During our second meeting with the faculty on July 3rd, we got a chance to interact with Mr. Greg Kutylo, Managing Consultant in MasterCard Advisors' Consulting Services, who is a veteran in the field of consulting. The idea was to receive an expert advice and discuss the opportunities and challenges involved in international consulting. He suggested that strategic planning for all stages of the consulting is a must for an international project and it includes chalking out the right definition and scope of the project along with setting guidelines for output and evaluation.

Choosing the right platform to communicate with the client especially by appropriate use of technology, developing documents that defines the process and terms on which both student consultants and the client agree to engage, process mapping and delivery planning, developing a scheduling system which keeps everyone informed about availability were identified as key factors that affect the performance of a team on an international consulting project.

Greg also discussed about the challenges a team may face while dealing with a virtual team. Some of them had direct effect on team’s decision making and product delivery process, such as the time zone difference between China and the U.S., language and cultural difference, workstyle and communication management etc. Taking into account all the details, we developed a ‘lessons learnt’ notebook where we would discuss details of all the virtual meetings and figure out things that went as planned and others which did not and how they would need pre-planning to improve for the next time.

The session with Greg was also helpful in crafting the DO's and DONT's of a team charter. In order to enhance the operational efficiency and improve on time and task management, we planned to review the project progress on a weekly basis. Keeping track of individual progress of fellow team members and checking with them for any support needed was an excellent decision we made. This later allowed us to build trust and keep high levels of commitment towards the project. The final piece of advice by Greg regarding dealing with pressures with a calm mind and strategic approach while utilizing the available resources efficiently, proved to be a boon during the high pressure and demanding team situations.