Around the world - Who moved the line then?

Geneva, Switzerland: There are strange things afoot in the hermetically sealed world of consultancy. Consultancy is a profession that operates in a rarefied atmosphere (ruder people than I say it’s a vacuum) and you need the special headset and breathing apparatus to survive in this alien world. Or at least you did until now.

But just what is a REAL management consultant these days? Where does the line stop? If we allow McKinsey and Bain and Arthur D Little, do we let in Andersen (who just happens to be bigger in people and turnover than all the others put together)? Do we let in the other Big Five? Then where do we draw the line again to keep out the lower orders? Or perhaps, just perhaps, there isn’t a line any more ?

Here in Switzerland – home of many of the mighty multinationals – some of those questions are more easily answered than in the bigger business ponds of London and New York. Here you can see all the players: the rich, the poor, those of noble birth and those who are just trying to get onto the bandwagon. Also, in this, one of the most boring cities on earth, observing the musical chairs of those who would put consultant on their carte de visite is one of the few exciting things you can do with your clothes on – or off come to think of it.

Here we can see the head-hunters, the public relations consultants, the compensation and benefit advisers, the law firms, even the outplacement industry happily chewing in what – until recently – was the feeding ground of only the very top management consultants.

And the reason is that everyone of these groups is looking for business in the same place – the top (the very, very top) of major corporates and inter-governmental institutions.

It just doesn’t matter anymore that The Economist refuses to recognise public relations as a consulting profession, still insisting on spelling it with a hyphen (public-relations). It doesn’t matter that half the people involved couldn’t invent a strategy for getting out of bed in the morning. They are all out there fighting for their piece of the action.

And they’re winning.

Consider this. Over the last five or six years most of the major multinationals have scooped out all the middle management personnel – the people who used to employ all those so-called peripheral consultants. I mean the managing director didn’t call up some comp’ and ben’ person and ask him to revise the sales team’s car policy did he? The chairman didn’t ask for market research on the new product launch, did he? Of course not! That task went to a middle manager. An HR chap, a marketing chap-ette.

But think hard! Today, all those people are gone. They are in the line making something or selling something. Corporate staffs have dwindled and died. This means two things :

One: the people buying basic consulting services-compensation studies, pensions planning, marketing research, publicity, advertising, design, even training, don’t know a damn thing about it. Organisations just don’t have advertising or market research managers any more. Instead today’s corporation has these decisions made by line managers, who couldn’t tell a sample size from a deferred compensation plan. So what do they do?

They buy on the basis of one thing – “how much is this going to cost me?”

Go on, ask anyone in the nether regions of the consulting profession and you’ll find, behind the brave talk, that people still buy on price – and prices haven’t moved in five years. It may make money, but lucrative it ain’t.

Two: if there are no middle managers, no staff people to butter up, do we sell the golf sticks and the squash racket? Good lord no. What we do is take the four or five most presentable people in our little consultancy, take a whiff of oxygen and head for new horizons. The top of the pyramid where the big boys hang out.

So suddenly the word strategy is on everyone’s lips – not to mention their business card. Everyone is chasing those elusive, rare people at the top – once the strict preserve of the very few powerful management consultants.

So every week there’s another seminal study, another breakthrough report from some organisation trying to catch the eye of those whose lot is to be chauffeured as they read the FT or the WSJ. Studies abound – even banks make this stuff public now, because even they are part of this mad chase of too many consultants chasing too few prospective clients.

Here in Geneva I’ve seen a search firm that wants to re-brand itself sell strategic human resource management to a top executive. A PR firm has developed – what they term – a high-definition dimension model than can track stock market success to strategic image positioning. A design agency has won a battle with one of the old management consultancies for the minds – and a lot of the heart – of the top management of a world-class financial institute.

Conclusion: the line that separates the uppercrust from the despised just snapped. It’s open season. Not for the best advice perhaps, but at least the presentations and posturing will be more entertaining than before.

Here in this small town it’s easy to see, there’s little else exciting.

But it’s going on worldwide. My advice – unless you are in Geneva – is put your clothes back on and watch.

Mike Johnson is president of Johnson & Associates, a corporate communications firm in Brussels and author of Getting a GRIP on Tomorrow and Managing in the Next Millennium.