I want to teach you how to build a successful consulting career and keep your clients coming back for more.
The focus of my career has been driving business transformation through Information technology.
These roles have given me broad experience with all aspects of consulting:
– Mike Lovell
Now it is time to give back!
After my wife died, I closed our joint consulting business and I’ve founded
Be A Great Consultant with the mission to pass on my consulting knowledge to aspiring consultants.
I provide training, coaching, career development, and advisory services to experienced professionals who want to leverage their expertise and build a consulting practice.
I can help you:
How I transitioned into consulting
My first jobs were working as a Business Analyst, developing application systems for large corporations and government agencies.
In 1977 I was appointed Commercial Systems Manager for the newly-formed Queensland Electricity Generating Board (QEGB).
My responsibilities covered all commercial systems—accounting, costing, purchasing, inventory management, payroll, personnel management, housing and community development for Power Station communities, engineering project management, construction of transmission lines, and coal mines production.
The initial phase of this job was effectively a merger and acquisition challenges to take seven previously independent entities and manage the transition to a new set of common systems.
In this role, I managed a staff of about eighty project managers and system developers, plus a data center and software support staff of about 30 people.
By 1982 all users had been transitioned to a new set of common systems and the first phase of this job had been accomplished.
That is when I realized that I had reached a plateau and I started to seek new career opportunities.
I took the opportunity of a short-term consulting project with the CEGB (at the time, the largest Electricity Generating entity in the world).
After successfully completing this assignment, I decided to transition to management consulting and I joined the DMR Consulting Group as Principal of their Public Sector Practice.
A deeper dive
My professional life has encompassed four exciting careers.
Seen in retrospect, the defining theme of my professional life has been digital business transformation.
I started work as a systems engineer with the Australian Department of Defence.
The more I worked with computers, the more excited I became about their potential to change how businesses and organizations work. This inspired me to switch away from the technical side and focus on their potential to transform how business operates.
After starting out as a business analyst in systems development, by mid-career, I was the Commercial Systems Controller for a large power generating company that was being formed by the merger of seven regional power companies. I managed the integration of all commercial systems (accounting, budgeting, payroll, HR, purchasing, inventory management, coal mine operations, and ancillary functions such as housing and travel).
After about three years, this work was completed, and the users had been transitioned to the new enterprise systems environment.
The job was done, and I was looking for something else.
My switch to consulting happened when serendipity opened up a short-term opportunity to do consulting work with one of the world’s largest power-generating companies.
In 1988 I joined DMR, an international Consulting company based in Montreal. Subsequently purchased by Fujitsu and became Fujitsu Consulting.
Over the next twenty years, I led consulting practices in several large international consulting companies, giving me the opportunity to work on projects for some of the world’s largest organizations in both business and the public sector.
It was a great privilege to have the opportunity to recruit and build teams of the best people, most of whom have gone on to establish their own careers as leading consultants in their fields.
One of my assignments during this period was as Director R&D for a project to identify and track the benefits of IT investments
Fast-forward to 9/11…
In 2001 I was Principal of the Portal Practice at Unisys Information Services, leading a project to help large corporations to figure how they could use the internet (then in its infancy) to open up new ways of doing business online for things like B2B global payments, booking airline tickets and writing insurance policies.
I would normally have been in the World Trade Center at the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but by a twist of fate I had been called to a meeting in Boston.
It would be an understatement to say that 9/11 was a life-changing event for so many of us.
Many of my clients were victims of the attack. Many large businesses were struggling to recover and just to maintain continuity of business operations—no one was thinking about pioneering applications on the internet.
In the aftermath, I took the opportunity to step away from the corporate world and joined my wife in forming Slate Consultants, a new consulting business focused on performance improvement and organizational design.
Working in the Central PA and mid-Atlantic region our projects included small-medium businesses in areas such as banking, agricultural wholesale, housing development, property management and home décor import and wholesaling.
After Pam died in 2020 I closed this business and have switched away from seeking active consulting engagements. My focus now is on passing on what I have learned to the next generation of consulting leaders and practitioners.
I founded Be A Great Consultant to provide training and coaching to professionals who are transitioning to a new career in consulting.
I can help you to leverage your expertise and build the skills to become a Great Consultant yourself.
I can help you:
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