| | By Mick James
For a growing
consultancy firm, one of
the dangers is the
opportunism and
happenstance that can
take the practice down
routes the founders never
envisaged. Defining what
success means is one of
the key challenges for
the leader of a growing
firm.
For Dom Moorhouse,
founder of Moorhouse
Consulting, the goal has
always been clear: "We're
not seeking world
domination, but we do
want to be the premier
practice in the UK in
terms of advisory
services in the programme
management space," he
says. "We'll never
measure that by size, but
by the accolades we
receive."
Moorhouse started his
firm after leaving the
Royal Marines to do an
MBA course and a
four-year stint with
Deloitte's programme
leadership practice. "I
felt programme leadership
could be a cogent
offering in its own
right," he says, "There
was no megalomania, just
a five-year plan to
create a niche practice." | |
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Moorhouse says that
he's had to "recalibrate
his aspiration" every
year but has always
tempered it with realism.
"Over the next year we
plan to add between five
and eight people," says
Moorhouse. "We could grow
much quicker but we
temper our growth – we
don't want to dilute the
quality of the people who
work for us."
Moorhouse believes
that the ability to start
with a "blank sheet of
paper" was a great
advantage in building the
firm, which has now grown
to nearly 40
professionals. The firm
only recruits individuals
it sees as "upper
quartile", with at least
four years’ experience
with a major business
management consultancy.
"I'm constantly amazed
by the talent we have in
the team," he says. "I
often ask myself, what
have I contributed? I
think it's that I'm a
fairly good judge of
character."
With a regular
programme of UK awaydays,
as well as annual trips
to more exotic locations
such as the Atlas
Mountains, Moorhouse | |
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| | likes to tap into this
talent to help plan the
development of the
consultancy itself.
"We give people a
chance to nudge the
tiller a bit," he says.
"We spent five days in
Morocco looking at the
next five-year business
plan, the growth of the
team, and how we might
handle that in terms of
culture."
Internal teams are
also responsible for the
"Moorhouse enablers",
developing the structures
in IT, HR, marketing and
so forth which will
support the growth of the
organisation. Moorhouse
himself has moved away
from consultancy work,
feeling that it wasn't
fair to clients to
partition his time or to
the firm to be an "MD in
the margins".
"The value I bring is
to spend more time on the
business rather than in
the business, to
facilitate its growth and
the global joining up of
our teams," he says. "So
much of our work is done
by a number of small
teams at clients – they
may not be able to take
that helicopter view."
Moorhouse Consulting | |
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| | works in small teams of
two to four people who
work at the apex of a
much larger client team.
"We want to be the leader
behind the leaders," he
says, "Our focus is on
giving our clients the
capability to manage
projects for themselves."
Early on the firm
developed a reputation
for "understaying its
welcome", refusing to
extend an engagement with
a client when it felt
that client could carry
on by themselves. This
is not just an ethical
stance, but commercially
savvy, says Moorhouse:
"Our values were intact
but our revenue stream
had dried up," he says.
"But soon the phone rang
again with the next piece
of work in the same
organisation."
This stance is
particularly important in
the public sector work,
which makes up the bulk
of Moorhouse Consulting's
income. In one project
they are working to
reduce a client's
dependence on externals
from 40% to 10% of their
staff, and develop an
in-house ability to lead
projects.
"There's definitely a | |
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| | dynamic in the public
organisations we work for
to estimate the capacity
issues rather naively in
terms of pound signs, but
the critical constraint
is never money," says
Moorhouse. "It's always
in the executive
bandwidth and talent to
be able to lead these
programmes seriously."
For Moorhouse,
successfully developing
his client's capabilities
is far more important
than being constantly
employed to hold their
hands.
"The public sector is
far more challenging but
you get a lot more reward
when you put in a stable
improvement," he says.
Recently he returned to a
client to find them
actually celebrating the
anniversary of the
internal change
methodology his team had
helped to imbed. "I
think that was the
highlight of my
consulting career," he
says.
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