Greetings, manager!
Congratulations, you’ve made it to February. This week is the week of Groundhog Day- there is something about the monotony of the first couple of months of the year that can be hard to get past, and, sadly, the groundhog this year has announced there will be another six weeks of winter. But fear not- I’m here to bring some light to your inbox.
If you are new to this newsletter- welcome! As existing subscribers will now know, I alternate between a Q&A, and a 'tip and a tale'. It is the latter this week, but please do continue to send you questions in, and I'll answer them in next week's edition.
Tip: Manage expectations
The only thing that leads to true disappointment is when one’s expectations have not been appropriately managed. Disappointment comes in many forms- where a promotion is not given, a presentation is bungled, or (perhaps more frequently) when your train is late or your partner failed to pickup the right food for dinner.
Take a moment to imagine your first Valentine's with a new partner. You come downstairs, ready to get the vase out, have chocolates for breakfast, and swoon over your card. Instead, your partner says “I didn’t think you’d be into something tacky like Valentine’s Day”. You may be quick to blame your partner- but I would challenge you, and say that the only issue here is that the expectation wasn’t clearly set. When we set someone, anyone, a bar or a goal, it provides them with the opportunity to give you what you want- and for you to give them the same.
In a world where individualism is paramount, and remote work is the norm- not setting clear expectations is easy; in fact, you probably don't realise when you are and aren't doing it. Here are some examples, and what you can do about them:
Have you conducted a review that someone was surprised by? Then you haven’t managed their expectations about their own performance. If in doubt, kick off a 1:1 with “How do you think its going at the moment?”. Listening to how they feel they are performing will tell you very quickly and clearly whether you are setting the right expectations, and how they think they are going to get on in their next review or promotion cycle.
Have you consistently got someone asking for more money? You may be in a position to influence someone’s salary, but its unlikely that you have all the tools to increase it. If you are putting off difficult conversations, including avoiding them until the once a year that you feel it is appropriate, people are going to be very annoyed if they don't get the news they want. Be open, honest, and clear, on what are they likely to get- and when.
Do you have someone who is rubbish in front of clients? We have team members who have sat in the dark in their hoodies for client calls. You could blame Gen-Z at large, but it is more likely that their management team is to blame. We have to be crystal clear on how we expect someone (especially someone whose entire working life has been post-COVID) to show up for online calls. That may mean telling everyone to buy a ring light, and setting a clear vibe-check on what they are to wear and what room to be in. It might sound like overkill, but actually, by setting the expectation everyone wins and no one has to worry about making their own judgements as to if they are doing what is expected of them.
In short, set your expectations, and then wait for them to be met. The worst case scenario is that you have something to point out when an expectation isn’t met; and in the best case, you get a really great outcome with everyone knowing what you want of them.
Tale: Management consultancy
Flying to work on a Monday morning at aged 19 on an internship made me feel like a superstar. I picked up my Pret from Terminal 5, and even nailed the whole 'show up to gate two minutes before take-off' thing. I thought it was crazy that all these people in suits looked miserable, while I was busy being Mariah Carey in Seat 3A. That buzz of being a career woman was never more exciting than when I was doing it all for the first time. Living out of a suitcase was a small price to pay for getting to be a real life industry professional. It was ten weeks but I learned a lot...#
The tale this week may be the polar opposite of my experience in the tearoom in my first newsletter (if you haven't seen that, ping me an email and I'll send you a copy!)- as we move to the glamour of management consultancy. The one thing these two tales have in common- is an incident involving my skirt.
For most people, week two of university is largely spent drunk or hungover. I was teetotal and on a Tuesday night, heading to a careers presentation from Blackrock (what a loser!). As a first year, I was perhaps too optimistic- but I was also certain I wanted to secure a career long before leaving university. The consultancies were the only people offering an amazing second year internship- 10 weeks, paid at a realistic salary- I just couldn’t believe that they were going to train me in London for a week and then send me off on a real life grown up project (mine was up in Edinburgh).
During this time, I learnt many lessons- largely about expense accounts- but a few remain applicable to general work life:
People are not “good” at Excel, they are “good” at Googling the solution to an Excel problem. I went on two Excel courses during my time at the company. I memorised formulae, I learned conditional formatting. I wanted to be a spreadsheet badass. But not only does such a thing not exist, it is an entirely fakeable skill. I remember being told to go and see Graham the “Excel whizz”, and he was very clear with me that he is no such thing- he just knows how to Google the answer to what he’s trying to do, and then copies and pastes the formula. It really is that easy.
Miss Selfridge don’t make appropriate workwear. Never had I been more mortified than when a female boss from a different team pulled me and the other intern into a room to tell us that our skirts were too short. Our male boss was too awkward to tell us, and the whole thing was incredibly embarrassing. Ten years later I think this would have been a very different conversation, but it was mortifying for days afterwards.
The bigger the organisation, the bigger the shock when you find out they don’t have it all together. I was working on a transformation project for a big client who will remain nameless. One of my tasks was to get a list of phone numbers for all the outlets of this organisation (which ran into very high numbers). This list did not exist. I had to manually Google them and put them in a spreadsheet. I was shocked that this huge organisation didn’t have a list of the phone numbers for its own outlets.
This shock has now numbed after years of working for giant organisations, who people assume would have the basic stuff nailed- but I am no longer surprised that some of the world's biggest organisations don’t keep copies of their old TV adverts, that supermarkets don’t know who makes their carrier bags, and that technology companies don’t have printers that work.
Meetings cost money. Every Monday there used to be an all team meeting for all of the consultants working on the project. It was at 4pm and there were probably 35 people in the room, certainly standing room only. I quite liked it as it was interesting to watch the internal politics, but one week, my colleague Jake stood next to me as we whispered in the corner, and he said “just think how much money this meeting costs every week”. He looked around and pointed out how much each team member was likely to be billed out at, and then did some mental calculations about how much the meeting was costing the organisation- I won’t say how much but it was a lot.
I didn’t really mind this when I was an intern, but when I was an MD and paying for everyone’s salaries I really cared about every person that attended a meeting- and was sure every ten minutes had to be valuable for everyone in the meeting. There is no shame in uninviting someone from a meeting, cutting it ten minutes shorter or doing it via the telephone to save time. I still look around in meetings and think about how much they cost, and it's not a bad thing to have in the back of one’s mind.
Teenagers shouldn’t be given access to a company card. This one stands alone!
Face time matters (to some people). There is still a generation, who like it or not, value face time. Whether it’s seeing your face in the right meetings, in the office all day or popping up in their inbox frequently. Never has that been more true for me than when I was 19 and working in consultancy. They want your face there in the morning, there in the evening, and all over the work they are doing- otherwise they won’t be recommending you for a job.
Thankfully, I think post-COVID life has improved this, even in those industries where the white man in a suit remains king. However, in 2025, there are still some bosses to whom faces matter. I certainly still hear the phrase “this will be good for your visibility internally” or “make sure X sees you there”. In reality, it is all part of your own sales pitch and personal brand- but I suppose I’ve learned that you only need the kind of visibility that you actually want, and if you don’t perform in your job, no amount of 'face time' is going to make up for that.
When you are living in a hotel, always take breakfast in your room- it will save you loads of time and you can eat in your pants. I learnt plenty of other lessons during my summer of consulting- not least that I didn’t want to be a management consultant, because whilst I was loving life in Edinburgh, some of my intake were at a Travelodge in Slough, and I just didn’t quite fancy that.
There’s also a more serious lesson about not getting romantically involved with people who are based in a city that’s different to yours, but, along with the egg mayo sandwich- that’s a story for another time.
Have a great long winter, and send me those questions for next week!
Bee