Strategic planning

Big firms are growing faster than smaller ones.  They’re using their scale to deliver work across borders, their brand to cement relationships in uncertain times, and their financial muscle to keep prices low.  But because none of these things will deliver the level of growth they need, they’re also making acquisitions.  A plethora of small and even mid-sized firms have been snapped by the Big Four firms over the last couple of years and there’s no sign of a let-up.

When my son was younger, just starting to relinquish my hand as we walked along the street and perhaps slightly intimidated by the enormous world around him, he always used to look down at the pavement.  One day the inevitable happened and he crashed into a tactlessly-positioned lamp-post.

This is a good analogy to the predicament the consulting industry finds itself in today.

“If you insist on beginning only with certainties, you shall end in doubts,” wrote Francis Bacon in the seventeenth century, “but if you will be content to begin with doubts you shall end up in certainties.”

It is advice, we feel, consulting firms would do well to listen to.