Inside Moves

Most people are drawn to the profession because they want to serve clients, and suggesting anything else elicits a response whose more polite version is, "Are you crazy?" The bias toward client work shapes all types of attitudes in consulting and dictates actions pros take. It's the reason senior executives don't just manage their staff, they juggle clients, too. And although a firm might need the very minds it sends out to organizations to help with its own business development, marketing, human resource, and IT issues, consultants who take these assignments like to make clear to all who are listening that their roles are only temporary.

In short, the firm's managers find a lack of R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
"There is an element of machismo to it: 'I'm out serving clients, how dare you tell me what to do if you've never done that?'" says David Kuhlman, a principal at Sibson Consulting Group in New York who spends about 15 percent of his time on management. "People have to see the value of the government before they are willing to accept taxation. Managers in consulting firms are not permitted to manage, because the partners in the firms do not understand or value what management gives them."
If everyone chooses to serve clients, then there is no one running the ship. Without strong leaders, consultants who are out serving clients are not being developed. And although it is agreed that consulting firms are among the most poorly managed, changing perceptions may be the hardest battle.
"The attitude of most people in consulting firms is that doing an internal role is a vacation," says New York–based executive recruiter William J. Kelly. "I don't know anyone who has taken an internal role and then had people say, 'He did this and this, and now I can do my consulting better, and now we can be more profitable.'"

According to Kelly, it's a rare situation when someone can leverage an internal position the same way that one can a client-facing one. He points to one successful consultant he knows at one of the large human resource consultancies who took an internal role running HR. Since taking the new job, the pro has been nearly invisible.
"At the end of the day, when you ask who the five most critical people in a company are, it's the people who have the largest relationships and bring the biggest revenue to the firm, the person who manages Lockheed Martin or IBM," Kelly says.
His advice to consultants? Stay put. If you are a consultant who is among the top 15 percent of the performers in your organization, Kelly advises you to stay on your rocket ship and not take any time off.
"You don't become a partner quicker by stepping off that track to improve the technology the firm uses to get data out to the other consultants or to look at the retention program," he says. "If you have a consultant who is just a magician with clients, why would you want to bring him back into the office to spend 10 hours a week managing people when he can spend those 10 hours with clients, selling business?"
If long-held beliefs are difficult to change, consider this: The job market may require it. According to Kennedy Information Research Group, consulting firms are today looking for senior people who can manage not just a business, but a practice.
"The hardest thing to find is a professional who wants to manage and be a businessperson. They are the gold that just doesn't exist," says Peter Block, author of The Answer to How is Yes: Acting on What Matters (Berrett-Koehler, 2001). "People who know how to run the business, who know how to market, who know about finance, who can talk to banks, are enormously valuable. Most consulting firms split up over time, and most consulting managers are lousy executives. And so I think that's one good reason to move into learning about management. It's needed, it's precious, and it's rare."

However, as of yet, most firms do not have many options for alternate career paths or do not have fully defined career paths for nonconsulting partners.
"It wasn't clear to me, even when I went off the consulting track, whether I'd be able to make partner, nor could anybody make it clear to me, since we had never done it before," says Dedrick, who is one of only two nonconsulting partners at Marakon (the CFO is the other). "We've had to define the parameters of the position as we go."
Although some people like Kelly might view the job as a vacation, Dedrick would disagree. She manages an HR group consisting of nine people in four offices around the world and works an average of 50 to 60 hours a week, with peaks significantly higher. However, she doesn't travel on a weekly basis and usually has more control over her schedule than her consulting counterparts do over theirs.
Her current job puts her in a decision-making role as well as an advisory one. And, she is acquiring much-sought-after skills relating to the management of a professional services firm. "There are a lot of challenges with managing professional services firms, particularly on the people side. And over the last few years, that's where it's been — how do you recruit, retain, develop, promote, and pay your talent?"

The key to taking an internal assignment is to get involved with projects of strategic importance to the firm, says Deloitte's Fugere.
For example, Deloitte consultants who got involved with the firm's e-procurement initiatives worked on getting the ideas and knowledge pulled together, building marketing materials, and creating methodologies. By the end of the assignment, they were in high demand.
In the 21 years Fugere has worked for the firm, he has had only one internal detour in addition to his current role. Seven years ago, he led Deloitte's reengineering service line, which was more of an internal marketing and product development role. Reengineering was an important, high-growth service line for the firm, got him networked with all its leaders, and gave him global exposure — three essential elements any internal career needs if its ultimate goal is membership in the exclusive club of partnership.
Words to the wise: Don't leave your client-facing home without them.

Sidebar: Assessing an Internal Role

Brian Fugere, a principal at Deloitte Consulting, offers these guidelines for taking on an internal project:

• Get an agreement that spells out the circumstances under which you are taking the assignment, and its expectations.

• Make sure that the assignment has a defined time period – a definite end. "Otherwise, you become the resource that's easiest to keep on these projects when it's past the steep end of the learning curve," he says.

• Use the same criteria that you would with a client-facing project. "If you are working with great people who will push you, teach you, challenge you, and stimulate you, you will do well."

Sidebar: Fireside Chat With Consulting Guru Peter Block

CM: What is your advice to consultants pondering an internal role?
Block: Take the assignment. Learn about marketing and finance, you're investing in your future. The other reason to do it is that if you do, you begin to understand what your clients' lives are like. Our clients have to deal with the practical nitty-gritty problems of managing. If you stay professionally trained just as a consultant, you'll never know what their lives are like and how hard it is to be a manager. It gives you credibility in your own mind that you not only can help managers, but you can also manage. The third reason to take a real job is just for the sake of your own existence. Most people were not designed, and family life was not designed, for a consulting practice. So why not take a couple of years and not travel so much?

CM: Without serving clients, how do you keep the respect of the other consultants in your firm?
Block: You won't be loved by your peers. The other consultants will give you a hard time. You're taxing them and making demands on them. You're trying to get them to care about the firm and not just about their own practice. But the other consultants don't love you that much anyhow. Most people in consulting firms get most of their affirmation and support from their clients, not from each other.

CM: Won't this take you off the career track?
Block: No, I think you increase your value. Ultimately, they are going to need people to manage the business. Maybe you'll lose some glamour, but so what?

CM: What about the stigma that people who don't do well with clients are the ones managing the firm?
Block: That's just jealousy talking. The problem with consulting is that you do not get results, your clients get results. I ran my consulting and training business for years, and I liked it because I was with clients. But the clients get the credit for the results and you never know whether you are really doing any good, even if you are billing like crazy. Whereas at least once a year at the Christmas party, I can see the families of 20 people. If nothing else, I know I've created and helped run a business that sustains these lives.

CM: Any last words?
Block: You have to ask yourself what matters to you, not what matters to the institution. Otherwise, you spend years in an institution and you wake up one day and realize that you don't believe in what you are doing. A lot of consultants, especially in the big houses, have a lot of doubts about what they are doing. People say "Don't leave the consulting, it will hurt your career," but most people don't stay with these consulting firms very long anyhow. What are you worried about? You're not going to last, everybody's going to die. It's a brutal life.