What are the most common M/SM failure modes post-MBB?

Curious as to your thoughts - for smart people with good education, but still relatively new in career and domain expertise, what have you seen as the most common failure modes post-MBB?

I'm looking for my next thing, and while I can clearly see the benefits of me (Bain M/SM) over an A or an SA as an IC, I'm having a hard time seeing myself leading a team without the leadership support at MBB (APs, Ps etc.).

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Treating your work like an MBB engagement. Not everyone is as sharp or moves as fast. Pushing people too much can make enemies and hamper growth.

There is a refined level of pace that you can bring without overbearing teams

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Lol. Or, not every way of doing knowledge work is designed around the idea of rapid unnecessary iterations, artificial urgency, and the need to appease leaders (ie partners) that actually know very little about the topic.

Some “strategy work” is designed to be intentionally slower, more analytical, etc. I’ve found that my former MBB colleagues often need to readjust to this different way of working.

MBB engagements are designed to intentionally burn out their teams and deliver in a short period of time because of the contractual / monetary incentives. Biz / corp strategy or advisory teams often do not have the same incentives, nor would frankly benefit from such a model.

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Pretty slides no one reads

All diagnosis no action

Burning the team on overanalysis (market intel or quantitative modelling especially)

"We recommend the following 7 strategic levers"

Premature contempt towards well-established corporate lifers

Inability to recognise deep but unpolished expertise

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2 of 7, the other 5 are secret

I should personalize this more too, I guess. What about failure modes relating to personal effectiveness? I've done decently well at Bain, good performance reviews, etc.

But I've hopped around a lot of industries and specialties, do a decent enough job directing work and helping team think through, action, refine; but I'm not great at going zero to one on a blank scope necessarily, and without domain expertise feel like that could hamper me

Thank you, that's reassuring!

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