Kill the Consultant

Management consulting in India commenced 50 years back with audit firms extending their services that focused primarily on strategic financial management. The need to market consultancy services was minimal.

Over the years, the range of services has expanded to include economic feasibility studies, organizational restructuring, management systems design, management development, executive search, and a few more. Currently, the focus is largely on IT enabled management.

It is worth noting that over these 50 years some things have remained constant….namely, once a consulting firm has a client in the net, there is no escape. Ad infinitum. The client list must always be a cumulative one. Question: Are there any clients that have retired as delighted clients?

Clients became dependent on consultancy services. In turn, consulting firms became dependent on dependent clients. OMG. What do consulting firms deliver? Reports! More reports! Larger reports! Jargon infested reports!

In my view, consulting firms should measure their performance based on transfer of knowledge and skills; and aim to become redundant. The focus should be on execution, not ‘reports’ generation.

I am sure you will agree that clients know their problems better than consulting firms do. What they lack is: an ability to define these problems; diagnostic skills to find the root causes; soft skills to implement remedial actions; and an ability to lock the change into management systems.

Therefore, as professionals, consulting firms should focus on empowering clients to solve problems that they already know. This requires consultants to have the following attributes: maturity to define problems; empathetic listening skills; knowledge from experience; and an abundance mentality. It is not a game of MBA numbers.

KILL THE CONSULTANT!!

You should build in-house consultants and conserve the knowledge –the main asset of any organization – within it.

Qimpro Consultants, the pioneers of the Quality Revolution in India, are back with the Next Quality Revolution.

Stay tuned for our next Breakthrough….

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