| | By Mick James
I have for many years
followed and generally
warmly supported the
development of the
“IMC”, first as the
Institute of Management
Consultants, and then of
Consultancy, after it
became a member
institute of the
Chartered Management
Institute (a.k.a. the
CMI. This article is not
for the initial-phobic,
but then neither is a
career in consultancy).
But I have to confess
I am a little puzzled by
its latest evolution.
After a merger with the
Institute of Business
Advisers (IBA), “the
Institute” is now to be
known as the Institute
of Business Consulting
(IBC), continuing as a
member institute of the
CMI but with a broader
membership remit which
now embraces trainers,
coaches and a myriad of
other advisers who
“enhance business
performance” .
My problems start
with the choice of name.
“The Institute of
Business Consulting” has
a flat ring to it,
sounding like a
correspondence course
college. You know the
sort of thing: “Become a
management consultant or
business coach, and earn
£1,000 ($1,700) a day...
Once you complete the
course, you'll receive
your Diploma. It's the
formal recognition
you'll have earned of
your skills and
knowledge. You also get
to use the letters
'Dip.MC (Inst.BC)' after
your name.” Which is
exactly what is on offer
from an “Institute of
Business Consulting”
based in Somerset, who
advertise just such a | |
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| | product (and which
shouldn’t ever be
confused with the IMC
Diploma in Management
Consultancy, the advert
for which asks: “Do you
want to get paid between
USD 1000 and USD 2000
per day and be
recognised as one of the
top consultants
worldwide by the
International Council of
Management Consulting
Institutes (ICMCI)?”) It
will be interesting to
see whether the Somerset
IBC has anything to say
about the IMC/IBA IBC
registering its name as
a trademark.
The branding issue
becomes more serious
when you think of the
long struggle that the
old Institute had to
impress both the
initials IMC, and the
monumentally tough to
acquire CMC (Certified
Management Consultant)
qualification, on client
minds. True, the CMC
qualification isn’t
going away. It’s a
trademark of the ICMCI,
and will continue to be
awarded by the IBC. But
the brand equity and
client recognition
associated with the IMC
name is gone for ever –
which is tough for those
consultancies which have
invested considerable
time and effort in
becoming IMC Recognised
or Premium practices,
and use this as a
credential when
competing with the “big
boys” for blue-chip
clients. Given that the
“small team that does
big things” is the
hottest story at the
moment in consultancy, I
worry that the Institute
may be weakening its
appeal to precisely
those practices which
are the future of the | |
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That said, one has to
question how high that
brand recognition ever
was – even some of the
clients who came along
to the IBC launch event
to wax lyrical about the
benefits of consultancy
seemed not to be aware
of the existence of the
CMC qualification. And
the big consultancies,
which employ the vast
majority of practising
consultants in the UK,
have, with very few
exceptions, never seen a
branding value in making
any sort of commitment
to either the IMC or the
CMC qualification.
Which brings me to
the issue of
exclusivity. When I
first came in contact
with the IMC it believed
that the route to
success was by
relentlessly driving up
standards through the
CMC qualification and
the enforcement of
professional standards.
From the outside this
seemed to boil down to
making it ridiculously
hard for people to get
in, and then devising
endless procedures to
throw them out again.
But without any legal
restrictions to
practising, these
strictures were largely
meaningless,
particularly as many
consultants operating
outside the Institute
annoyingly persisted in
behaving ethically,
professionally and
delivering high quality
consultancy.
My view was that to
successfully establish
themselves as a
profession consultants
needed to first get
everyone inside the
tent, and only then
start erecting barriers | |
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| | to entry and raising
standards. Lacking
sponsorship from major
employers, clients or
the government, the only
route to success would
be developing an
irresistible package of
benefits for members,
rather than an endless
series of hoops for them
to jump through.
Over the years, this
exclusivity has
softened, and with the
link up with the CMI,
the IMC became a much
broader church and
developed new levels of
membership. I welcomed
this: consultancy is
nothing if not a tool at
the disposal of
management, and the two
professions are closer
now than ever before. I
wonder if this latest
move doesn’t stretch the
consulting brand too
far. I have nothing
against training or
coaching any more than I
do against IT systems
development or
outsourcing. But I would
always want to
distinguish these
activities from the
provision of high
value-adding consultancy
to management. It’s not
easy to make these
distinctions at the
boundaries, but I feel
it’s important to try,
not least to preserve
the achievement and
personal branding of
those individuals that
practice it at the
highest levels. I find
it interesting that at
this precise moment the
Management Consultancies
Association (MCA),
itself a much broader
church than it used to
be, is making efforts to
more precisely
categorise its members’
wide-ranging activities,
and identify the core of | |
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| | consultancy which it
considers to be its
proper remit.
Against these doubts,
the new, inclusive
Institute does gain from
an expanded membership,
and a much broader view
of the business
landscape. Should the EU
ever decide to regulate
consultancy and use the
Institute as its vector
there would be few
nommes de guerre outside
its rubric under which
fleeing consultants
could hide. And there’ll
be frameworks and
competences and new
qualifications, and
committees to oversee it
all. But for an
institute to succeed it
needs to do more than
conceptually map out its
terrain. What will drive
the future success of
the Institute? Demand
from clients? Unlikely,
even if scarce resources
were devoted to a
massive
awareness-raising
campaign. Government
intervention? Well
there’s no saying what
regulative lunacy the EU
or a Brown premiership
might come up with, but
at the moment it doesn’t
seem to be on the cards.
The only way forward
must be in the
development of an
utterly compelling case
for membership, in which
the benefits far
outweigh the direct and
opportunity costs of
joining. I don’t see
that yet, but it will be
interesting to see what
the new Institute comes
up with over the next
few weeks and months.
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