Insights on the Profession: How the Consulting Process is Mastering Increased Complexity

Abstract

Management consulting is at an inflection point. Consulting firms have honed their processes and methods over the past half- century, but the context in which they deliver their services is changing rapidly in terms of client objectives and expectations and the tools and technologies they use to deliver those services. The purposes of this paper are twofold: (1) to assess the impact of these changes on the current consulting paradigm and (2) to recommend a course of action for consulting firms to respond to these changes. For the first purpose, this paper starts with an examination of the evolution of consulting process models and technologies to establish a baseline. By assessing the ability of this baseline consulting paradigm to accommodate changes in the service context, it then makes a case for action. Next, it considers the extent to which changes in methods, people, business partners, and services that consultants are currently making are suffcient responses in this case. For the second purpose, this paper starts by articulating the consulting transformation opportunity occasioned by new process technology, coupled with changes in the nature of work, management organization, and mindsets and behaviors. It then presents research ndings conducted by one of the authors using the science of coordinated action along with real world experience of the process technology company he co-founded. Based on this research, the paper argues that through a combination of scalable process automation and an emergent process model that can better control for the complexity and uncertainty of the current context, consultants can deliver greater realized outcomes for their clients, one core bene t of consulting process improvement.

Introduction