Sunday 13th Mar, 2016
By Fiona Czerniawska.
Today’s oil industry was born in the second half of the 19th century, after a Scottish chemist, James Young, discovered that he could distil a clear, light oil that could be used in lamps from the dark, viscous stuff that seeped out of coal seams. As the process of refining was itself refined, oil production took off – from just 2,000 barrels a day in 1859 to more than 12 million just after the turn of the 20th century. Oil was important because it powered things, and because its supply was abundant yet controllable. It made, and continues to make, fortunes for those who control its production.
Tuesday 5th Jan, 2016
By Fiona Czerniawska Clients love a specialist. In a previous article on this blog I’ve discussed how the extent to which clients’ rating of the quality of consulting work is very influenced by whether they see the firm concerned as a specialist. The more specialised a firm is seen to be, the higher the quality of its work is rated.
Monday 23rd Nov, 2015
By Fiona Czerniawska Clients want to have their cake and eat it. They regularly tell us that they’d like to use specialised firms, but in practice they tend to stick with larger ones (and the bigger organisation, the more likely this is). That’s because larger consulting firms can pull together the type of flexible, multidisciplinary teams needed for transformation projects; they’ve also got the global coverage big clients ask for – though don’t necessarily need in practice.
Thursday 13th Aug, 2015
By Fiona Czerniawska Consulting is a like a piece of string, I wrote earlier this year, with low-cost consulting (industrialised, standardised work in familiar territory) at one end and high-value consulting (focused on unfamiliar areas) at the other.
Thursday 28th May, 2015
By Fiona Czerniawska Is the consulting industry guilty of talking too much to itself? There are times I think firms’ big and on-going debate about business models are starting to sound like therapy sessions. Still traumatised by the upheaval of the financial crisis, the industry now finds itself in a comparatively benign environment: no longer scrambling to survive, firms have space to think and to talk. What they’re probably not doing – like the vast majority of psychoanalysis patients, I suspect – is listening. The discussion about business models has been almost entirely internal.
Thursday 19th Feb, 2015
By Fiona Czerniawska When I wrote an article on this blog about changing business models a couple of weeks ago, I had no idea I was mining such a deep vein of interest. Sadly, most of the comments can’t be published in an open forum – not surprisingly, perhaps, given the strategic nature of the question – but it’s been a salutary reminder of just how important an issue this has become for consulting firms. Most of the behind-the-scenes debate has focused on the question of how much needs to change: is this a cosmetic problem, or something more deep-rooted?
Monday 2nd Feb, 2015
By Fiona Czerniawska Consulting services are linear, right? We’re all familiar with the upstream/downstream model that has strategy consulting on the left (or at the top, if you’re a strategy consultant), technology consulting on the right, and everything else in between. This standard model is as convenient as it’s simple: everyone knows where they stand, and it’s easy to imagine all the players neatly lined up along a single piece of string.
Tuesday 20th Jan, 2015
By Fiona Czerniawska It’s hard to find a topic that stimulates a more – or more forceful – debate in consulting circles at the moment than the question of business models.
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