Guru: The Free Agent Model Comes of Age

CM: Do you believe a consultancy's organizational model ultimately determines whether it succeeds?
Ulrich: There have been two themes that have played out here. In a competitive world, it isn't just saying where you are going that is going to make you get there. How do you turn strategy into results? How do you execute? Well, competitiveness equals strategy multiplied by organization. Now, the second theme is organization does not equal structure. Just changing some form of the hierarchy doesn't mean you'll have an organization that works. Organization equals capability. So my thinking is how do you define, discover, identify and create a set of capabilities within a firm. One way to think about this is as a wheel where the hub is capability and the different types of capabilities are spokes and then the rim that holds the spokes together is the HR system. And so I've looked a lot at the capabilities within a firm — and those capabilities include how firms attract, retain and motivate talent. They include how do you make things happen fast. Another capability is how do you create a shared mindset and build a common agenda that's distributed throughout the firm. A fourth one is learning how you build learning into the enterprise. A fifth one is how do you build leadership brand through the firm.