Two Happy Clients to End The Week

Watching a new team come together, gel and start delivering results feels excellent.

Throughout my career, I’ve been lucky to be a manager or mentor for younger staff multiple times, and I’ve always found it rewarding.

In previous posts, I’ve shared how unique our Wheaton Innovates (WiN) Team is. These seven students are majoring in a variety of topics from economics to creative writing. Before this summer, most of them might not have considered a career in any type of consulting and yet this summer that is the type of work they are doing.

This week the first two projects were completed for our MassChallenge clients.

The first was a quick re-edit of an overview video for LuminDx who are hoping to help patients and physicians address challenging skin diseases using artificial intelligence.

The client had all the footage they needed but wanted it edited down to a short and fine-tuned overview video.

The second was for Candorful, who work with veterans to prepare for civilian job interviews.

They needed an original video that could play at the MassChallenge Showcase on their table. Something that could loop and give an overview of their services if the founders were busy talking to people.

Both of these projects had tight deadlines, and the students stepped up to make them happen. In both cases, the clients were delighted with the results and hoped to work with us again before the end of the summer.

While these projects were going on, our work request form kept pinging us with new requests. As a team, we decided it was time to pause requests until we delivered on the variety of projects that we had already agreed to take on.

Each member of the team is the project manager for several different companies and member of multiple other projects. While each student has individual strengths, they are all learning new skills as they apprentice under and shadow more experienced students.

It is fun to watch someone set up their first shot on a video camera or to brainstorm a social media strategy. They’ve all learned that one of the hardest tasks in consulting is managing clients and their expectations.

This morning we had a status meeting, and it was fun to see how comfortable the team has grown with each other. Joking and challenging each other. Not being afraid to share an "out there" idea, when a few weeks ago they might have hesitated.

With so many projects going on, I’m trying to help and mentor as much as possible while allowing each student to grow and learn by doing the work. So far, they’ve done great, and I have no doubt they will continue to do so.