Consulting in the Gulf: The world speeds up

Speed: we’ve lost count of how many times we’ve heard that word from clients based in the Gulf states over recent weeks.  Here’s a typical comment, from a senior Saudi executive:  “We want to get a move on.  We need to make decisions and get started.”  Whether it’s their corporate strategy that’s being talked about, a leadership development programme or the implementation of new technology, time is of the essence.

This is an opportunity for consultants in the region – but it’s also a challenge, as our new report on the GCC consulting market in 2013 highlights.

The opportunity is obvious.  In our report on the market in 2012 we commented that clients in the region often feel cautious about handing over responsibility for getting things done to consulting firms.  There was, we observed at the time, a lingering cultural preference for older-style advisory work.  Mounting, if long-term, social, economic and political pressures have changed things: this year, we heard far more clients being far more willing to use consultants to get things done – a shift that is leading to larger, longer and more complex projects and an overall growth in demand for consulting.

But the challenge lies in the fact that larger, longer and more complex projects aren’t necessarily quick.  They may yield spectacular results, but are unlikely to do so overnight.  One response would be to explain this to clients, to set their expectations.  The trouble is that this seems to position consultants as part of the problem, not part of the solution: “We’d like consulting firms to be more innovative about the way they work, so they could get things done more quickly,” continued the same Saudi interviewee, “if they didn’t have to spend so much time finding out about our organisation and sector before they started, they might be able to work faster.”   “I couldn’t believe it,” said a Qatari executive, “the consulting firm put someone on the project who they said was an industry expert, but they just left him to it.  There was no process or methodology to help him work efficiently.  It felt like he was reinventing the wheel – and it was very basic stuff.”  Another client, this time based in Dubai, was even blunter: “If I simply want a good person, I can get a contractor or I could even recruit someone full-time: the point of using a consulting firm is that it’s supposed to have been through all this before and help us complete the project more quickly.”

Looking on the positive side, this creates a window for consulting firms able to demonstrate that they deliver not just results, but results at speed.