Tuesday 12th Jul, 2016
By Julie Ahadi
Let’s start with a predefined notion of “normal” from a western perspective:
- A western male teenager: Dresses in a hoody, wears expensive trainers, and spends time either graffitiing or climbing walls.
- A young Arab man: Walks aimlessly around malls for hours, dressed in a sparkly white, freshly laundered thawb and headdress (with sandals).
Perhaps that’s the reason, therefore, that a video, showing an Arab man in traditional attire as described above, scaling multiple buildings in sandy (undisclosed) locations, went viral earlier this year. His speed and dexterity has earned him the nickname “Spiderman of the Gulf”. But, aside from the fact he was wearing the most inappropriate footwear–yes, sandals–is it that much of a big deal? A young, fit man with time on his hands and energy to burn choosing to climb a building or ten? It seems pretty standard for any–and all–silly antics to be filmed by your mates and uploaded onto YouTube these days. And that’s exactly what happened here. So it’s not the act so much as the circumstances–i.e., someone doing something which is completely at odds with our cultural stereotypes–that amuses us so.
Thursday 16th Jun, 2016
By Fiona Czerniawska
One of the things the consulting industry isn’t short of is myths. You have to be a small specialist or a big brand? Wrong! Clients’ number one buying criterion is price? Wrong! With increasing amounts of data now available about the industry, sacred cows are falling like ninepins.
Tuesday 19th Apr, 2016
By Julie Ahadi.
I used to enjoy sleep. And then I had a baby. Much like the heyday era of consulting, when an abundance of cheque-happy clients and high fees was the norm, I used to roll around in bed of a Saturday morning thinking ‘there’s plenty more where that came from’. Not only has my window of opportunity for a relatively easy life closed, but I am now conditioned not to be able to sleep, even if I am permitted to.*
And to some extent, I’m the problem – I’ve created an adorable baby Frankenstein. At some point along this magical journey, my daughter may just (may just, mind you) have mistaken my kindness for weakness. The moment she’d call; I’d jump. And she got used to it. And so did I. And it really didn’t need to come to this – I’d read all the books, listened to (far too many) people’s helpful advice and yet here I am – me and my eyebags. But, like so many sleep deprived, busy mums (and there are plenty busier than me), I soldier on.
Thursday 14th Apr, 2016
By Alison Huntington.
Thousands of bright-eyed graduates pass through the doors of the world’s leading consulting firms every year, but despite their initial excitement the reality is that they’re not all going to stay and climb the greasy pole until they’re made a partner. Many will go on to have glittering careers in industry, rising to the top of their chosen field and becoming clients of the very firms they used to work for.
What then, do these people think of their alma mater?
Tuesday 13th Oct, 2015
By Alison Huntington If you bought a shirt from Primark, you wouldn’t be too annoyed if a button fell off or a seam frayed. After all, shirts from Primark cost about €5. On the other hand if you bought a shirt from Tom Ford (a brand for which a single shirt tends to be priced between €500 and €1,000) then you’d be pretty unimpressed with broken buttons and frayed seams. You’d expect a perfect shirt, you’d expect to look fantastic in it, and you may even expect random (and, obviously, very attractive) strangers to walk up to you in the street and tell you as much.
Monday 17th Aug, 2015
By Alison Huntington The headline of our Client Perception Study in the French consulting market is that 59% of clients are willing to pay more for the services of the leading consulting firms. Yes, you read that right. This news may come as a surprise – France is still a tough market, where every percentile of growth is fought for, tooth and nail. And they may wonder where all these clients are hiding. We can’t tell you that, but what is important to know is there are far more clients willing to pay more for some firm types, and far fewer for others.
Thursday 2nd Jul, 2015
By Alison Huntington The ‘bromance’ may be a fading Hollywood genre, but it’s alive and well in the world of consulting. Having been kindly invited to several analyst days with consulting firms, it struck me that the clients wheeled out to sing a firm’s praises are always men. And then I noticed that it’s always men introducing them. No, I lie – I heard one female partner speak at a tech firm once, and her specialism was (you guessed it) HR.
Tuesday 17th Mar, 2015
By Fiona Czerniawska “What would I advise a consulting firm to do? Spend more time on relationship development. We have a very, very good account manager: he sleeps, eats, and breathes our industry; he meets with us once a month just to have coffee and talk about the state of the business – it isn't a sales call, just something he thinks is important to do. And the people he brings with him are just the same.”
Tuesday 24th Feb, 2015
We tend to take consulting firms' claims that they're dropping low-value clients in favour of a small number of big, high-profile, accounts with a pinch of salt. It's not that we don't believe them, it's just that we suspect it's never quite as binary as they make it sound, and is often being used as a way of telling us that their business is doing very well, without resorting to the usual weapons-grade metaphors. Like "booming", or "exploding".
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