Jamie Chen
Rice University
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Tawfik Jarjour, Senior Manager, Accenture Strategy, Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

Tawfik Jarjour is a senior manager at Accenture Strategy in Houston, Texas. He graduated from Rice University in 2012 with degrees in ecology & evolutionary biology and cognitive sciences with a minor in biochemistry and cell biology. I had the pleasure of interviewing Tawfik via video conference while I was across the world in Taipei. In the interview, we talked about his career journey at Accenture, various projects he has worked on, as well as important lessons and takeaways from his unique experience.

In college, Tawfik wanted to work at the intersection of healthcare and public policy then become a doctor. He actively participated in student life and extracurriculars, with a focus on community engagement and leadership; he was the president of Habitat for Humanity at Rice, the director of the Rice Centennial Project, and an active member of the student government. His initial contact with consulting was at the Student Center when an alumnus, who was supporting Tawfik’s Habitat for Humanity project, mentioned that he would be a good fit for a consulting role. At first, he thought it would be a temporary position before pursuing his main goals in healthcare and medicine. However, despite the slightly rough start, Tawfik decided to continue at Accenture after he realized he could still make a positive impact as a consultant on the issues he cared about despite not being in the profession he imagined himself to be in.

Although Tawfik’s first project as a consultant was not what he expected, he didn’t give up. He wanted to incorporate his passion into his job. He started working on a healthcare project advising hospitals on how to decrease the length of stays. That project launched his “healthcare career” in consulting. Tawfik got to work with the hospital systems from the other side, which, in retrospect, may have enabled him to make greater changes in the healthcare system to improve the conditions for patients and healthcare workers.

Tawfik continued to make purposeful decisions that shaped his career. He chose a risky project that later led him to diverse work opportunities abroad that profoundly enriched his experiences and challenged his ability to utilize his skillset to make an impact outside of healthcare and of the United States. In his year and a half abroad, Tawfik was in merger and acquisitions working with companies making microchips and semiconductors in Taiwan. Currently, Tawfik is involved with Accenture’s central COVID response content coordination group, working with the c-suite to help define the approach and provide guidance for other companies making decisions in light of the pandemic.

One of the main takeaways from our conversation was the emphasis Tawfik placed on always being open to learning and growing, going where your impact could be the greatest, even if that entails putting yourself in challenging situations, and building up your skillset as you go. Equally important, Tawfik also reminds us that we should learn to take advantage of non-ideal situations as there is never a totally wrong decision in life and there are plenty of opportunities waiting for those who are ready. “The path is never something you can completely plan for” — you never know, with a positive perspective and growth mindset, imperfect decisions may, with some twists and turns, lead you to the perfect place you want to be.

Highlights from the interview:

What were your goals during and right out of college? And how does your path align with your expectations?

I’ve realized that I didn’t have to go to the medical school to make an impact; you can make an impact in nearly any career if you seek it out, and I learned how I could do meaningful work as a consultant

What led you to your current position? What does the job entail?

Given the nature of consulting, you have to be prepared for ambiguity and challenging situations that you can’t exactly predict. You can never plan out the exact path, but you can set up some guideposts for yourself.

At Accenture, I got involved in healthcare, working on a project where we advised doctors and nurses on how to decrease length of stays. That was the start of my healthcare career and I started doing one project after another in the industry. Those first couple years really showed me what it’s like to work in hospital systems. I got a chance to figure out how to change the healthcare system and adjust how hospitals are run, to try to make things better for patients and physicians.

Then I started going in a different direction at Accenture. In your career, you should be able to make the best of situations and be willing to jump into some that are a little risky, from a career perspective, but can yield big dividends. After some time at Accenture, an opportunity arose and I took the riskier path, deciding to move into a role that ended up defining my career. Taking risks is what is needed to build your skillset and put together a stronger toolkit. It’s not the easiest path and even if it means delaying certain achievements to invest in your development, it’s still worth it because in the long term, you will be more successful at what you do.

What kind of work do consultants do?

This is the progression and the kind of work you do at each level as a consultant. You use data, do presentations and interviews, have conversations with people, and pull it all together to give your final recommendations at the end.

When I first started, I was a data analyst. To make any decision, you need to have a good dataset underlying it. In some projects I worked on, I was given different datasets, and I helped organize, structure, and make sense of them to present to an executive audience for decision-making. This is a big part of how you make consulting decisions, because data models and predictive analytics are very important. What we’ve started doing as a company [recently] as opposed to when I first started is to leave this [data] analytics decision-making process to the client. In other words, you don’t want to just tell the [clients] what the answer is; you want to teach them how to continue to go through the data and find the answer on their own. Understanding the data behind the situation and how you make decisions based on the data are really important.

As an analyst, I also had to learn and work on presenting well. My presentations in college were not very good compared to what I had to do here. The first couple years, I really had to improve, especially the graphic design and visual design [aspects]. How do you present your information in the right way? How do you craft a good story? I can’t tell you how many times I pull out pieces of paper and sketch out what I want the [presentation] to look like first, and then eventually I get to the version I want. [It’s important] because you want to share a message with your slides, and the slides at Accenture and other consulting firms are our publications. instead of publishing a report or a paper, we publish a PowerPoint deck.

There are also a lot of program management and project management [responsibilities], especially in the beginning. Can you schedule the meetings the right way? Can you have the right conversations? Are you taking notes in those meetings and capturing the information you need to create the materials or do the research that you need to do?

As you move up to become a consultant, you become the person who owns and defines [more of the work]. You define the research and the presentations, you start presenting yourself, having more ownership, and potentially managing someone.

When you move up to the next level as a manager, you are managing a team and you are the one in charge of owning the [project].  You give advice related to the projects. Let’s say you have a client who wants to enter a new space; they came up with a new product but don’t exactly know how to push it forward and they want advice on how to do that. You have a team that does the research, prepares the presentation, and goes through the materials, and then you have meetings with the client. As a manager, you have more responsibility. You also start managing the project budget and [monitoring] how much you’re spending and who spent too much on their travel, for example.

Then, you get to the next level, which is the senior manager level, where I am right now. As a senior manager, you end up overseeing multiple projects and opportunities and you have a team. You are in meetings all day long, and you have to get really good at delegating. Because I can’t do the work myself, I have to delegate it to other people.

The last position is the partner or the managing director position, depending on what companies call it. For that position, you do even less delivery; you are mostly there to meet the client, see what they want, and help sell the work to be done. Then you give advice and supervise your teams. You check on your teams in different places, see how they’re doing, and make sure that things are moving forward the right way. As a managing director or a partner, you focus more on the sales side.

What are the most important skills that you use the most to succeed in your position, or as a consultant in general?

The most valuable skills are confidence and the ability to listen and learn. Having a positive attitude, being inquisitive, asking the right questions, and understanding how to go through datasets, interpret what the data mean, and present things in the most effective way are also valuable skills to have.

How do you see your field and your role developing in the future? Where do you see consulting and all the roles shifting?

In consulting, there will be a big shift, and it is already in progress. The company that I’m working at, Accenture, is a little bit further along than some other firms. Many years ago, we saw the writing on the wall: companies don’t want you to come in, make a presentation, and leave. Companies are looking for something more tangible that they can use and something that drives a bigger impact to their business and how they run it. [In response], we’ve invested very heavily in our interactive group, digital group, and teams that can help us create tangible things for clients we work with.

A lot of times we partner [with other groups within Accenture]. I’m on the strategy side, so I come up with the bigger picture and then partner with folks who can implement that bigger picture. We also have teams that can prototype applications. We worked with a lot of companies on their e-commerce tools. For example, if the product recommendation is an online ordering system for sandwiches, [we deliver] a working application that they can use to do that. That means a lot more to them; even if it’s not what they use in the end, it still gives them a prototype to work off of. there’s an important role you play to help the clients; you can take it to the next level. Clients want you to merge the strategy recommendations with actionable items you deliver to them, and then finally have a long-term tool that they can use. We set up certain datasets and dashboards that they can review formally, and we train someone from the client side. That way, after we’re gone, they still have someone who can run these tools, run the reports, and see what’s going on. Clients want us to teach them how to fish versus just bring them fish. We’re not a fish market anymore, we want to be the fishing trainers. I think that’s the future of consulting and it is a more sustainable approach because companies can do things on their own and might not need us for certain things. Then they can get our help with something different. 

Is everyone who works at a consulting company called consultants?

They’re mostly called consultants, but there are also people who have different roles, for example, data scientists. At Accenture, we have more than 6,000 data scientists, who are not called consultants. There are also people in the marketing [department] who are not called consultants.

What advice would you give students getting into consulting?

First and foremost, I would recommend they explore and learn different things as a student. I didn’t really start looking at consulting until my senior year at Rice University. The other things I did during my previous summers were valuable and I learned a lot from them.

Starting from your freshman year, be aware of what the companies are doing, who they are, and when their application process starts. The biggest challenge I’ve actually seen for students who want to get into consulting is that they miss the deadlines because the deadlines are much earlier than you’d expect. To recruit MBAs, we start meeting with the MBA students before they start their MBA program, while they’re still applying for business school. The applications are typically due by the first week of September of your senior year. So, if you’re not paying attention, before you know it, all the applications are closed.

Throughout your time as a student, take the chance to test out some of the leadership opportunities and manage some projects. That helped me a lot to get into consulting. In a lot of really sharp students, who have great grades, great academic background, and great interview skills, one of the challenges we see is that they never really took on any leadership role. Taking part in leadership roles with the student government, a club, or something tangible, is valuable because it teaches you the skills you need to be successful as a consultant more than you can learn in a classroom. having these extracurricular activities that allow you to grow in that way is essential. 

Anything else you want to mention before you have to run off to your meetings?

In life, you have a lot of opportunities coming your way and whether you’re interested in consulting or anything else, there’s never a totally wrong decision. You make a decision and it might not be the perfect decision for you, but then you may end up moving to where you want to be later. Everything you do in life teaches you something–   always take that positive perspective and learn from the things you dealt with. Whenever I dealt with challenging times in consulting, I could have stepped away and missed out on a lot of the things that I ended up doing in the end. For every exciting opportunity that I enjoyed and grew with, there was one that I really did not enjoy. There are situations where you do things that you really like and some that you don’t. Being able to make the best of all the situations is very important, and finally, whenever you can, it’s important to give back and help others

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee. This article only aims to share personal opinions and learnings and does not constitute the interviewee’s current or former employer(s)’ position on any of the topics discussed.