Strategic planning

By Fiona Czerniawska.

THE SCENE: A bar in midtown Manhattan. It’s late and two men in their 50s sit hunched over their beers. Matt is the corporate risk officer for a major pharmaceutical company. Greying and a little broad around the middle, he no longer aspires to be a professional ping-pong player. He simply wants to get through the week without another crisis. Sandy is his drinking partner of many years, since they met up at business school and discovered a common liking for burritos. Sandy is the financial controller of a well-known arts and craft magazine, a job Matt would happily trade for any day of the week. MATT runs his finger down the droplets on the side of his glass.

By Fiona Czerniawska.

Our recent report on how the consulting delivery model could change from being an often uncomfortable and suboptimal mix of advice and implementation to a combination of deep expertise, smart software, and proprietary data (something we’ve reluctantly—in the absence of anything better—termed “managed services”) has triggered more conversations with more firms than anything else we’ve written this year. So what have we learnt?

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.