In many ways, this year’s Top 25 Consultants are a microcosm of the profession and the marketplace. Much like today’s consulting industry, there’s really no easy way to define the Top 25 in terms of specialty, methodology, firm size or business model. Gone are the days of the cookie-cutter consultancy. As the pace of business and industry continues to accelerate, staying ahead of client needs becomes a more difficult challenge. These Top 25 Consultants are doing their part to push the profession to higher places in an ever-expanding global economy. The Top 25 is a snapshot of all that’s right in consulting. It is made of up CEOs, vice presidents, partners, chief strategy officers, chief talent officers and innovation leaders. Reflecting today’s business marketplace, it’s a more international group than in previous years and, as such more than half of this year’s list has global responsibilities. The group is also more inclusive than in previous years; the 22 firms represented are the most since the Top 25 Consultants launched eight years ago.
When discussing the future of A.T. Kearney, Paul Laudicina, managing officer and chairman of the board for the Chicago-based firm, likes to talk about the past. “Right now, we’re spending a lot of time refashioning the future of A.T. Kearney based on upon our rich and historical past,” Laudicina says. “We’re fortunate to be one of the few consulting companies that has a very long legacy that helped establish the science of management consulting.”
In 2000, Forrester Research anointed Sapient the top e-business consultancy. Then the dot-com mania collapsed. “So we were number one in a defunct category,” recalls Alan Herrick, president and CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Sapient. The firm then set about re-inventing itself in a second act. Last year, Sapient posted a 29 percent increase in annual revenue, and today, more than half of its 5,000 people are based in India.
Kris Pederson fashions herself a “business doctor.” And it’s an apt title, as Pederson, vice president and partner of IBM Global Business Services, started her undergrad education in a pre-med program at UCLA. “From about five, I wanted to be a doctor,” she says. However, she quickly found that the softer skills involved with medicine were much more compelling, and she used that interest to go into business and get her MBA from Harvard Business School. But she still sees the parallels in her initial career choice and her role at IBM. “Instead of physical pain, you’re sorting out business pain.”
In a market where hundreds of consulting firms compete for the same clients, Rolf Thrane, CEO of New York’s Mitchell Madison Group, decided to set his firm apart from the rest. In 2003, Thrane decided to offer clients an unconventional proposition: demonstrate his firm’s commitment to achieve a performance objective by sharing in the cost, risks and benefits.
Executives responsible for developing talent at consulting firms tend to concentrate on cultivating analytical and relationship-management skills during the early stages of their consultants’ growth.
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