Feel useless in business meetings? Here's how to add value as a new joiner/ analyst

Summary

In this insightful video, "Engineer Your Career" provides valuable guidance for new joiners and analysts feeling ineffective in business meetings. The creator shares personal experiences and highlights the importance of mastering the analysis and data aspects of presentations to shine and be noticed by leadership. By being well-prepared with the data and showing reliability during discussions, new professionals can effectively contribute even if they're not participating in strategic dialogues.

Highlights

• Feeling lost in business meetings is common for new joiners and analysts. 🙆‍♂️
• Your unique value is your detailed knowledge of analysis and data sources. 🕵️‍♀️
• Leadership values reliability, especially in the early stages of your career. 🏆
• A well-prepared analyst can answer questions confidently, gaining trust. ✨
• Introverts can excel by letting their preparation and data speak for them. 🎯

Key Takeaways

• Focus on the data and analysis aspect of presentations. 📊
• Don't feel pressured to solve strategic issues; your role is to support with data. 📈
• Being prepared with answers can earn you trust and visibility in meetings. 🤝
• Memorize key data or have it readily accessible during meetings. 💾
• It's okay to be introverted, preparation will help you shine without flashy remarks. 🌟

Overview

Starting a new role often comes with the challenge of feeling inadequate in meetings, especially when discussions are strategic or high-level. As a new joiner, one might be unsure of how to contribute effectively, but this is a common experience. The video emphasizes that understanding your unique contribution — your grasp on the detailed analysis and data — can make you invaluable in those contexts.

The creator shares personal anecdotes about their time at McKenzie, highlighting how being prepared with the right data during meetings made a significant difference. New professionals are encouraged not to stress about solving big strategic issues, but rather to ensure they’re on top of their analysis. This detailed knowledge is where they can outshine more seasoned colleagues and support leadership effectively.

As an introvert, one might worry about speaking up, but the video reassures that flashy comments are unnecessary. It's all about preparation. By having a strong command over the data, you earn the trust of your team and leadership. This approach not only enhances your visibility but can also significantly impact your early career trajectory positively.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction: Challenges in Business Meetings This chapter discusses the challenges faced by individuals in business meetings. It highlights the difficulty of contributing meaningful input when discussions are highly strategic or at a high level. The chapter addresses the common scenario of choosing to remain silent rather than speaking without confidence in one's input, and implies potential dangers of such inaction.
• 00:30 - 01:00: The Issue of Visibility and Contribution This chapter discusses the problem of lack of visibility and recognition in a professional setting, despite making significant contributions to projects or meetings. The issue is prominent for individuals who, despite their efforts, remain unnoticed by leadership, which can negatively impact their career progression. The author shares a personal anecdote from their early career at McKenzie, where they struggled to see their role and contribution in strategic and high-level discussions involving corporate leadership.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Young Analyst's Role and Expectations The chapter discusses the challenges faced by young analysts or engineers in articulating ideas during meetings due to lack of confidence and knowledge, emphasizing that their strength lies in the foundational work like data analysis, data acquisition, and handling exact numbers.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Excel in Data Analysis and Presentation Support The chapter emphasizes the role of a junior engineer or consultant in corporate settings, particularly in meetings and presentations. It highlights that while junior staff are not expected to solve strategic corporate problems or determine the company's direction for the next 5 years, they are expected to be thoroughly knowledgeable about the analysis being presented. Their expertise should align with understanding and backing up the data, graphs, and charts that are part of the presentation. The chapter underscores the importance of juniors being prepared to support their superiors with detailed analytical insights during discussions.
• 02:00 - 02:30: Enhancing Reliability and Gaining Trust The chapter discusses the importance of being prepared for questions from clients or leadership regarding the details of an analysis. It emphasizes the value of having data and sources readily available during meetings to demonstrate reliability and gain trust. It suggests memorizing key data or keeping the analysis accessible to avoid uncertainty in meetings. While acknowledging that it's impossible to know every detail from past analyses, the chapter encourages preparedness to showcase competence and reliability.
• 02:30 - 03:00: Case Study: Engineering Presentation The chapter discusses the significance of having data readily available and its impact on perceived reliability and trustworthiness, particularly in the early stages of one's career. It highlights the expectations placed on young professionals, whether in consulting or corporate roles as engineers. The narrative is provided by a leader of engineering teams who reflects on their experience and emphasizes the importance of these skills through a retrospective understanding.
• 03:00 - 03:30: Conclusion and Encouragement for Introverts In the conclusion chapter, the speaker shares an encouraging story for introverts, highlighting a presentation by an external engineering contractor. The contractor impressively navigated through complex engineering packages with ease and confidence, answering questions accurately without needing to check offline. This demonstration of competence and preparedness not only inspired trust but also served as a powerful example for introverts to emulate, showcasing how expertise and readiness can build credibility and foster confidence in professional settings.

Feel useless in business meetings? Here's how to add value as a new joiner/ analyst Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Have you ever been in a larger business meeting and you wanted to contribute something to the discussion, but you didn't really know what to say? Maybe the discussion was too high level or it was too strategic and you didn't think that you could contribute anything of value. And of course, instead of just saying something for the sake of it, then you simply just said nothing at all. Danger comes in many, many forms, from the dinosaurs that tormented our caveman ancestors to the get to the point. And if this happens frequently,
• 00:30 - 01:00 the issue is that even though you contributed to the preparation of the meeting, the project or the analysis, your work might not be noticed as much as it deserves to. You might not be as visible to the leadership as you need to be. And this can really hurt your career in the long term. And now exactly how this feels when I started my first job as an associate at McKenzie just fresh from university I oftentimes felt what can I really contribute to the discussion especially if it was very strategic or on a very high level corporate leadership was involved what
• 01:00 - 01:30 could I say that my project manager or the partner cannot say with much more depth or knowledge behind it. So I was struggling with exactly the same problem I was lacking the confident and also the knowledge of what to really say in those meetings. So how do we solve that problem? So if you're just starting out your career, you're a young analyst or young engineer, then what do you really excel at? Well, it's the actual work behind the presentation, right? It's the analysis, it's the data acquisition, it's the sources, it's the exact numbers. That's where you really have
• 01:30 - 02:00 the knowledge that exceeds most of the people present in the presentation or in the discussion. No one is expecting from you as a junior engineer or junior consultant to really solve corporate strategy problems, right? To really have an idea of where the company has to go in the next 5 years. No one expecting that of you. What they do expect of you is that you are on top of the analysis. That's why you're in the meeting. So that if for example your project manager or your boss is presenting some analysis, some graph, some chart and for
• 02:00 - 02:30 example the client has a question or upper leadership has a question on how this analysis was done, what the sources were. This is really your moment to shine. This is where you can have either the data readily available. So just memorize them before you go into the meeting or at least have the analysis open on your laptop so you can quickly check the numbers in the meeting and you don't have to say, "Oh, I'm not sure right now how we did this or which sources we used. let me check after the meeting. Of course, this can happen. No one ever knows everything of every analysis that they've ever done, right?
• 02:30 - 03:00 But the more you have this data readily available or even on the top of your mind, the more reliable you seem, the more the leadership is actually going to trust in that analysis. And that's really what's expected of you, especially in the first couple of months of your career. And it doesn't really matter if that's in consulting or if that's in a meeting in a corporate setting where you're a young engineer. And especially now that I'm leading engineering teams myself in my current role, I really just understood how important this was looking backwards. I recently had a discussion or
• 03:00 - 03:30 presentation with an external engineering contractor. So he was preparing a let's say an engineering package for a certain technology and I was really impressed because he was able to navigate in all the subfolders. He knew exactly when I had a question about a certain PFD or a certain utility list exactly where to look and in most of the cases he had the answer actually at least somewhat accurately on the top of his head and that really made me trust him a lot more than if he for example would have said oh let me check offline
• 03:30 - 04:00 or ask a colleague or do you know where we saved this file and didn't really have it open on the laptop to begin with and didn't really put any thought into what question leadership could ask going into the meeting and that really is an important differenti iator between an average engineer or consultant and someone that really excels at their job and they also are being recognized for it and that is really going to have an impact on your career early on. And that's also great news for the introverts amongst you because no one's expecting you to do some fleshy comments
• 04:00 - 04:30 or come up with some crazy strategies if you just joined the company a year ago or 6 months ago, right? So just prepare ahead of the meeting. Be on top of your analysis and then if an opportunity comes up where a number is being questioned or they want to dig deeper into the analysis or also there's a point being made that you can underscore with some of the numbers that you have in your mind and that's really your opportunity to shine. That's it for today. I have one more video that's on a similar topic called visibility. I'll link that in the description below.
• 04:30 - 05:00 Watch that if you haven't done so yet.