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The sexy business of consulting
Talking to some MBA students last week I decided to spend some time challenging any preconceptions they might have about the consulting industry, particularly the sort that might lead them to believe that, five minutes after finishing their course, they’d be waltzing into a glittering career of unfettered riches as a high-brow, blue-sky-thinking McKinsey consultant. [...]
It’s Showtime, folks
The news that American TV company Showtime is launching a new comedy series about management consultants, subtly entitled House of Lies makes for a depressing start to the year for anyone working in the consulting industry. But it’s also a timely reminder that any attempts to improve the image of management consultants in the media [...]
If you go down to the woods today
I recently spent a week in the woods on a fundamental bush craft course, run by Ray Mears (him off the telly). It was a tough week in which we had to learn the various arts of fire-making, shelter building and rabbit-skinning as well as generally getting used to what life would feel like if [...]
Colour-coordinated consulting
Carrying out some research recently, I suddenly realised that each of the Big Four firms have now taken ‘ownership’ (in that special marketers meaning of the word) of one of the major colours. Was this deliberate? Suddenly I’ve got a picture in my mind of the Chief Marketing Officers from each firm sitting round a [...]
Was Sir Isaac Newton the world’s first management consultant?
We associate him with gravity and optics, the foremost thinker of the English enlightenment and one of the greatest scientists ever. But it’s a little known fact (beautifully narrated by Thomas Levenson’s book Newton and the Counterfeiter), that, wearing his other hat (although wig might be more accurate in the context of the 17th century), [...]
A Christmas Consultant
“Scrooge!” The voice was less terrifying than he’d been expecting, more posh and nasal. Scrooge lowered the blanket: a dimly transparent figure stood at the end of the bed, grey hair, grey suit, navy tie, dazzling white shirt. It was holding an attaché case in one hand and a business card in the other. “I’m [...]
Lunch isn’t for wimps
The MCA’s ‘Are you worth your weight in gold?’ campaign for the 2011 industry awards has struck a chord with me. At a time when the value that consultants deliver is coming under increasing scrutiny it seems like a really appropriate question for the industry to ask itself. It’s also a nice reminder that – [...]
Consulting and Star Trek: some interesting parallels
Whenever an economy / sector / organisation has been through a period of turmoil as the consulting industry has over the last year, it’s good practice to look back at the lessons learned. How, the regulators and politicians are asking themselves, can we avoid similar meltdown in the future? But is the consulting industry asking [...]
Are consultants really getting shorter?
It came as something of a shock to me, as I was reading our recently published report on HR Consulting this afternoon, to discover the following two sentences: "Where the business case for using consultants is insufficiently compelling, clients are making more use of their own staff. Consulting teams are therefore typically smaller and shorter." Without [...]
Is it true? Was Beatrix Potter really anti-consultant?
Like me, you’re no doubt reeling from the revelation that Beatrix Potter’s “The Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse” is actually a diatribe against consultants. According to the FT, she eventually narrows the door so that Mr Jackson, a toad, cannot get in, a strategy Greg Dyke, former Director General of the BBC, says is the ideal [...]
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