'Success comes with enjoying being in the workplace and listening very hard'

British-born Chris Outram, founder, chairman emeritus of OC&C Strategy Consultants, says he had had a "very strange" childhood as his father was in the Royal Air Force, so every three years, he and his family had to move on.

"I used to move around a lot, attending a lot of different schools. Eventually, I ended up at the University of Birmingham. When I finished university, I relocated to London in 1972," he recalls.

He did two degrees at the same time in university - one in mechanical engineering and the other in industrial economics and graduated with double honors. Both degrees have served him very well - being an engineer makes him very disciplined and thoughtful, while economics is fundamental to what he's doing now.

"I was very lucky in that I had accidentally picked the right subjects. I had worked in the industry for four years and later went to a business school of INSEAD in 1976."

Outram says he had heard about consulting in business school and, after graduation, he joined a strategy consulting firm, had great fun before going on to found OC&C in 1987, and never looked back.

From the outset, the company has been going to top universities to recruit their top students.

"The strange thing about our firm is that, in order to do the sort of work we do, you have to be really bright, so we go to universities, and we find absolutely the brightest people. We don't care what they majored in at university, whether it's English or Chinese, as long as they are smart, have a mathematical aptitude and are very flexible, we can teach them what to apply to."

Outram stresses they will make sure that the people they recruit are very nice people, as they need to face clients. The company wants to form real partnerships with clients and not to show them "we are smarter than you are".

Most of OC&C's work takes up to two to three months long, so they'll be facing a different and very high level problem every two to three months. Outram says their employees are working on very interesting stuff, as the clients won't come to the firm with easy or boring problems, and the employees are learning a lot, and most of them are very self-motivated as they want to do this.

"I, for one, still get up early in the morning to work on our clients' stuff."

For those who are in the early stages of their career and want to succeed, Outram advises, they'll have to work hard. It doesn't matter if they're with OC&C or in finance or corporate business. Anybody who's very ambitious and wants to be successful will have to put a lot of time into it.

For young people who do want to make the grade in future, Outram suggests they should listen hard when they join a company, listen to what's going on and try to understand what the senior employees are doing.

"If you do all that and enjoy what you do, you'll be reasonably successful."

sophiehe@chinadailyhk.com