A leading question

There’s such a lovely, subtle distinction in the English language between “a” and “the”.

Call yourself “a leading firm” and you communicate a degree of confidence and pride, but not outright arrogance. Announce yourself – and many consulting firms do – as “the leading firm” and the impression is wholly different.

Moreover, the “the” immediately raises the question, which the “a” doesn’t tend to, of what exactly is meant by “leading”. It certainly doesn’t mean biggest: “leading” is what you say when you can’t say “biggest”. It could imply unparalleled expertise or most reputable but how can do you measure such things? And what is being led? Being the leader in a large, highly competitive market is quite different to being the leader in a niche field where you have no obvious rivals.

The trouble is that obvious qualifiers (“Among the leading...”, “One of the leading...”) sound short on ambition and commitment. They’re like the high-street bank that says, “We aim to serve the majority of our customers within five minutes.” It’s the weasel-wording that rankles most: the bank isn’t saying that it will, only that it aims to; it won’t commit to serving everyone within five minutes, just most of them. Clients don’t want consulting firms to be half-hearted, anymore than customers want their banks to be so. They’re not going to hire a firm that appears to doubt its abilities and experience anymore than they’re going to hire one that admits it has faced challenges on projects in the past.

The underlying problem is that we’re all trapped inside a world in which everything always has to be absolutely fine – unless it’s a complete disaster. The media is quick to expose failed consulting projects, but consulting firms refuse to acknowledge there can be problems. As a result, it becomes impossible to have a sensible and serious debate about what consultants do, where they lead, and where they don’t. This has important implications at a time when the consulting industry is under pressure to demonstrate it can deliver tangible results to its clients. No one, not the best client or the best consultant, does everything perfectly. By projecting supreme self-confidence, consulting firms appear to belong to a fantasy world, one in which, by definition, nothing real gets done.

How to move beyond this and have that meaningful debate is perhaps not just “a” leading question, but “the” leading question of the day.