Career Journey of a Consultant Rockstar Featuring Jonathan

In this Where are They Now? episode, Christie interviews Jonathan, now a Senior Vice President at a global marketing firm and a former consulting colleague with the brand of a rockstar. Jonathan shares stories of his career journey and how he transitioned from the media & entertainment industry into consulting and back into the music industry.

Jonathan also discusses a myriad of topics including:

* Moving from Virginia to NYC to Los Angeles and living differences between the various cities.

* Genesis of shareholder value as a strategic priority in corporations and its impact on organizational cultures.

* Things to consider when deciding to pursue an MBA and how to get a free education.

* Realities of firing a client that compromises integrity and values.

* Becoming a trusted advisor for your client and Jonathan’s definition of a great consultant.

* Hacks to get promoted quickly as a newbie in a consulting firm.

In career dilemma segment of the show, Christie and Jonathan gives advice on how to manage conflicts and build relationships with a difficult client.

Listen to the Episode Here:

We will be doing a segment that I call Where Are They Now. Where Are They Now are essentially opportunities where I connect with an individual that I used to work with, a former colleague, who had the brand of a rock star. We have fun re-connecting conversation on the show. If you want to hear about the journey of how I wrote my book, you can check out Episode 2 where I share a little bit of what I went through. If you’re every interested in publishing a book, let me tell you. Writing the book was actually the easiest part. The publishing aspect of it is pretty intense and lots of lessons learned, lots of twist and turns. It’s taking a lot longer than I anticipated. That’s the key idea from every other author that I have spoken to. It takes more time than you sometimes anticipate but it helps to round out and make a great product.

In our episode, I had a chance to connect with Jonathan. He is a former consultant. He is now a senior vice president at a global marketing firm. Jonathan has a great background in media and entertainment. In today’s career dilemma, I had a mentee reach out to me about a client that continues to throw her under the bus, and what she should do about that? In this episode, we are going to give my mentee some advice and things that she can consider to help manage that dynamic. I had other people asking me about a previous Where are They Now episode I did. Check out Episode 12. I did connect with Ron in that episode.

Interview with Jonathan

Jonathan, thank you so much for making time to connect with us today on the MECE Muse Unplugged.

Thank you for inviting me.

It’s been so many years. So much has changed in our lives and in the world, so thank you for your time today. Maybe you can share with the go getters of the MECE Muse Unplugged a little bit about who you are and your background.

My name is Jonathan Jordan. I am right now in LA, Los Angeles but originally I’m from the East Coast. I’ve been out here for about two years. I grew up in Virginia and DC area, and then migrated up to New York City, which is when we met when we were both working at a big four. I’m in New York for about seven years. After that I moved out here and there’s tons of great opportunity out here. My current role is focused around the same stuff that I’ve been doing most of my career in consulting. Most of the work I do is focused on people strategy. Whether that’s people in organizational change management or whether...