Rising Stars of the Profession: Xiao Liu

Xiao is a Principal in Treacy & Company's Boston office. Through his decade-long experience in strategy and management consulting, Xiao has produced revenue and margin growth results for Fortune 1000 companies across a broad range of industries, including technology, financial services, healthcare, business services, consumer goods, and industrials.

Xiao has been at Treacy & Company since 2010 and advises clients on a variety of topics, most notably strategy, innovation, and commercialization. Much of his work is grounded in practicality. In fact, he often serves as an extension of clients' product, sales, marketing, and operations teams to drive innovations and accelerate market adoption of new products and services. Furthermore, he is an organizational problem solver who navigates through complex, matrix companies to deliver results.

As a Principal at Treacy & Company, Xiao has wide-ranging responsibilities that include leading consulting teams, developing insights for clients, driving client strategies to results, advising senior executives, overseeing existing accounts, and pursuing new client opportunities. He is also a member of the operating committee that manages the day-to-day activities of Treacy & Company.

Outside of work, Xiao is an avid reader of history books and a devoted fan of baseball.

What do you consider your greatest personal or professional achievement?

I am lucky to have many long-lasting client relationships. In fact, I have clients with whom I have worked intermittently for over six years, and many of them specifically request my participation whenever they need our help in solving their strategic and operational challenges. It is highly rewarding to see senior executives at billion-dollar businesses – who have many choices for consulting support – continue to come back to Treacy & Company and ask for my involvement. It also speaks to the impact and trust that we have generated through our work.

Furthermore, consistent, deep-rooted client relationships are testaments of the strength of the consulting philosophy at Treacy & Company, which I have helped evolve and improve over time. The firm certainly produces top-notch research and analysis. At the same time, Treacy & Company further distinguishes itself through its ability to drive implementation of strategies by working side-by-side with client teams. We turn the perfect – yet often impractical – answer to each client's problem into deployable solutions. While we are not always successful, I take great pride in our consistent and improving ability to drive growth result across clients.

What advice would you give a professional just beginning a career in consulting?

During my time in consulting, I have learned that generating value for the client requires not only having the right answer to the client's problem, but also helping the client execute. Good frameworks, research, and analysis are important foundations to consulting, but the true value-add – and therefore sustained long-term client relationships – stems from linking those insights with what is feasible for the client, based on existing capabilities and willingness of the executive team to make changes. The ability to produce good research and analysis is important, but not rare. The ability to help a company drive incremental improvement – even when the solution is not perfect – is rare and the true value-add of consultants.

What have you loved most about your consulting career?

In many ways, consulting is a strange industry where clients pay large amounts of money to an external vendor that often knows neither the industry nor the company as well as the client does. Yet, the consultant is expected to find answers to some of the most difficult business problems. Each project is difficult, as growth – which is the focus of Treacy & Company – is not formulaic and requires quite a bit of creativity.

At the same time, the joy of seeing clients achieve results based on our consulting engagements is exciting. When I connect with former clients, I often hear about how our support has placed them in a much better position for accelerated growth. I continue to enjoy our consulting work due to the success we have had in addressing the difficult problems that are often the topics of discussion on business news channels – such as growing in a declining market, winning against lower-priced competitors, finding the next big innovations.

What's the best advice—personal or professional—you've ever received?

A former client once told me that the value of consulting is to "help the client fish, not fish for the client".

As consultants, we always want to take credit for big wins. We want to say that "we found a big market opportunity worth $1B for you" or that "we launched this new $100M product for you". On the other hand, in growth consulting, our value is not only in delivering a specific recommendation on a specific problem, but also in teaching the client how to look at problems differently and come up with effective solutions for the next time a similar challenge arises. It would involve working extensively side-by-side with client teams to share our thinking and process. Some people may find this advice odd, as it is about enabling clients to find answers on their own, which can take away business from consultants. However, what I find is that effectively teaching clients "how to fish" strengthens trust and opens new doors of opportunities as large companies will never be devoid of problems to solve.

What does being honored as a Rising Star mean to you?

My time in consulting has been with Treacy & Company, a boutique firm that has worked with C-suites at some of the largest companies in the world and competes head-on with the largest strategy shops. Recognition as one of the Rising Stars has been an affirmation of not only my own consulting achievements, but also the ability for boutique firms to deliver unique value for the most sophisticated of organizations. Furthermore, I hope this honor allows me to learn from other Rising Stars and connect with additional consultants on my thoughts about the profession – for example, driving recommendations that are not necessarily the perfect answer, but the best feasible answer.