"Traditional consulting firm" is perhaps the last description anyone would use to describe Aveus, a 25-person consulting firm based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Given its size, the firm has an impressive client roster, which includes: Cisco, Hitachi, and Xcel Energy. From its start in 1998, the way it approaches the market is unlike most firms. To better understand the business model, Consulting's One on One sat down with Linda Ireland, one of Aveus' four co-founders.
Consulting: What's the biggest difference between Aveus and more traditional consultancies?
Ireland: We don't have any career consultants. Our firm employs consultants that have accumulated wisdom as line executives, business owners or operators. We all have years and years of experiences on the client side, including serving as buyers of consulting services. It drives a lot of our values.
Consulting: How did your career track lead you to Aveus?
Ireland: I've had what I'd call a blissfully crooked career. I've led a business from every chair in the C-suite—with the exception of technology and finance. By the time I was in my early 30s, I had a reputation for joining a company and saying 'we've got a lot of smart and well-intended people here, but if we could move things a little and adjust the capital structure we could make big improvements to our balance sheets.' And after making those changes, usually within 18 to 30 months, I'd move on to the next thing. I never thought of it as consulting. For me, they were short-term employment opportunities, helping companies by either starting ventures inside a large company or reinvigorated a mature business line inside a company.
Consulting: Prior to co-founding Aveus, had you considered a consulting career?
Ireland: In the mid-1990s, someone said to me: 'You should be a consultant.' My first visceral reaction was 'yuck.' As a corporate leader, I had worked with BCG, IBM, and McKinsey — some really great consulting firms. I didn't like the prevalent business model in which the senior partner would shake my hand, and then do the data suck from my team and come back with a deck of really smart thinking. The consulting firms we hired left a bad taste in my mouth because my team never felt more capable afterwards.
Consulting: Given your experience as a buyer of consulting services, how does that change how you go to market as a consultant?
Ireland: At Aveus, we sit in the backseat instead of the front seat. We go in with the smallest team possible, requiring the largest possible collaboration with our clients. When a client wants to slice something off and find a consultant to whom to delegate it, we walk away from. Clients sense in us the kind of empathy we have. We see ourselves more as a coach, than teacher. We want our advice to be more action oriented. We have our own golden rule: Do unto others what we had wished had been done to us.
Consulting: The firm was founded by four women. Does that bring a unique perspective to the firm?
Ireland: Our firm is obviously influenced strongly by those at the top. Women do lead differently. I didn't always think so, though. When I was in the corporate world, I was always being invited to join women executive organizations and I'd shun them. I felt that if we isolated ourselves we'd never be seen as equals. But as I matured, I've learned that gender diversity is a conversation worth happening. Studies have shown that mixed gender boards make better decisions than those that are all male or all female. At Aveus, we're led by women, but we have plenty of boys that work here. We value our employees' diverse points of view. We also make sure that we've got the right leader for whomever we're working with on the other side of the table. In healthcare, in particular, the industry has a lot of women in leadership positions, which works out well for us.
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