Change management. Consultants use the term often and put the discipline of change management into practice on a regular basis. It is ironic, however, that the consulting industry is probably the hardest industry to change. While there has never been a time with more innovative consulting firms such as Point B, North Highland, and our firm, Censeo Consulting Group, challenging the "status quo," most of the industry meanwhile continues to operate under the same model that it has for decades. The "traditional" model stresses breadth of services over depth of expertise, on-site presence to deliver, and a people model that assumes that high turnover due to work/life balance issues is the reality. The cost of this model to our clients and our people is enormous; we are inefficient in how we deliver, we incur substantial recruiting and training costs, and our people suffer in many ways including time spent away from their friends and families.
It's time for a revolution.
At Censeo Consulting Group, we are truly committed to addressing the inherent inefficiencies present in the "traditional" consulting business model through a model that redefines the way we think about our work, our clients and our people.
In fact, our vision is to offer exceptional value to clients and employees through a unique and transformed consulting model. We are glad to know that we are not alone on this journey as we find more and more firms out there willing to challenge the status quo. Our business model is comprised of three key components: Expertise, People Model and Operational Efficiencies. Working together, these three components are helping us redefine the economics and cost structure of consulting, and, in turn, helping us create more value for our clients and for our people. I'll discuss each of these components, but focus most on the People Model.
Expertise
We believe that expertise is a key value driver for our clients, and we are committed to delivering deep expertise to our clients on each and every engagement. We do this by first being focused and disciplined about the work we take on. There have been many occasions where our clients have asked us to do work that was outside of our core service areas, and more often than not, we have turned the work down.
This requires courage and a reward system that motivates people to make the right decisions, and not just be driven by top-line numbers. We reward people for growing our core expertise areas and only allow work in "new" areas if it is tightly aligned with identified and approved areas by the management team.
Additionally, we invest substantial amounts of time and money into developing new ideas while leveraging existing best practices. Our goal is to not just rehash existing methodologies and approaches but to bring new and innovative ideas to the table for our clients.
Operational Efficiencies
There are many levers to profitability in consulting. We focus on the key ones to drive out inefficiencies and create a more efficient model. While we would not discuss which key measures we focus on, we only can say that we have set goals well above and beyond benchmarks and continually think of innovative practices to help us meet those goals. We also tell our people during our recruiting process not to expect "perks" that we don't believe add value for them or for our clients. While we work with mostly C-level clients addressing strategic issues, you will never find our offices in a building with Italian marble and mahogany desks, for instance.
The People Model
The people model of consulting is broken to say the least. We take for granted that high turnover is a reality of consulting, resulting from work/life balance issues. We, as an industry, are not willing to challenge the idea that we can do at least some of our work without being at a client site and still deliver substantial value. Work/life balance isn't the only issue that we must contend with. We treat our primary assets, our people, essentially like commodities, force fitting every person through the same career model and measuring people on the same set of metrics.
When I recently attended a consulting industry forum a few months back, I heard many CEOs from new firms talk about "people" as their No. 1 challenge. Yet, when you ask what they were doing to address this challenge, I was disheartened to hear nothing besides recruiting more aggressively and perhaps paying more.
At Censeo, we truly believe in creating value for our people, so much that it is part of our vision statement. Our people philosophy stresses the need to understand each of our employees' strengths, goals, objectives and motivations for what they desire out of work. We believe that only with this understanding can we chart a path that allows both Censeo and our employees to succeed. There are two key pieces to our People Model—career paths and work/life balance.
• Career Paths: We offer our people an ability to deviate from our "base" model in a flexible manner. We work with each individual to align his or her strengths against roles where he or she can have the most success and also create the most value for our clients. Of course, flexibility means more complexity from measurement and management standpoints. But we think the payoff in terms of retention is worth the time. Additionally, we are able to deliver more efficiently by aligning staffing needs against individual goals and capabilities.
• Work/Life Balance: We do not believe in the three- to four-day on-site model, and, in fact, have made a commitment not to work with clients who have such a need. Ironically, it's not clients who are not flexible but old-time consultants who are not willing to change and accept the idea that our clients are human also, and they care about our people's ability to have a life. We do travel to client sites when we need to—with the key word being "need."
To date, we have run some of the most complex change and transformational efforts by collaborating with our clients through technology but also traveling as needed. Our consultants average about 15 to 20 percent travel and don't live out of a suitcase. We have seen enormous benefit from our model to date, with a retention rate above 95 percent.
Some may ask why we are giving away some of our secrets. After all, our model allowed us to grow more than 100 percent last year. Our answer is our vision and commitment to bringing about change in the consulting industry. We want to do away with all the stereotypes of consultants and consulting firms and create a new age of consulting that brings a new focus on creating value, not just for our clients, but also for our people.
We already see some smaller, innovative companies working hard to create a new model for consulting. Now, we would like to challenge others to do the same, whether they are in larger firms or thinking about starting new firms. Our goal is nothing less than to start a revolution.
Written by Raj Sharma is Founder, President and CEO of Censeo Consulting Group and brings over 14 years of experience working with and advising senior management of Fortune 500 companies and federal government agencies on how to address complex business issues related to supply chain and procurement. Prior to founding Censeo in 2003, Mr. Sharma held several sourcing and supply chain management positions at Booz Allen Hamilton and FreeMarkets (now part of Ariba). He holds an M.B.A. from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. in International Business and Finance from the University of Maryland, College Park.
E-mail Raj Sharma at rsharma@censeoconsulting.com.
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