Strategy consulting

By Fiona Czerniawska

Now would be a good time.

In our peregrinations through the offices of the world’s consulting firms, the talk is all about consolidation.  That’s neither new nor surprising.  It has escaped no one’s attention that the pace of organic growth in many markets won’t meet consulting firms’ ambitions.  The acquisition of boutique firms by bigger ones is an important way in which the latter build their capabilities in specialist areas.  Supply-side fragmentation results in diseconomies of scale; internecine competition is bringing down margins.

Deloitte’s acquisition of Monitor (see my previous post) may have unintended consequences, a bit like that apocryphal butterfly which, flapping its delicate wings on one side of the world, triggers a hurricane on the other.

Deloitte may be being unusually quiet about the move, but it’s provoked widespread discussion right across the consulting industry.  Why?

Writing up some of our client research earlier this year, we estimated that as much as 15% of all consulting goes on what we called ‘validation’, an activity which ranged from genuine research and analysis around a particularly thorny issue to signing off on a decision already effectively made by senior managers.