10 Great courses for consultants and managers

For the ones who work or have worked in it, being a consultant is much like being a jack of all trades. You come to perform a lot of different tasks and have knowledge (at least some) in a wide range of areas, even if you start or end up in a specific niche. If you are a specialist, you still learn, beyond your industry essentials, marketing, graphic design, storytelling, interpersonal skills, tech savyness?, travel hacks and so on. If you are a generalist, multiply that for the industries you work in and you get the definition of multidisciplinary (in the best and worst sense).

In that context, is true that, nowadays, as consultants we have infinite resources to work with and immediate information available but, still, deep knowledge in specific fields and tasks require time and effort. However, a growing number of e-learning platforms, make acquiring new skills much more easy and flexible. In my purpose of becoming (and making you) a fully resourced consultant, I gathered a list of the video courses that give you a quality background in aspects that are either embeded in the nature of a consultant or that have the potential to give you a clear competitive advantage.

Included in the list are courses from various platforms like Lynda.com, Udemy or Coursera among others, covering topics like financial modelling, presentations or big data. I hope you find interesting and new learning opportunities in it:

1. Data-Analysis Fundamentals with Excel with Curt Frye — Lynda.com:

It will not come as a surprise if I tell you that Lynda.com is my favorite e-learning platform, I made dozens of courses here that have helped me to stand out as a professional. This specific one is specially valuable for consultants. It goes through the fundamentals of data analysis and explores the less-known tools within Excel. Starts with foundational concepts, including an introduction to the central limit theorem, and then shows how to visualize data, relationships, and future results with Excel’s histograms, graphs, and charts. He also covers testing hypotheses, modeling different data distributions, and calculating the covariance and correlation between data sets and ends with Bayesian probabilities. A must-take course for consultants that perform data analysis and test hypothesis. Specially valuable if you are starting up as an analyst.

2. Up and Running with Excel What-If Analysis with Curt Frye — Lynda.com:

Another Lynda.com course and, in essence, the logical next step from the above one. Once again Curt Frye, goes one level up and shows how to analyze hypothetical business cases using formulas and variable data. Teaches how to build data tables, define alternative data sets with scenarios, find target values with Goal Seek, and analyze complex problems with Solver. The most valuable part will come to the end when the courses covers the steps to build a configurable model and Monte Carlo simulations. Building complex models to analyze future scenarios and test hypothesis is invaluable for management consultants and every info-worker in general. Go take it and boost your modeling skills

3. PowerPoint 2013 / 2010 Power Shortcuts with David Rivers — Lynda.com

If you are a consultant of any kind, but specially if you practice management or strategy consulting, your message is communicated mainly through what in the industry is known as decks. A deck is just the fancy word for presentation. A presentation forces the consultant to be clear, short and specific and, well practiced, is a powerful business tool. Although, there are quite a few software applications to prepare presentations, and I recognize I love to play with lots of them, PowerPoint is (and will be) the industry standard, the most known and used, and quite feature-rich.

As I assume you are already hands-on in PowerPoint, I suggest this course to take it to the next level. Master this tricks, could take your presentation to a whole new standard in graphic quality and no less importantly will considerably speed-up your workflow. Take a look at it and let me know if it is what you expected.

4. SQL: Intro to SQL: Querying and managing data — Udemy.com

A headache-intensive and crucial part of a consulting project start up phase more often than not involves data extraction and analysis. If your client is an already established business, it will likely store huge amounts of it and the extraction and cross-checking, could take weeks to complete. You or your company probably have some more technical-oriented consultants that could perform the extractions but knowing of the language works will help in emergency situations and, above all, will improve how to communicate what you want effectively and quickly. SQL is a special-purpose programming language designed for managing data in a relational database, and is used by a huge number of organizations. In this dynamic Khan Academy course, you will rapidly learn and be proficient on the basics.

5. Storytelling for Business — Udemy.com

One thing is to come up with brilliant insights and recommendations through long hours of analyzing, interpreting and investigating, and another one completely different but equally, if not more, important is to learn how to effectively communicate and sell them (YES, sell). If you are a brilliant analyst but struggle to get your message accross and generate your client or supervisor buy-in, this Udemy course will serve you well .

6. Data Visualization for Data Analysts with Bill Shander — Lynda.com

If you work by the principles of simplicity, clarity and cleaniness when communicating your message accross your client, you prbably know how hard it is to do. As in the McKinsey’s principle one chart one message, most of the time the complexity lies in making things simple. In this Lynda.com course, Bill Shander focuses on the key challenges analysts face trying to communicate complex information, and how visual communication can help. He breaks down ten key components of great data visualizations — built in any program — and shows innovative ways of rethinking the slides, charts, diagrams, and templates you work with every day.

7. Up and Running with Public Data Sets with Curt Frye — Lynda.com

The third piece of the Curt Frye in Lynda.com set is another invaluable course, this one more for the resources he lists and how to operate with them than for the complexity of the topic itself. He shows how to find free, public sources of data on a variety of business, education, and health issues and download the data for your own analysis. Resources range from the US government (from census to trademark data), international agencies such as the World Bank and United Nations, search engines, web services, and even language resources like the Ngram Viewer for Google Books.

Sometimes, the biggest time-waster activity of any project is to find consistent and reliable data. Set your self a list of good and free resources to start with taking this high quality short video-course.

8. Design with Photoshop: Photoshop CC Essential Training with Julieanne Kost — Lynda.com

Communicate clearly and shortly is an absolute must for consultants and a good, maybe the best, way to do so can be using graphics, charts and images. This is maybe not a standard nor specifically required skill within

the industry, but being agile handling photoshop can give a great boost and clarity to your messages and, why not, bells and whistles often create much value to your deliverables. There is a diference between listing the features or characteristics of a product, and a whole diferent level is to draft a quick but realistic prototype and put it in your slide to catch on your customers attention. Besides, there are already thousands of PSD templates and resources available, mocking-up a whole lote of products and interfarces, so you will not have to start from scratch.

Whether you’re relatively hands-on in Photoshop or someone with zero experience, learning how to manage the most used design software effectively is the best investment you can make to get the most out of your documents. Julieanne Kost filters out the noise and complexity often associated with Photoshop, so you’ll feel empowered to get the image results you want.

9. Coding: — Programming Basics (Python) — Coursera

And…here it is: there is a lot of noise nowadays about the convinience of learning to code whatever career you are on (I recently wrote an article expresing my belief), but getting some basics in programmins, is the best way to improve and automate your processes, handle huge amounts of data, speed up your workflow and even help you get a more structured mind, and this course is specifically designed to be a first programming course using the popular Python programming language. The pace of the course is designed to lead to mastery of each of the topics in the class. It uses simple data analysis as the programming exercises through the course. Understanding how to process data is valuable for everyone regardless of your career. This course might kindle an interest in more advanced programming courses or courses in web design and development or just provide skills when you are faced with a bunch of data that you need to analyze. You can do the programming assignments for the class using a web browser or using your personal computer. All required software for the course is free.

10. A course specific to your industry

This one is rather obvious but reminding it does not hurt. Even if you take every consulting-oriented course in the world, you still have to acquire profound knowledge of the industry which you are currently in. The most effective course you can take is the one that goes one mile deep in your industry. Lynda.com, Udemy, Codeacademy, Udacity, EdX, Coursera and more specialized MOOCs will surely have a course that suits your needs or can give your career a boost. Check some examples by role in the lines below:

Finance: Financial and Capital Markets — Khan Academy

IT Consultant: Big Data: Techniques and Concepts of Big Data with Barton Poulson — Lynda-com

Management Consulting: Learn Management Consulting — Udemy

Logistics: Supply Chain Management Fundamentals with Eddie Davila — Lynda.com

Hope this list comes in handy. Try some of this courses, or better yet, have a plan (link) of your on-line education and you will mark the difference in your current and future roles. If I missed (surely I did) some great courses or resources, please share them in the comments and let’s talk!