Editor's Note: Downsizing the World

Back in the early 1990s, a rather bawdy political match made the consulting profession a scapegoat for job cuts after various re-engineering schemes had triggered corporate layoffs.
It was a match won by default when the profession refused to be baited and no one consulting leader spoke up on the profession's behalf. While some argue that consulting leaders had little to gain by stepping into the ring, from that time forward consultants have arguably been cast in the mind's eye of the public as a leaderless clique of depraved downsizers — a cloistered cabal indifferent to the pains and everyday toil of corporate life.
This time, the stakes would appear to be far greater, as various political camps single out consultants as being responsible for the recent movement of tech jobs to cheap labor sites around the world. In recent months, consultants have been labeled everything from un-American to the for-profit purveyors of "dual-use" knowledge.
While the debate surrounding the globalization of the professional services industry is likely to carry forth for many years, the profession can no longer afford to reside in the shadows. The consulting profession's best defense has always been its people. And only by talking about who they are, what they do and what they stand for, will consultants be judged fairly.
In this issue, we profile a number of consulting careers that reveal quite a bit about the profession. Not least among their subjects is the head of global operations for Cap Gemini, Chell Smith.
There's a sports figure who comes to mind when people talk about Smith. The comparison may appear somewhat trite given that they are both cancer survivors, but when you consider Smith and Lance Armstrong even in a big-picture context, the comparison is hard to resist. First, there are the tricky French ties — which require both consultant and athlete to be global ambassadors for a country neither calls home. Then, there's the global nature of sports and consulting — each in its own way shrinking the globe.
Rand Blazer, Chairman and CEO of Cap Gemini rival BearingPoint Inc. put it this way: "(Global consulting firms) are another force driving commonalities around the world, and we can now be counted along with trading partners, research communities, and universities as helping weave this fabric of oneness."