Nagarro's Consulting Masterclass: Why our "consultonauts" take an intensive drill

September 26, 2022: Nagarro offers exclusive Consulting Masterclass to 500+ Nagarro current and future top consultants to bring their consultative problem-solving skills and collaboration to the highest level, before they enter the pilot seat. We create a safe environment to get creative in a carefully curated journey of inspiration, real business problem-solving in global teams, and joint reflection of results. No clients or projects are impacted – unless clients want to test the possibilities with us.

Why Consulting Masterclass?

The answer to the question ''can you learn to swim in a shower" seems obvious – and nobody should be forced to jump into the deep water without upfront preparation and exercise. This also is true with consultant skills that form the foundation of our goal to "solve business problems with technology".

As technology experts, our problem-solving skills become more and more relevant to our clients and us. Today's problems often are complex and uncertain. We call this combination wickedness. Solving these problems must include multiple disciplines in a well-orchestrated process to collaborate on the best solution.

These solving processes follow a universal language and form an operational system for solving -unveiled and deepened in the "wicked problem solving" training developed by Tom Wujec. In a strategic partnership with PMI and deep involvement from Tom Wujec, Nagarro developed a customized version of this training. We integrated wicked problem solving with the Nagarro Thinking Breakthrough methodology. This paves the way for outstanding individual solving skills (the front channel) and crafting solution strategies. We steer the team through these (we call this the back-channel) – requiring constant monitoring of the journey through the problem and respective solutions space and adjusting the path whenever appropriate.

To offer the chance to develop these skills for today and future consultants, we developed the Consulting Masterclass – an intense journey, a space trip to new hemispheres, offering a few interplanetary adventures that require intense business problem-solving in international and distributed teams.

The curriculum – a few interplanetary adventures

The Masterclass starts with an intense self-learning experience on how to solve wicked problems in distributed teams. It is the foundation for the entire learning journey – our base station.

On the first planet, you will learn how to understand the higher intent of a client and the forming of a consulting engagement. The meta-skill of this planet is a clear understanding of the anatomy of an engagement and how to express it clearly to the team and the client.

The use of this meta-skill is part of the second planet centered around our brand promise of thinking breakthroughs as a practical appliance of the wicked problem-solving toolkit. Forming a new product – and pitching for a thinking breakthrough requires complete curation and execution of the methodology within the teams. This experience is essential when forming solution strategies, e.g., in our projects (what works when, how long does it take, what are alternative approaches, how to handle critical situations, etc.).

The third planet adds business value argumentation and value lever management. The business case calculation as a vital element of solution evaluation supports selection and focus.

Each planet has a minimum of three to seven inspirational sessions and an assignment to solve a real business problem within a global peer team. Results and findings are discussed in live reflection sessions – an intense experience happening all 14 days. A key element is the "learning by doing" experience in a safe environment with inspiration, assignment work, and joined reflection sessions. Our first experience shows that around 3-5 hours must be invested in keeping track of the group.

Skills required

The future "consultonauts" are challenged on various levels – collaboration skills are essential, and a lot of phantasy and creativity are as important as presentation and storytelling skills. There is no way to stay in your comfort zone – the deep water is waiting. No real projects are involved, so this gives room to get creative and learn from others in a fully global, leading edge, and demanding training campus. The investment is worth the award – you get access to session content from Kanchan Ray, Bernd Schulze, the famous inventor of wicked problem-solving Tom Wujec, and Martin Hack, responsible for the overall curriculum, concept, and execution.

"The guiding principle when designing this mission was to establish consulting skills across business units and regions, building on all the learnings and insights I gathered myself throughout the years. The idea is to learn by doing in an intense but also inspiring way," explains Martin Hack, Global Head of Consulting.

A huge team from NagarroU enables the entire show. In the end, future "consultonauts" receive the first Nagarro NFT as finisher certificate – exposed in a Metaverse gallery.

Voice from participants

"This course is extremely powerful. It is easy to grasp and includes interesting playbooks and simple ways to teach. It helped me to grow my presentation skills. Thanks for exposing us to this wonderful kit, Martin Hack", says Garima Dang, Associate Manager at Nagarro.

"With the use of Wicked Problem Solving and Thinking Breakthroughs methodologies, visualized brain-dumping is becoming easier, and results are structured. The workshop helped me to efficiently identify customer pains and the leap to desired state, and to turn problems into solutions eventually," says Martin Wan a Senior Software Architect at the company.

"Wicked Problem Solving (WPS) toolkit gives us an excellent structure to solve critical business challenges in a very structured and efficient manner. We are using this extensively in our "Thinking Breakthroughs" process," says Nakuleshwar Pandey, Principal Consultant at Nagarro.

Arsh Bashar, Delivery Head and Consultant at Nagarro's Education Practice, says, "Consulting is a combination of art and science, and I think the Consulting Masterclass touched upon both these aspects quite well. Various exercises conducted during the program helped me sharpen my problem-solving skills and reaffirmed some of the learnings that I have acquired over a period of time. It was great to learn with some of the best people in the industry. Interacting with people from different projects and regions of the world was the cherry on the cake." 

We plan to offer the Consulting Masterclass training engine to around 500 motivated future consultants within Nagarro during 2022. Essential credo: motivation beats experience!