John Kim

Associate Professor in the Practice of Organization & Management Emory University, Goizueta Business School

  • Atlanta GA

Management consultant by training and passion. Learning with 400+ BBA, MBA, Executives every year.

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Emory University, Goizueta Business School

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Biography

Management consultant with 20+ years of experience working with executives to make difficult decisions and implement sustainable change. Now sharing that consulting process with students and executives.

Enjoying the learning journey with 500+ business school students annually. Strategy, consulting, healthcare strategy. BBA, MBA, MSBA, Executive Education Programs.

Education

Emory University, Atlanta, GA

MBA

Strategy and Management Consulting

2005

University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

BA

Economics

1993

Areas of Expertise

Strategy
Management Consulting
Healthcare Consulting
Corporate Training

Publications

Consulting Fundamentals: Skills, tools, tips

ConsultantsMind LLC

John Kim

2023-10-28

Written by an ex-Deloitte consultant, this book gives you the top 200+ things you need to think and work like a consultant. John Kim is an associate professor at Emory’s Goizueta Business School in Atlanta, GA, USA. He teaches 400+ students a year on strategy, consulting, and healthcare.

1) Think of this like an executive summary. It is direct, structured, easy-to-read, and no jargon. It’s a reference book and toolkit.

2) The paperback is in color and easy-to-follow. Whether you’re a new hire, or a corporate manager, or a solo entrepreneur – this can help you get more done.

3) Some of the questions answered in the book:
- Why do clients hire consultants?
- What are consulting competencies?
- How to prepare for a client project?
- Why are external consultants (McKinsey, Bain, BCG, - Deloitte) so effective?
- How do consultants “sell” their services?
- How to write a proposal and statement of work (SOW)?
- What are the tips for running a great client interview?
- What are the pitfalls of too much benchmarking?
- What does consulting PowerPoint design look like?
- What does it mean to solve problems with hypotheses?
- Why is messy client data a great opportunity?
- How to prevent scope creep?
- How to network effectively within the company?
- How to say “no” to a client?
- What’s the key to executive presence?

4) This content complements the 75 videos on “Management Consulting” specialization on Coursera.com. Get a free trial on Coursera to get a flavor of the teaching style.

5) Want to see a sample of this content? Go to www.ConsultantsMind.com (#1 Google Search for consulting blog).

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Research Spotlight

3 min

Businesses must have a strategy for a messy tomorrow

John Kim is a Senior Lecturer in Organization & Management at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. He is a management consultant with more than 20 years of experience working with executives to make difficult decisions and implement sustainable change. Recently, John published a piece that details a ‘Strategy for a messy tomorrow’ where he outlines how businesses must have a strategy development and implementation for an unpredictable business world. The piece is attached and a must read, especially in these turbulent and unpredictable economic times. In the article, he focuses on three key points: 1.Beware of False Choices “One thing we try to teach here at the business school is to be careful of false choices. Business is incredibly dynamic. Every industry is now a technology business, and the corporate playbook that evolved to protect profits is quite outdated.” Kim notes that Thomas Friedman poetically described this new normal in his 2005 book The World is Flat, and over the last 15 years, competition has only accelerated because of the explosion of two resources: cheap money and data. Kim notes that it’s a great environment to start or fund a business because interest rates have been low for the last 10+ years. There are dozens of new entrants in all industries, and all parts of the value chain, who are often well-funded, flexible, and are not weighed down by legacy business models and assets. The big winners are the customers who have increasing choice, lower prices, and great value capture. 2.The Challenging Environment From his corporate experience, Kim sees two significant challenges to strategy implementation. First, senior leaders turn over quickly. “It’s hard to have consistency of vision and leadership and implementation when there is such a movement in the C-suite with someone moving in and someone moving out every 5–6 months. So, it’s not a surprise that a lot of strategies either don’t follow through or there are too many cooks in the kitchen, and strategy gets a little bit muddled as a result.” Secondly, when the strategy does eventually make it to the ground-floor and needs to be executed, things have often moved on, and the market responses are rarely the ones you expect. Riffing on Peter Drucker’s famous quote on uncertainty, Kim explains to his students that, “Instead of trying to think of something brilliant to do tomorrow, why don’t you think of something very actionable today that prepares us for what we know will be a totally messy, crazy, unpredictable tomorrow.” 3.A Business Executive’s Response The business executive’s job is to not only set the direction, build a climate of trust, and create the energy for change—but also to be willing to test the assumptions and constraints around a given problem. Increasingly the answers will lie outside of a given industry, and thus require leaders to be broader in their horizon-scanning and more open to alternative paths forward. If you are interested in learning more about why business do indeed need a a strategy for a messy tomorrow – the let us help. John Kim is available to speak regarding this topic – simply click on his icon now to arrange an interview today.

John Kim

In the News

Big Wins for BBA case competition team

Emory Goizueta BBA  online

2024-05-16

BBA case competition team wins a lot of case competitions. In the last year, 1st place (3 times), 2nd place (twice).

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Faculty and staff honored for excellence in teaching

Emory News Center  online

2022-05-12

Vulcan Materials Company Teaching Excellence Award: John Kim, senior lecturer in organization and management

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Should you get your team in sync, async?

Atlassian - Work Check Podcast  online

2021-10-05

In this episode, you’ll hear from John Kim, of Emory University’s Goizueta Business School about the high cost of unnecessary meetings, and GitLab’s Jessica Reeder shares the story of her mind-bending move to flexible, asynchronous work. Harvard Business Review’s Christine Liu joins to defend the magic of collaborative, working meetings, and Rebels at Work author Carmen Medina shares what gets missed when groups don’t meet in real-time.

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