It is our choices that show us as we truly are

Regular readers of this blog will know that from time to time we like to entertain ourselves by finding parallels with the consulting industry in far-flung, unexpected places. Last week’s musings on which consulting firm resembles which make of car generated considerable interest (and there’s still time to fill in our two-minute survey telling us what you think). This week it’s Harry Potter.

Perhaps not the most obvious handbook for consultants, you might think. After all, that magic wand waving stuff is something that today’s consulting industry, anxious to manage clients’ expectations, would be keen to distance itself from. But I refer you to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, in which Harry, in between crash-landing into the Whomping Willow and slaying the basilisk, worries about his dark side. Was he born to be the heir of evil Slytherin?

Consulting firms spend a lot of time on the corporate equivalent of the psychiatrist’s couch. Are they specialists or generalists, advisors or implementers? They agonise about their DNA; they blame their parent companies. Like Harry, they worry about who they are.

If you want an example of this introspection, you only need to look at the networks of offices maintained by all the big consulting firms. Having – the equivalent of being born with – such a network doesn’t necessarily make you a multinational firm. Indeed, research we recently carried out in the financial services sector showed that clients buy consulting services from Big Four firms for many reasons, but getting global teams, made up of people who come from different countries but feel at home wherever they are (something strategy firms do as a matter of course), is not one of them. The size of your global footprint matters less than what you choose to do with it: you can have people liberally distributed across the world, but if they never work together, how different are they to a local consulting firm? By contrast, a firm that has just one office, but a globally-recognised depth of expertise in a particular field, is more likely to have consultants who feel comfortable in any international environment.

Yes, of course, a firm with multiple offices may be the only one capable of offering the same service across the world, but it can do so only because it reduces global differentiation. It’s rolling out a standardised process across the world and there’s unquestionably a market among clients for that. But a global firm doesn’t necessarily equal a global mindset.

As Dumbledore observes to Harry, “It’s not our abilities that show what we truly are. It’s our choices”.