The one-second consulting project

By Edward Haigh.

A common complaint among many consulting firms, in recent years, is that clients have been unwilling to commit to big projects, at least in one go. Most clients seem to prefer doing things in small, manageable chunks that allow them to assess the value being delivered along the way, and that don’t leave them over-committed at a time when they’re nervous that something unexpected might crop up. Like thermonuclear war or something.

Seeing this as a phase that’s likely to pass is looking increasingly ill-advised, as we suggest in our new report–The hand on the mountain–How assets and productisation are re-shaping the consulting industry. In fact, we posit the idea that it’s part of a trend that’s a long way from being played out, and that, far from being frustrated about projects that last one month, consulting firms ought to start preparing for projects that last one second.

To understand the rationale for this probably requires us to shake up our definition of consulting to some degree, and to see it as encompassing (though not ending with) any situation in which a client has a question and decides to buy an answer.

In the past, those answers have been provided by human beings. But they’re increasingly being provided by machines, and though the process (or project, as we’re used to thinking of it) is likely to be shortened to the point where even a second might, frankly, be considered slow, it’s the same thing, isn’t it? You have a question, someone or something looks at all the available evidence in support of a range of answers, and then decides on the best one. Only now, clever old Holmes has been replaced by super-speedy Watson.

For the sake of clarity, I’m not suggesting that all consulting projects will last one second. Transformation projects, for example, will clearly take a lot longer. But I think there’s a danger that many consulting firms will fail to spot the opportunity presented by those that will. We also talk, in the report, about the idea of the human consulting world being eclipsed by machines, the result of which–as in a solar eclipse–is the appearance of a corona. We’re calling it the human corona, and it describes the advantage that humans will always have over machines, and that will only become brilliantly clear when everything else they do is eclipsed.

I think some consulting firms (likely to include strategy firms) will actively decide that their business is the corona. But I think others will decide what they’re not, without deciding what they are. I think they’ll decide that the eclipsed part, in which Watson delivers one second consulting projects, doesn’t fit with their definition of consulting, or their expertise, and steer clear. At the heart of that decision, I suspect, will be a concern about price. The one-second consulting project sounds like a very cheap project that belongs in the part of the market with which they don’t want to be associated.

That’s understandable, except for one thing. I don’t think there will be thousands of one-second consulting projects going on at any moment, like there are one-month consulting projects. I think there will be billions.