What I thought consulting would be, and what it actually is

In August 2023, after 34 years in the corporate sector, I started Vihaan Initiatives.

I had a clear picture of what consulting would look like. I would bring my experience in operations, commercial, business transformation, and P&L to companies that needed it. Clients would recognise the value. Work would follow.

Some of that picture was accurate. Most of it was not. Here is what I had wrong.

My initial understanding of the client's problem is not the actual problem.

In consulting, I learnt that the first question is rarely the complete question. Not because the client is being evasive, but because when you are inside a business, close to it every day, it is genuinely difficult to see it from afar. The promoter knows something is wrong. Identifying exactly what, and why, is often what he needs help with most.

The real work begins with listening carefully to what is said and being patient enough to let the fuller picture emerge. That requires a different discipline than anything I had practised in a structured corporate environment.

I assumed that good work would find clients.

In my corporate career work came through the organisation, from roles, assignments, projects. The institution provided the context. As a consultant, there is no institution. You are the institution.

Visibility is not vanity. Writing, talking to people, involving yourself in discussions: these are not self-promotion for its own sake. They are how people come to know what problem you solve. Without that, even the best track record sits in a drawer.

What I had not anticipated was how long that takes. A 34-year track record does not transfer automatically. It has to be communicated, repeatedly, to the right people, before it becomes visible to anyone who has not worked with you directly.

That was a more patient process than I had expected, and a more deliberate one.

What has stayed the same.

The way I approach a business problem has not changed. I look at the commercial structure first, where value is leaking, how decisions are made, whether the operations can support the scale the promoter has in mind. I ask the same questions I would have asked at any stage of my career.

The difference is that I now ask them without the pressure of an internal agenda. In a corporate role, every recommendation you make is shaped, at least partially, by the structure you sit within, the reporting lines above you, the priorities of the quarter. As a consultant, the only agenda in the room is the client's problem. That changes the quality of the thinking, and what the client is willing to say to you. Both matter.

Almost three years in, I can say this: the transition from a three-decade career to independent consulting is not a continuation. It is a different thing entirely. The experience is necessary. It is not sufficient.

What I did not know in August 2023 is that the learning was not behind me.

(Published in LinkedIn - 6th May 2026)