The five Bs of consulting

Consultants really don’t help themselves sometimes.

The word “product” is one most firms would like to steer clear of. They think it smacks of a supermarket approach: put a standardised consulting process in a box, pile it high and sell it cheap. But this is a very narrow-minded way of thinking about it. Sure, you can productise a process in such a way that anyone can do it, destroying value to the client and consulting firm alike. But you can also take a more Lego-like approach, either:

• Providing the bricks for a specific model a client has in mind but doesn’t have the bricks for. This approach focuses on the process, getting clients and consultants to build the model together, and giving clients the instruction booklet so they can build it again as often as they want.
• Saying to clients, “Yes, we have buckets of bricks in all kinds of shapes and colours. Let’s talk about the kind of models we could build.” These are the generalist firms whose core competence is in helping clients identify their needs (they don’t yet know the models they want or need to build), finding the right bricks in the buckets and having skills flexible enough to build whatever they’re asked for.
• Going in to clients with a specific proposition – “You need this type of model” – but recognising that it will need tailoring to meet a client’s unique needs. What differentiates is having a world-class expert – the brains – to do this.

These four approaches (boxes, bricks, buckets and brains) are four quite distinct and recognisable forms of consulting. What I find interesting is that most of the arguments around consulting pit the “boxes” firms against the “buckets”: the “bricks” and “brains” strategies rarely get a look in. Yet my hunch is that the market is going in the latter’s direction. At a time when every penny spent on consulting is under intense, and often very public, scrutiny, clients want to know what they’re buying (the model, in my Lego analogy). This will make it harder for the “buckets” firms. Some clients will buy “boxes”, but the wiser ones will know that one shape rarely fits all and will look instead to the “bricks” and “brains” firms.

But who are they? Consulting firms are reluctant to publicise their bricks and brains: how many outstanding products or exceptional individuals can you name? That brings me to my fifth and final “B”: brand.

A consulting firm’s brand is the expression of its collective skills and experience. You can’t have a brand which is too different to its people (clients spot the discrepancy) or which is too dependent on one product or person (clients go to them, not to the firm, creating huge resourcing problems). So brands have to reflect the rule, not the exceptions; the average, not the peaks.

So the challenge for the consulting industry is not just how to migrate from a boxes-and-buckets world to a bricks-and-brains one, but to ensure their brand doesn’t get in the way.