Clients we place into McKinsey etc from the so-called tier-2 firms like Booz, Deloitte, KPMG etc always think they will struggle most with the analytic and other technical elements. We see a flurry of activity, and anxiousness to master story boarding model building, brainstorming and hypotheses development. Our advice to these clients is that this should be the least of their worries. The harsh reality is that they have been pre-wired to think about the wrong priorities on soft-issues, and these intangible areas cause more trouble than they could imagine. Many find that very difficult to understand, so here are some stories based on our own clients' experiences demonstrating how the soft issues could betray your ambitions.