Business Communication - Consulting and Personal Branding

         Let's talk about a very enriching session on the importance of Business Communication in consulting and personal brand building by our former NITIE alumni  Mr. Nikhil Kulkarni. 

        A brief about him; Mr. Kulkarni is the owner of a start-up tripdarwin.com which is a holiday planning website This website lets you decide the place, type of activities and creates an itinerary in just minutes to get the extra mile on your holiday planning. He worked at KPMG for 10 years and later quit the job to give a shot to his entrepreneurial journey.

        As per him in consulting 80% is your communication and from rest 20%, 15% is relationship with the customer and only 5% is your research about the content.MS Word, Excel, and Powerpoint are must for a consulting job at least for the first few years. Powerpoint is the most important tool for proposal making, report making, and Executive briefing as many are interested in fewer data, and PowerPoint appeals more to the customer in terms of communication.

The Pyramid Principle & MECE

We should follow the pyramid principle to design the content. We should know the objective, audience, context in which the content is consumed, and should be able to cover all aspects of the problem. This is done by MECE (Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive) which means all content should be independent of each other and all points should be duly addressed.

Use a hierarchical structure to organize ideas and supporting evidence. The information must flow in a well-structured way with a Key Message(quote, video, etc.) followed by IDFL(Idea, Data, Fact, Logic)  and Summary so it reinforces the way the human mind understands anything.

Personal Branding

        A personal brand is something that builds credibility as an expert in the respective area. It introduces your personality without someone actually speaking about it. No. 7 Jersey in Cricket represents Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

 A personal brand is an important part of a person's career. You can get easy jobs, get things done whether it is tender or project based on your persona. The personal brand makes other people comfortable with you while working.

     He talked about his personal experience that how his blog writing helped him to get many assignments as clients really wanted to know him personally while working with him and how brands have evolved in the last 10-15 years to strive for success in the market.

        In a nutshell, it was a very good experience knowing how important business communication skills for any role and wish him all the best for his future endeavors.