{"id":21703,"date":"2019-08-20T09:40:46","date_gmt":"2019-08-20T09:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hnews.hult.edu\/?p=21703"},"modified":"2026-05-08T15:37:31","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T14:37:31","slug":"time-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hult.edu\/blog\/time-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Time matters most, but what if you don’t have any?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the ways you learn at Hult is through the intimate relationship alumni maintain with their alma mater. Be it a guest lecture they hold or a one-time workshop they give, opportunities to engage with professionals from numerous industries are many: offering insights into different companies, and coming together in cross-campus challenges, such as the PwC<\/a> Challenge.<\/p>\n

Early in the Masters in International Business<\/a> curriculum at the Hult London campus, we had the chance to apply to participate in said challenge. In one part, it served as an insightful Q&A into the life of current PwC Manager Steffen Roggenbach and his colleagues. On the other, it challenged student teams to familiarize themselves with a specific real-world challenge<\/strong> and pitch their project approach to the client, represented by PwC. What sounded simple quickly turned into a valuable lesson in time management and prioritization<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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The approach<\/h3>\n

Day One of coaching enabled many to gain a first glimpse of what life as a consultant actually looks like. On Day Two, it was up to us to apply what we\u2019d learned.<\/p>\n

The key to any client pitch is to understand the main challenges and issues faced by the client, to truthfully convince them of your approach<\/strong> and achieve their buy-in. At this stage of the project, you\u2019re not required to propose a solution to the client \u2013 all you need to do is to convince them of the way you would like to engage and solve their problem.<\/p>\n

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“What sounded simple quickly turned into a valuable lesson in time management and prioritization”<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/h3>\n

Plan of attack<\/h3>\n

To tackle this, we first tried to make sure we had a consensus about what the underlying client issues were.<\/p>\n

Secondly, we had a lot of discussions concerning the precise scope of the task \u2013 where the approach ended, and the actual solution started. Overestimating<\/strong> the time available and underestimating<\/strong> the effort necessary to come to a consensus.<\/p>\n

Since we failed to come up with a consolidated and focused list of things to do<\/strong>, we hectically tried to check all boxes discussed. Ultimately, as you may expect as reading this, the result wasn\u2019t our proudest deliverable.<\/p>\n

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\"To<\/p>\n

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Down but not out<\/h3>\n
Fortunately, this wasn\u2019t an actual client pitch, and we didn\u2019t just jeopardize a multimillion-dollar contract for our firm; we were acting safely within a learning environment. Looking back at the challenge, instead of trying to check all boxes at once<\/strong>, we could have divided our time to:<\/div>\n