By Liz DeVito
Consultants are always looking for the next big thing, the innovation that will see clients storming through their gates, bypassing pesky procurement departments, and writing blank checks for the magic mousetrap that whitens and brightens and cleans windows, too. I would like to propose that the next big thing in consulting is not a thing at all, but a "how", that is, how consulting services are delivered.
The idea emerged as I was researching the consulting market in Asia and realized I was hearing themes from consultants and clients alike that were consistent with what I had been hearing throughout the year on other projects. These themes condense around four trends that appear to be reshaping how consulting is delivered by firms of all sizes—speed, innovation, ecosystem, and strategy.
That they converge in Asia is not surprising. Asia is a diverse and complex market that is rapidly transitioning. There is greater understanding and adoption of consulting in the emerging markets, at the same time that consulting to mature markets is responding to changing demands.
As Robert Zampetti of Towers Watson put it, "Operating in Asia forces you to think differently. The cultural and competitive drivers are different, as well as the pace of change. We have to adapt our methodologies."
Take leadership development, as an example. In Asia, the Western timetable of giving a leader three to five years for job rotations and advancement is collapsed into one year. The pressure on consultants to design and deliver accelerated leadership development programs is intense and they have stepped up to the plate, creating programs that are later exported successfully to clients outside of Asia. After all, the need for speed is a hallmark of doing business in the digital economy and not limited to a specific market.
Speed and innovation are driving an increase in ecosystem consulting, in which providers partner with vendors, clients, academia, and others to solve client issues. Leadership development, again, provides a model for how this works. I heard repeatedly that clients do not look to one consulting firm to answer all of their needs, as there are so few that provide the full range of services.
They prefer instead to work with best practice providers across the value chain, and they also expect these providers to work together. There are, in fact, consultancies that have embraced this model and differentiate on their ability to leverage the ecosystem for their client's good.
The strategy consulting trend seems counterintuitive in this context. Speed, innovation, and ecosystem consulting are, after all, largely about implementation and specialization.
And yet, the message is clear that strategy consulting is a consistent client demand and increasingly a component of providers' value propositions across consulting sectors. Strategy is not dead, as some pundits would have you believe. It's integrated into every aspect of consulting engagements.
These forces are redirecting attention from the "things" that consultants provide—things that can so easily be copied, commoditized, and assetized—to how services are delivered in a high-speed,
hypercompetitive world.
Liz DeVito is an Associate Director, HR Consulting at Kennedy Consulting Research & Advisory. For more information, visit Kennedyinfo.com/consulting.
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