Quality and value

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.

Increasingly high-profile concerns over the difficulty of valuing the benefits of consulting services is putting pressure on the industry to provide tangible proof of its impact. At the same time, procurement people, whose focus on daily rates has blurred the distinction between consultants and contractors, are waking up to the need to build consulting projects around outcomes, not inputs.

This phrase, at the bottom of an empty page, perfectly sums up my memories of the quality management systems which invaded consulting firms in the mid-1990s. It is stating the obvious; it has no proper verb (no action....); and it treats us as though we’re stupid. Fortunately, they didn’t last long, at least outside some very specific areas of the public sector. The invasion of the initiative-snatchers evaporated, leaving only shelves of decaying ring-binders and process checklists as a sign that it had ever existed.