Big Four firms

By Fiona Czerniawska.

Sometimes you really, really want to scream.

The consulting industry has one of the best value propositions of any industry in the world. What do consultants do? They make business better. So what do they say they do? They talk about how good they are at teaming, and at cross-border working. They tell us they’re more innovative than the next firm, better at implementing than the last. But do they tell us that they’re going to make our organisations better? As I said, in the deafening silence, you want to scream with frustration.

By Fiona Czerniawska.

Avid readers of our blog will be familiar with our concept of Fortress Strategy: the idea that clients have mentally erected thick walls around the major strategy firms that prevent other firms entering their space, but which equally trap strategy firms in a business model that doesn’t necessarily suit current market conditions.

By Fiona Czerniawska.

Size has long mattered in the consulting industry: in the last five years, we estimate that firms with more than 1,000 consultants have grown by 46%, 2.3 times the rate of smaller ones.

That’s not new: if you went back to the 1970s and tracked firms’ growth since, allowing for all the inevitable mergers and acquisitions, you’d see that the firms that dominated consulting then are still those that rule the roost today. Smaller firms come and go, but the big firms march relentlessly on.  There are several reasons for this. Big firms are more likely to work on big projects for big clients: if you’re the CEO of a major corporation you’d don’t hire a ten-person firm to do the global roll-out of your new strategy. You may bring small firms in for specialist advice, and you may well be prepared to pay a premium price for that, but you don’t expect them to cover the ground. With more money coming in, big firms have been able to invest in account management, so they’re alert to upcoming opportunities and are more likely to win them because they know those involved. The biggest firms, too, have been able to attract the best people because they pay more and claim to offer more interesting work with iconic brands.