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What is consulting?

FEACO¹ organises the business into four main segments:

1. Consulting,
2. Development and Systems Integration
3. Outsourcing
4. Other services

This provides executives with a useful map of the terminology, and a starting point to identify which – or, crucially, which combination - can best meet your specific needs within the broader context of your business.
This can create a common language within your organisation.

Defining the scope

In our view, the primary task of management consultancy is to help executives to do their jobs – a facilitative role which does not extend to taking over specific segments of the organisation.

Later we shall see, too, how and why the human element of organisations, rather than being a separate ‘segment’ of the consultancy role, is actually part of its core.

¹ FEACO: European Federation of Management Consultancies Associations

How to ensure impact consulting?

The top 8...

1. Know not only the terminology of the consulting world – but the scope of what consulting is – and is not
2. Rigorously examine 6 key factors when benchmarking training partners
3. Ensure technology and tools prove their relevance on human level
4. Pioneer the blend of analytical rigour and business skills with deep-rooted behavioural change
5. Accept that a trial of good ideas applied well and fast is infinitely better than any attempt to impose the perfect plan
6. Delight in – and demand – a challenge to your assumptions
7. Ensure that your credibility and legitimacy to initiate change is in place – or can be coached
8. Demand that your consultants frequently measure the impact of their progress – and adjust as necessary

Finding a partner

• Perspectives and needs
• 6 questions to help executives check and benchmark consultants
• 3 shifts in senior executives attitude
• International strategy consultants - looking beyond the names

Perspectives and needs

In our experience, clients look for a consultant that is associated with a certain speciality – for example, strategy, finance, operations, marketing, or HR/Change.

A second question is:

• What kind of firm am I seeking?
• What geographical scope is necessary? International or local?
• What kind of profile is demanded? High profile, or rather less conspicuous?
• And in terms of the scope, should this be broad or focussed?
• What kind of style or approach? High brow, or down to earth? Objective, or involved?

This leads to 6 distinct groups:

1. The ‘Final 4’ – accountancy firms with M&A, (merger and acquisition) tax and business consulting divisions
2. IT services fi rms – with implementation, outsourcing and business consulting activities
3. International Strategy Consultants
4. International functional or industry-focussed players
5. National players, ranging from highbrow/high fee to pragmatic/low fee
6. Self employed contractors ranging from highbrow/high fee to pragmatic/low fee

Benchmarking excellence

6 questions can help executives to check and benchmark consultants:

1. Philosophy

• What are their driving principles?
• How diligently will they challenge you, uncovering real needs? How pragmatic are their solutions?
• How insistent are they upon the transfer of learning into action?
• What is the fit with your culture, with the ages and learning styles of participants?

2. Impact measurement

• How will they set and meet measurement criteria, impact level agreements, return on investment?

3. Delivery

• How will they engineer a complex and multi-dimensional intervention throughout your business, nonetheless ensuring consistency?
• How will they ensure the right consultants are active, in terms of seniority and specialism?
• How can they help you secure the commitment of key stakeholders?
• What quality control mechanisms are in place?
• What about the training and coaching of key players and target audiences?

4. Customisation

• What is the fit with your specific challenge/sector?
  A ‘one size fits all’ approach or an eclectic application of ‘what works for you’?

5. Symbiosis

• How will they integrate solutions with your existing ones?
• How well do they collaborate with other specialists?
• Do they bring out the best of your key-players or do they try to ‘steal the show’?

6. Risk

• What is their track record, their fi nancial security?
• What is their back-up system in case of emergency?

Three shifts in attitude

On the basis of continuous interaction with clients worldwide, Krauthammer note that three trends are beginning to take root in the mindset of senior executives.
They deserve our full attention, since all influence the impact of change interventions.

1. Diversity is key The first trend is widely recognised. Organisations increasingly want to mirror the composition of society. And, frankly, they must if they want to respect the ‘law of requisite variety’ (Ross Ashby). In other words: organisations have to be as diverse as - or more diverse than - their environment if they want to survive profitably. This leads to questions regarding marketing (diversity of products and services), HR (age, ethical and gender issues) and organisational structure (aligning networks with the need for centralised governance). US-based multinationals are also realising that universalism has its own limits and that Europe as much as Asia requires a different style of leadership.
    
2. Paradoxes are part of life
   With our personal and professional lives becoming increasingly interwoven and complex, the tension between both realms makes it more difficult to make the right choice. This means paradoxes will become an integral part of life – and of leadership. Leadership paradoxes seem contradictory but can be combined in innovative ways. Viewing a tension as a paradox challenges the leader to seek the best of both worlds – a synthesis of the two sides.
   Here are just two wicked examples:
   • the need to synthesise dramatic performance improvement AND breakthrough innovations.
   • the imperative to ‘compete or die’ synthesised with the imperative to ‘collaborate or be isolated’.
   
    
3. Recognition that organisational change is behavioural change
   “I see an increasing interest in ‘soft’ skills: attitude, ethics, energy, motivation and interpersonal skills” reports a senior HR manager in a leading European insurance company, speaking of
   the “combination of rational and emotional components, which motivate employees to invest”. A Project Manager of Business Operations and Process Industries of a global ICT consultancy adds: “We produce more complex knowledge faster, areas of onceseparated knowledge will converge - industries’ success will increasingly be based on this convergence.” A leading oil multinational, in line with this thinking, launched a campaign to stamp out “nine killer behaviours”. These raise the bar for managers and consultants. When is change successfully implemented? How can hard issues, like systems and processes, be tackled simultaneously with soft issues such as values and styles?

International strategy consultants

Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey, are all top-end players.

Based on extensive experience in the market, Krauthammer recommend that interventions should be structurally combined with the exercise and installation of deep change at the behavioural level of your organisation.

For those looking beyond the names mentioned above, the Vault European Consulting Survey 2007 features firms who have “prominence in the consulting industry and are of interest to consulting job seekers”.

A new approach

Change underpinned by behavioural and skill growth

The lack of lasting performance improvement, we believe, lies in the fact that business has conspicuously failed to blend analytical rigour and business skills with deep-rooted behavioural change. Achieve this integration (or virtuous collision), and a true paradigm shift in business consulting is possible. 
To deliver it, outstanding business consultants must be paired with excellent behavioural coaches - both with a strong bias towards execution.

Here is an example.
Providing the infrastructure to ensure profitable growth – a case study.

“A new breed of consultancy is called for – a blend of practical solutions and client specific training and coaching - rooted in the client’s vision and strategy. A bias towards execution is essential – since conditions are never constant enough for a 100% solution. A trial of good ideas applied well and fast is infinitely better than any attempt to impose the perfect plan.”
Steven van Rooij, Managing Partner, Krauthammer Consulting

The 3 phases of consultancy

If, like most executives, you are dealing with complex challenges in ambiguous environments, you will almost certainly welcome a disciplined - yet flexible - approach to change.

Here is a template for doing this in partnership with your consultant.

Analysing pain

Confusing symptoms with causes, accepting diagnoses or interpretations at face value, all are easy mistakes to make when ‘analysing pain’ especially in situations of complexity and/or crisis. Here we make explicit the reflex of ‘going deeper’ - and ‘positive confrontation’ - two qualities of an effective analyst. All change processes evolve constantly, so we strongly recommend rigorous questioning at regular points during a process. As follows:

• What is your description of the situation?
• Why is this important? (An issue, problem, challenge)
• Summarise simply, triggering the other to express worries more deeply, “So if I understand you correctly…”
• Take an issue, asking repeatedly “How do you know? Says who? What (symptoms) did you observe?”
• Ask repeatedly “How come, how come…?” to dig for/identify main causes/bottlenecks.
• Depending on the atmosphere, now ask: “So what? What will happen if you do nothing?” to unearth the real risks. (This usually demands repetition as well).
• Determine the stakeholders. Who is directly concerned/accountable/responsible/ involved? Who needs to be consulted? Who can change this?
• Establish the urgency. When would still be in time/too late?

The Human Capital Development model© 
anchoring vision in action

‘Organisations’ are ‘organisms’ whose sustainable performance depends upon people and their behaviour. Of course! Yet, how do we align people with the three pillars of strategy, culture and structure, so determining the health of our organisation – or our change process?

Krauthammer developed the ‘HCD model’ to help organisations translate vision into action, mapping their current and desired future situation with regard to a set of clear parameters, using leading questions which apply a common language.