Consultancy has changed - which is why the IMC is undergoing such athorough review of its position and purpose. In the month that itcelebrates its 35th anniversary, the IMC reflects on the new role for theconsultant, the client and the profession as a whole.
Management consultants are no strangers to change. Over recent years, as technological improvements, globalisation of markets, increased competition and similar developments have revolutionised the environment in which businesses and other organisations operate, it has been consultants who helped their clients to adapt themselves to succeed in this ever-changing world.
Naturally, the same causes of change have had their effect on management consultants in their own industry. Indeed, consulting itself has gone through changes as dramatic as those seen in any other sector of the economy.
The industry has become much bigger, the range of work done by consultants has widened and the nature of the relationship they have with their clients has altered.
The expansion of the management consulting sector has been driven by client demand. Organisations are using consultants much more than they used to. While once consultants were rare and rather exotic visitors to a business, now they are seen as a normal part of corporate life.
“I can remember that 25 years ago, when consultants came into a company it was an event,” says Barry Curnow, IMC president. “People would be talking about it for years afterwards. Now, however, every FTSE 100 company has at least half a dozen consulting teams in working on different projects all the time.”
The increased demand for consulting services results partly from greater awareness of the value of their services. But, it is also because, as they have restructured to become more efficient and competitive, clients have become leaner and cut their internal management resources, making them more dependent on outside skills.
Greater reliance and greater familiarity have had some important effects on the way that consultants and clients work together.
“Clients are a lot better informed about how to use a management consultant than they used to be,” says Geoffrey Kitt, a former IMC president. “They understand more of the issues of how to select them and how to manage the relationship.”
The increasing sophistication of clients, together with the accelerating pace of technological change, has altered the terms of that relationship.
“About 10 to 15 years ago consulting was prescriptive. When we went in to a client we knew more about what they were doing than they did, and we would tell them what they should do,” recalls IMC president-elect, Paul Lynch. “Now, though, it has changed. Today, consulting is more process orientated. We tell clients: “We will go through this process with you and you will decide what you want to do as we go through it”.
Once clients would see consultants as experts – perhaps regarding them with some awe. Now, though, they are more likely to regard them as equal partners, carrying out work alongside them. With this change in the relationship, and with client organisations typically having less in-house resources than they used to, consultants are being required to do more than just report. They are increasingly expected to implement changes within client organisations.
One effect of this trend has been to increase the range of skills required of consultants, to the extent that it is no longer possible for individual consultants, or even individual firms, to provide more than a selection of the specialisms required.
“The days when it was possible to convince people that you had answers to every question have gone,” says Kitt.
This has created greater diversity within the consulting industry, with consultants identifying themselves as specialists in a particular business function such as human resources or marketing, in a single vertical market or in a specific area of technology. And, since the implementation work that clients require will normally involve their computing systems, the number of IT specialists in the consulting industry, and the range of specialisms within that area of activity, has shown particular growth.
As it has become less homogenous and encompassed a greater range of skills, the industry has become less clearly defined.
“The identity and role of the consultant have changed radically,” says Curnow. “It is much harder to say precisely what a consultant is any more.”
It is not only in terms of specialism that diversity is growing among consultants. The organisations within which they work are also becoming increasingly different from one another, and they are following a growing variety of career paths.
The big consulting firms have grown at rapid rates over recent years, and as this has happened they have developed their own, very distinct cultures. At the same time, the number of consultants practising as individuals, or within small firms, has also increased greatly. Consultants working within these very different environments may share the same profession, but the perspectives from which they view their membership of that profession can be very dissimilar.
Career structures are also more varied for consultants than they once were. Consultants do not always see the work they are doing as a lifelong career. Many of the graduates recruited by the big firms, for example, can be expected to move into jobs in other industries after they have trained and gained a few years valuable experience of consulting. “For many it is seen as just a first step on a career ladder,” said Curnow.
“The majority will probably not be staying.”
Again, in the large firms in particular, consultants are increasingly geographically mobile. The market for their skills is a global one and they are likely to take jobs in foreign countries at some point in their lives.
Another group with a different career pattern are those consultants who have entered the industry after working in corporate management. Their numbers have been boosted over the last 10 years by the shedding of corporate managerial positions that came with restructuring, and they have contributed particularly to the growth in the numbers of sole practitioners seen in the industry.
All these groups, with their different career plans and histories, contribute to the increased diversity of the consulting profession we see today.
When the changes in consulting over recent years are examined, therefore, it becomes clear that one of their principal effects has been to make the success of the profession important for an increasingly wide range of people – clients as well as practitioners in the different branches of the industry. All parties share a common interest in ensuring high standards in the profession, and all can benefit from support from a professional organisation. However, each has slightly different interests and priorities.
As the IMC faces up to the future, it has to develop the flexibility to deal with this diversity.
