Consulting Skills: Solve Problems Like a Consultant
Signature Course No. 137 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
A New Kind of Learning
Socratic coaching, delivered by an agentic AI coach.
Not a course you watch. An AI coach you work with.
The Lighthouse Coach begins by discovering how you think about the subject, teaches what is missing, and gives you realistic practice before asking you to prove that you can use it. You may test out of concepts you already understand, while capstones turn the learning into a practical plan, decision, conversation, or other real-world result.
The curriculum is deliberately authored; the AI delivers it through coaching. It is not an AI randomly generating lessons.
A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing
The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's Consulting Skills: Solve Problems Like a Consultant course, in the Leadership & Management category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.
This is the course for internal problem-solvers — operations leads, chiefs of staff, analysts, and project managers handed the hard, unstructured problems inside their own organizations — for aspiring consultants who want the full engagement craft, for managers who buy or receive consulting work, and for specialists whose deep knowledge is trusted but whose problem-framing and recommendation skills are not yet.
It works as one engagement arc. First, Module 1 — Structuring the Problem — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Structured Diagnosis; then, Module 2 — Working the Engagement — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The Recommendation That Lands.
One running engagement carries the whole course: an independent consultant, Ingrid Solberg, and her client, Dunmore Packaging Group, whose profit has halved while its sales grew. The case facts are stated once, in full, and every concept works from them — figures labeled facts stay facts, and figures labeled estimates stay estimates, every time they travel.
The methods are taught as a generic craft — issue trees, MECE structuring, hypothesis-driven analysis, and storylining, described in plain generic language you can carry into any room, whatever your title or employer.
You finish by proving the whole course — in The Structured Diagnosis and in The Recommendation That Lands. You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies, hands-free. In this course the Voice Coach is not an extra — framing a problem for a sponsor, defending a sizing estimate, and delivering bad news are spoken acts.
The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — a structured diagnosis of the running engagement, and a complete closing package with its recommendation, storyline, meeting plan, and ninety-day landing plan — written to be usable on the real job, not just filed in the course.
This is the one hundred and thirty-seventh course in The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning has delivered since 2002.
Course Facts
One full concept, coached end to end — free: verify your email and we’ll send you a link to start.
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Diagnose → Learn & Practice → Prove → Capstone
Every learner moves through the same discipline a Cognosco instructor would insist on in the room.
Diagnose
The Coach starts where the course starts: with the frame. Most problem-solving fails before the first analysis — in the week spent solving a problem nobody framed. Every concept opens with three questions that locate where you actually stand, and your answers shape how deeply the Coach works the concept with you. Everyone begins with Module 1 — no skipping the foundations you only think you have.
Learn & Practice
Work each concept in conversation with the Coach — spoken or written — then practice it against realistic situations until it holds up.
Prove
Every concept ends in proof: answer the check cold and demonstrate the skill. Know it already? Test out and take credit immediately.
Capstone
Finish with two capstones — The Structured Diagnosis for Module 1 and The Recommendation That Lands for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
Some people solve problems the way consultants do, whether or not they have ever held the title. They refuse to start until they know what decision the work must serve. They break a tangled problem into parts small enough to test. They state what they expect to find before they go looking, so the evidence can prove them wrong. They ask only for the data that could change the answer.
And when they speak, they do not recite everything they learned — they deliver a recommendation a busy decision-maker can act on, with the trade-offs named in plain words. This course teaches that craft, whole, as one engagement arc.
You will learn to frame a problem before solving it, structure it with issue trees and MECE discipline, work it hypothesis-first, prioritize the branches that carry the money, request and run analyses that each answer a named question, and synthesize findings into a “so what” a client can use.
Then you will learn the human half of the craft, which decides whether good analysis ever matters: reading who the real client is, interviewing without leading, running working sessions that think, handling resistance and bad news, building a recommendation from options and criteria, storylining it, putting it on pages whose headlines carry the argument, defending it in the room, and landing it — owners, dates, and measures — so the decision survives your departure.
What you will learn
- Frame a problem as a decision — client, deadline, and success criteria — before any analysis begins
- Structure a problem with issue trees that are MECE: no overlaps, no gaps
- Work hypothesis-first — state what you expect, design the test that could break it, and let evidence decide
- Prioritize by sized impact, request only decision-changing data, and run analyses that each answer a named branch
- Synthesize findings into a recommendation built from options, criteria, and honest trade-offs
- Handle the client side of the craft — stakeholders, interviews, working sessions, resistance, and bad news
- Deliver and land the work — storyline, pages, the defended presentation, and a hand-off with owners, dates, and measures
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of Consulting Skills: Solve Problems Like a Consultant, in 2 modules
- A starting-point check first — the Coach finds where you actually stand before teaching
- Learn, Practice, Prove for every concept — no passive video watching
- A test-out on every concept: prove you know it and move on
- The Voice Coach: talk with the Coach out loud — it speaks, listens, and replies
- A personal Learner Record of your work across the course
- Two capstone exercises: The Structured Diagnosis and The Recommendation That Lands
- A printable session summary whenever you pause
- The Lighthouse Coach completion certificate (Signature Series)
- Your progress is saved as you go — stop anytime, resume where you left off
Built for the person handed the unstructured problem
Consulting Skills: Solve Problems Like a Consultant is for internal problem-solvers handed the hard, unstructured problems inside their own organizations and expected to bring back answers, not activity reports, for aspiring consultants who can do analysis and want the full engagement craft — structuring, client handling, and delivery, not just the spreadsheet — and for managers who buy or receive consulting work and need to hold a recommendation to a standard.
It is also for specialists widening out — engineers, accountants, marketers — whose deep knowledge is trusted but whose problem-framing and recommendation skills are not yet.
This is a Leadership & Management course. It assumes experience working inside at least one organization and comfort with ordinary business figures — percentages, simple totals, a profit line. It assumes no consulting background.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with The Structured Diagnosis
$195 — introductory price. One payment. No subscription, no password to manage.
Here is exactly what happens when you enroll:
- Pay securely with Stripe — you are taken straight into the course
- Create your learner profile and begin the Module 1 starting-point check
- Save the access key you are given — it restores your enrollment on any device
- Learn at your pace; your progress is stored in your browser on your device
For the full voice experience, use Chrome and allow the microphone when asked. Typing your answers works everywhere, all the time. Questions before you enroll? Email hello@cognoscolearning.com.
More Signature Courses are coming
Consulting Skills: Solve Problems Like a Consultant is Signature Course No. 137. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.