Cover Story: Consultants, Guns, & Money

By Alan Radding and Jack Sweeney

Jump ahead to 2003. You've just been alerted via your wireless IP phone that the firm is ramping up to handle a hot, sexy business project — it's really an e-business project, but everybody dropped the "e" two years ago, when everything became an e-business project. The big question is, Will you be part of this new engagement? Before you can fire off an answer, you punch some keys on your cell phone and pull down your latest personal stock price — your value rating in the firm's equity brain trust. The news looks good: You are right in the top tier. A few partners are assembling teams for other projects, you notice, but they're definitely second-tier compared with this newest one. Of course, those second-tier projects are offering the usual perks to attract a few top-tier players like yourself, but you already have stock in three other fledgling ventures, so more equity is not what you're after. OK, you respond. Count me in, but only for an A-share of the action. Damn, it's hard to remember what life was like before the firm had the talent exchange, consultant free agency, and equity stakes in the firm's brain trust. We might as well have been indentured servants. Jump back to 2000. The "indentured" consulting masses are restless. As more consultants exit their firms and even their profession in search of new opportunities, better compensation, and work/life balance, consultancies are at the brink of a workforce revolution, where traditional workforce models are being overthrown for ones capable of moving the mechansims of talent appraisal into real time. It's a movement that would have been unthinkable only two years ago, but one that is now gaining momentum due to the talent wars' mounting consultant casualties and the ready availability of new Web-enabled technologies. Is there a talent trading exchange in your future? B2B Internet trading exchanges, a.k.a. Web marketplaces, are hot, hot stuff, and they have the potential to radically change how industry conducts business. And, there's no one profession they are likely to impact more than consulting, where a number of top firms, including PricewaterhouseCoopers, Andersen, and McKinsey, are now exploring the use of internal talent exchanges.

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