Life in old pyramids

The belief that the 'pyramid' model of consulting may have had its day is one that's becoming increasingly widespread, not least because we keep talking about it.

What replaces it is the subject of much conjecture and no little amusement. Some talk of slimmer pyramids, some of diamonds; those of a more macabre inclination are drawn to the idea of the coffin-shaped firm, while we've spent some time in the past trying to get everyone interested in the hourglass.

But a conversation I had with a senior procurement manager in an oil major recently reminded me that we shouldn't be too hasty in sounding the death knell for the old pyramid. "It's exactly what I want," he told me. "I'd love it if firms would sell me the pyramid."

Mentally scouring our website to check for images of pyramids with RIP written on them, I asked him to elaborate. "What we need are teams made up of a relatively large number of junior people working under the guidance of a relatively small number of more experienced senior consultants," he went on. "What we get are teams made up of a large number of very senior - and very expensive - consultants."

There are a number of factors at play here:

The first is the organisation: oil majors are some of the biggest buyers of consulting services in the world. Unlike some organisations, for them the question is less about whether they should be using consultants in the first place and more about the value they get from those consultants. While smaller organisations may be unsettled by the sight of big consulting teams working under their roofs, oil majors are fairly used to it. Their projects are big and they need big numbers of people to get them done. So it's the composition, rather than the existence, of those big consulting teams which are of most interest to them.

The second is that this is a procurement manager's view of the situation. It may not be any different from that of an end client within an organisation like this, but it may be. Clients may have very good reasons for wanting a team made up entirely of senior, experienced consultants - reasons which might not be made clear to the procurement manager who just sees them as costs which need to be justified. I'm being slightly uncharitable to the procurement manager here, but the idea that there's a disconnect between procurement departments and the end client isn't the most far-fetched.

The third switches attention to the supply side: to be uncharitable (once again) the simple way to look at this is that consulting firms are trying to sell as many senior people as possible - even if they're not really needed - in order to make as much money as possible from a big-spending client. The kinder, more nuanced, explanation is that consulting firms genuinely find themselves in a bind. Client sentiment has indeed been turning against the pyramid - a result of them wising up (both to the idea that the bottom is where the money's made, and to the fact that 'capacity' is something they can buy more cheaply from elsewhere), and because greater internal capability leaves them looking only for the specific, deep, expertise that they don't have in-house - and so consulting firms have found it harder to carry a bench full of young talent. Added to which, there have been fewer big projects knocking around in the last few years than there used to be because clients haven't had the money to pay for them. So consulting firms are expected to ditch the pyramid but then to bring it back at the click of a client's fingers. Which isn't easy at all.

The inevitable conclusion, once again, is that flexibility is what matters most. The future may be diamond-, coffin- or hourglass-shaped, but pyramids have stood for many years and reports of their demise, as it turns out, may be exaggerated.