Accentuate the positive

I have written in this blog before about the extent to which the difference between clients and consultants has been eroded by increasing management education, by the availability of previously privileged information via the internet and by the number of former consultants now working in client organisations. I’ve also argued that client-consultant convergence matters because the need to access specialist skills is the motivation behind many consulting projects and because clients who use consultants for their expertise tend to be more satisfied than those who use them for other reasons.

Since writing about delivery partners in my blog last week, I’ve been struck by how much the debate about differentiation has shifted from skills (for the reasons described above) to delivery. It’s now not the know-how of consultants that distinguishes them these days, but the fact they can get things done.
In establishing the difference between their and their clients’ ability to deliver, consulting firms face a choice:

They can denigrate managers’ ability to get things done themselves. Too embroiled in the day-to-day challenges of their job (the argument goes), managers can’t step back to see the “bigger picture” – a term, I suspect, entirely invented by consultants – and can’t cope with new initiatives. This is what we’re starting to see in the UK as the consulting industry faces up to the challenge of rapidly shrinking demand in the public sector. Attempts to demonstrate how consultants play an integral role in the modernisation of public services are rapidly giving way to assertions that the government’s attempt to survive without consultants will fail because civil servants can’t implement.

The alternative approach would be to demonstrate that, while managers are good at implementation, consultants are even better. But how? Know-how, experience and methodologies – the stalwarts of consulting – are important, but rely on assertions (“Our know-how, experience and approaches are better than yours”).

Critical here will be product, proof and performance. Winning firms will be those that are absolutely clear about what they’re offering (the process they proposing to take over) and can demonstrate they can deliver it more cheaply and to a higher standard. If they can do this, everything else in the marketing mix – position, place and, most importantly, price – pales into insignificance.

25th July 2010