1:1s first. Funny enough, my biggest value add ended up being teaching Excel shortcuts to VPs.
2023 industry survey shows 68% of ex-consultants in corporate strategy report ‘stakeholder management’ as their steepest learning curve vs 22% citing hard skills. Recommend focusing on 3 areas: influence mapping, internal KPI alignment, and adapting communication velocity to organizational norms.