As I'm practicing consulting cases right now for an MBB interview, my standard question to reducing company costs is: can we reduce labor costs by lowering their wage? Ah, they're unionized. Ok, let's look at another cost saving strategy that does not involve labor.

The first time I learned this I was shocked that this is a standard question in case practice for strategy/implementation consultants. Now I'm happy that I know this is how strategy/implementation consultants think. It kind of feels like learning to defend against economic exploits by coming up with them yourself (a similar thing occurs with security when one learns ethical hacking).