Advice vs implementation

Almost every consulting firm is laying claim to the space that lies somewhere between advice and execution / implementation.

Pure advice has been widely discredited by clients frustrated with the number of recommendations from consultants that are never acted on. Pure implementation would take consulting firms into outsourcing’s dangerous, low-margin territory. So most firms, like superpowers itching for battle over a rich but obscure Balkan state, say they do both. All of which is ironic when you look at the way they behave.

For some time now I’ve talked about the Four Ps of consulting, the four fundamental reasons why an organisation will use consultants: people (the access to specialist skills not available internally); process (methodology and momentum); perspective (the ability to see the wood for the trees); and politics (validating a decision already taken if not actually articulated).

To these, I think we should add a fifth: getting things done.

Increasingly high-profile concerns over the difficulty of valuing the benefits of consulting services is putting pressure on the industry to provide tangible proof of its impact. At the same time, procurement people, whose focus on daily rates has blurred the distinction between consultants and contractors, are waking up to the need to build consulting projects around outcomes, not inputs.