Another Sunday morning, another pile of internal work to get through.Is this typical of other consultancies??

Another part of the world. Same story!www.banalyst.wordpress.com

Bopper - maybe you should go on the time management course so you learn how to use your normal working hours more efficiently.

I used to get the whole "priorisation" speech from managers. But, sometimes, time management and "prioritisation" just doesn't factor into it. If you're given 100 hours worth of work to do, then it doesn't matter how much you jiggle it around or prioritise - it's still gonna take you 100 hours. And if it's due next week... then it's a simple matter of lack of resources, not time management.The way out of this is to work faster or drop some stuff altogether. I'd like to hear tips for also using existing time more effectively. For instance:- work on the train- do internal work during work hours when other people are surfing the net- delegate stuff if you can- re-use old material if you canetcAny other tips, guys?

The idea of prioritising is that you don't do all of it. You just do the most important stuff.If you are going to do it all anyway, then there is no point in prioritising, you're just wasting your time.

Is it really 100 hours of solid, uninterrupted work?Or is it 40 hours work, 20 hours flapping, 40 hours worrying about a lack or time management and focus?

The 100 hours thing was illustrative.BUT... if you want real figures, I generally find myself needing 10 hours extra per week for work, if I am to work a nice normal 45 hour week.

well..most of my days are prioritised by 'if this doesn't get done - can I handle the fallout as a result ?' - if yes... dump it.At least yr then in a position to handle the crap - and concentrate on stuff you can do - well.

I can't understand why someone would like to work for PA during the week, let alone on Sundays.

I left PA Consulting for another firm in Spring of last year to get away from the long hours culture with nil support from the Partners. You were expected to travel in your own time to client sites (often leaving Sunday night, and not getting home until 10pm Friday), and then to do all your TL and Business Development stuff at the weekend. The sad fact is that you get no support or thanks for this, but get well and truly beaten up if you don’t deliver it all.This old style command and control culture is why PA has singularly failed to grow over the past 10 – 15 years, and will struggle as everyone else starts to grow again once the recession ends (which is likely to be sooner rather than later)Monty Byrnes should have sold out to SAIC when he had the chance.

Monty Burns.You have to go out of your way to spell that rong

And don't forget that PA only does process mapping for memory sticks in the public sector and their bonuses really suck and they smell blah blah blah &etc forever

Oh - and don't forget that you only get 23 days hols, compared to 25 to 30 elsewhereYet another way for PA to frug you overPeter

Stop cribbing, BOPper. I do agree that if you wish, you can take more work on yourself in PA, which can quickly consume your personal time , but I havent seen it being imposed on anyone. People who want to learn more, or get on the career ladder much more quicker , have the option in PA to volunteer for more work and rightly so. But equally I know tons of Cs and PCs who do a normal 40-45 hour week and dont take any work home, without them being prejudiced against. Its different in years when you are expecting a promotion, but thats true for all companies. So grow up and take control of the situation. If you love the work you are doing , stop cribbing. If you don't love it , then either learn to say No to work more than 50 hours a week, or look for other options - It will be better for both you and PA. Just for the record, I have been doing normal 40-45 hour week last 2 years in PA , and since this is promotion year for me, I have decided to push up a gear and work a few extra hours to ensure that I get that promotion by the end of the year.

That strategy might work in other practices, but there have been no partner promotions in BOP for 5 years now, and very few to MC, most of whom leave afterwards.The attitude from our partners in BOP is one of fit in or f*ck off if you don't like working weekends and getting below market pay. They can get away with this in the recession, as most of our public sector work is still holding up.

BOPper,Please stop your moaning. Your options are simple either put up and shut up or do something about it.If you want advice and help - ask. If you just want to complain - go away.SS

Interesting comment from BOPer re: "fit in or f*ck off".This seems to be supported by the immediate reply of "If you want advice and help - ask. If you just want to complain - go away."This is great - it's giving me a real insight into the culture of the firm!

Which is?

It's probably the 50th similar posting from BOPer, any sympathy has long since expired so hardly an insight in to PA culture.

It is instructive though that BOP have done absolutely nothing to address the very real concerns of their staff.I know a few people who work in that practice, and its not a happy place. They take some very good people and farm them out to do inscrutably boring process mapping for local government and QUANGOsLittle wonder that morale is so low

Imposter - nobody at PA would use the term QUANGO. If you worked there, you'd know why.

I work there, and I don't know why. So pray tell.

As George Bush once choked on a pretzel, so one of our BOP partners once choked on the fees he milked a QUANGO for. Hence the sensitivity around the term. We now refer to these QUANGOs as "Strategic level public sector executive business partners".

To the original message, yes it is. Consulting, in the term's loosest definition' is basically an exploitation industry. Hire fiercely competitive grads, manufacture a sense of pride and differentiation ('hell, we're not contractors, we're consultants', 'hell, we're strategists not op/IT etc') and let them outwork each other to get those normalised promotions and rises. Sell jobs on a fixed day rate in order to win the bid and pay no overtime to those working the extra 6 hours a day required to deliver - so that the real hourly rate is less than that of contractors, and their hourly earnings are much like those of the grunt clients they look down on. Strip everthing possible out of the chargeability measure so that training, product development, research, admin etc all gets done in personal time. Wise up guys, there is no longer any honour or prestige associated with consulting - it's just an industrialized labour machine.

Wonderful thread olddog (or what ever your name is)What I would add is the actual work you do in consulting (apart from BCG naturally) is process mapping, pmo, project management, iT strategy, IT configuration, IT management, business process optimisation, business process control and what ever other nonsense one want to conjure up.All you consultants (flexible admin labour in my vernacular) are useless. None of you have any commercial savvy, economic literacy or business acumenZB

That’s a bit unfair ZB.I have worked for BOP on a number of local government clients, and we have really helped them bring cutting edge processes to their business processes.

Did you really just use the terms "cutting edge processes" and "Local Government" in the same thread?Please do elaborate.........Or were you reading from the PA Sales deck?

We do some really exciting stuff in the public sector. All you others that think you are oh so clever, working for private sector companies will be royally in the poops cos this recession is getting worser.