| | By Mick James
The more consulting
firms I talk to, the
more variety I find in
terms of business models
and service offerings.
When you look at the
companies that have
consultancy
subsidiaries, the mix
becomes even wilder: one
firm might do your
books, another will
empty your bins.
When it comes to
recruitment, there's not
so much variety. Over
and over again I hear
the same demand: we want
experienced consultants
with deep content
knowledge. And as the
well runs dry, it's
increasingly the content
knowledge that is sought
over and above the
consultancy background.
Nowadays nearly
everyone extols what
they call the "diamond
model" over the
"traditional pyramid".
The very use of the word
"pyramid" conjures up
the negative
associations of
pyramid-selling, of
deeply hierarchical
organisations consisting
of a mass of drones with
a few evil geniuses at
the top. It also evokes
one of the perennial
images of
consultant-bashing: the
arrogant and ignorant
twenty-something riding
roughshod over the loyal
and experienced
workforce.
The diamond model
offers, by contrast, a
thick middle tier of | |
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| | to new ideas.
Creative, innovative
thought is something
that the young have
something of an
advantage in. The great
mathematicians and
physicists, for example,
often do most of their
best work in their 20s.
We talk a lot about
ageism these days, but
tend to forget it works
both ways. Dismissal of
the young as "wet behind
the ears" is as
offensive in its way as
assuming the old are
worn out and useless.
That’s not to say
that the old pyramid
model of the 1990s
didn't have some pretty
serious drawbacks.
There was a lot of
serious criticism about
the way consultancies
tended to deploy great
armies of consultants on
enormous day-rates,
often doing quite
low-level work. But
nowadays clients are –
or at least should be –
better prepared. There
should be no need to pay
junior consultants to do
basic information or
preparatory work and
clients should also be
demanding the
opportunity and
knowledge transfer to
carry out a lot of basic
implementation
themselves.
But the sword cuts
both ways – if a
consultancy doesn't have
squads of eager youths
doing the residual
low-level work then who
is? Clients have been | |
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| | pretty good at using
procurement to keep fee
rates down, even during
the present consultancy
boom. One answer to
this is to deploy only
consultants who can
justify higher fee rates
by virtue of their
seniority. That doesn't
mean that all the work
they will be doing
requires that experience
or justifies that rate.
This is bad for clients
but arguably worse for
the consultants
concerned. It also
plays to another client
weakness. Once they
find a consultant they
know and trust, they
want to use them for
everything – they'll
happily take a Sabatier
knife to the sardine
tin.
So it's time for the
profession to open
itself up to youth
again. Encouragingly,
there are signs that
this is happening, and
often it's the smaller
consultancies who are
leading the way, making
their principals' time
(and clients' money) go
further while creating a
valuable future asset
for their firm.
Experience is great, but
for every one who's
learned something the
hard way, thousands can
get it the easy way
through knowledge
transfer.
I'm not saying we
should restart the great
consultant factories we
had in the past – that's
probably impossible | |
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| | anyway. And I can
understand the
reluctance to train in
such a skills-hungry
recruitment market. But
we need to think about
what's happening to
those extremely bright
people – the real
diamonds – who would
normally have been
brought into the
profession by
milk-rounds and the
like. They're probably
even now suffering the
usual graduate-scheme
come-down, grappling
with the great issues of
philosophy one day,
counting pencils in the
storeroom the next,
wasting some of the most
potentially creative
periods of their lives.
One of the great appeals
of consultancy to a
graduate is that it
offers not just variety
and continued learning
opportunities but a
chance to be involved in
real, hands-on stuff at
a very early stage. The
consultancy industry is
full of people who took
that opportunity in the
past and rode it to the
very top of the
profession. Let's make
sure we don't miss out
on the potential of the
current generation.
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