Business model

By Fiona Czerniawska.

Many years ago, I took part in a panel debate about consulting at London Business School. An hour or so into the discussion, a tentative hand went up in the audience. “I’m sorry,” the student said. “This is all very interesting, but I still don’t understand what consulting is.”

It’s a question that’s being asked again today, but this time behind the closed doors of senior partners’ offices. For consulting firms, contemplating their strategy, how they answer this question will determine their future success.

On one side, there are people who see consulting work as a cerebral activity, done by smart, creative people working with smart, creative clients, which helps organisations adopt and adapt best practice and innovative ideas, all in pursuit of better performance. This is, of course, the classic view of consulting—one that would be recognised by the original James O. McKinsey back in the 1930s and one that was nurtured by his illustrious successor, Marvin Bower, who ran McKinsey from 1950 to 1967 and remained a highly influential figure into the 1990s.

By Fiona Czerniawska.

It sounds as though it should be a movie, a grim account of an unravelling dystopia. And, for some consultants, that’s probably exactly what it feels like.

The origins of the consulting firm, as an institution of collective activity, lie in fragmentation. Individual experts, working autonomously, built up small teams of more junior people around them who could leverage the partner’s expertise across a number of projects. But it was a hunter-gatherer model that allowed little opportunity for investment: Every expert-team combination was constantly on the move, either working on existing projects or looking for new ones. With the arrival of larger, longer projects, often centred around technology, these small teams needed to start to work together. The key experts, accustomed to independence, found themselves part of an emerging hierarchy—and they weren’t happy. To solve the issue and salve their egos, they came up with the partnership structure.

By Fiona Czerniawska.

My husband, a mild-mannered but physically imposing man, once ripped up an IKEA catalogue in front of the store’s checkout assistant.

To be fair, we’d been waiting in the queue for two hours, having inadvertently visited the store on a morning when it started a major sale, but in our defence I’d plead that only a small number of the checkouts were manned, and that it was a long time since we’d had breakfast. We’d done the usual things—eyeing up the shelves of lingonberry jam, discussing whether that pot plant was just what was needed for the study, wondering why Swedish is the language it is. But two hours was still two hours, and by the time we started to load our heavy boxes on to a conveyor belt clearly designed for professional weightlifters, my husband had clearly had enough. “There’s no way we’re ever going to shop in Ikea again*,” he said, letting rip literally and figuratively.

You’re probably thinking that this doesn’t have much to do with consultants. Premium consulting, all expensive suits and business travel, seems a world away from cheerful flat packs, but pause for a moment.