You could call it burn-out, or you could call it growing up. The reality is that the single or married-but-childless part of our lives are still fairly juvenile, allowing us to indulge ourselves in travel, adrenaline and fast-cars, fast-careers and occasionally fast-women (or whatever your preference).Most consultants eventually tire of consultancy and its veneer of self-importance wrapped around a pyramid selling scheme. Most human beings settle down to enjoy the pleasures of a family. The arrival of your daughter has simply turned a gradient into a step and brought the matter to a head.The fantastic news is that you are excellently placed to capitalise on an A1 CV. It is entirely likely that you could move directly to a client organisation with little or no loss of income, enjoy similarly challenging work, and yet get to enjoy your life. The danger is that you try to struggle through, getting worse and worse at your job and destroying the immense credits you currently enjoy. I have previously written at length on the importance of managing the credit and debit side of your career in consulting. Right now you have the highest credit balance you're likely to attain and the highest desire to spend it. Stay and you might find it being wiped out. I speak from similar experience. I rose quickly through the ranks and was a client manager by aged 28, selling a million a year. By 34 I managed the FS practice at a niche firm selling £5m a year. This was ten years ago and I was making 150k a year. The niche firm was acquired and I was then headhunted to a global firm to launch an IB practice. Six months in I could hardly face getting up in the morning such was the bull I was listening to every day. I quit, sold up completely and took a year out.During that year I lost about two stone in weight, did some things I’d always wanted to, played football for a village team every Sunday, became fluent in a language - and most importantly became a dad (which I'm not ashamed to say had been very elusive during my high stress, mega travel life in consultancy). When I returned to the market I determined not to buy back into the same old BS. I took a contract role way below my abilities, but through volunteering and positive attitude quickly moved from SME to Project Manager to Programme Manager and all the way back to Programme Director. For the last five years I've billed more than 200 days a year. Last year I took the whole of the school holidays off and went away with my wife and (now) two kids. Currently I'm running one of my banking clients top five programmes.My client is desperate to reduce their ridiculous reliance on 1500 quid a day big4 joe-average-managers. In the last month they've hired two ex-consultant desperate to get out of consultancy. Hardly a week goes by that my boss doesn't ask me "do you know any other people like you that could replace these consultants?" They'll take perm or contract.Management consultancy was fantastic for me. I loved it. It taught me loads. But when you tire of it, don’t walk away. RUN.
