The Death of Consulting
The death of consulting. This has surfaced quite a bit in discussions at Excelerate recently. We believe there is truth in this, but we also believe it only applies to a portion of the consulting industry. Essentially, we believe traditional consulting as we’ve known it will not survive this next era. Here’s why.
Consultants Can’t be Trusted
When we show up as our best selves at Excelerate, we are there to advance the careers of our clients. Our job is to make our project owners (our clients) look good and succeed by giving them the support they need. Traditional consulting firms don’t tend to see it this way. They focus on leveraging the knowledge of these groups to impact how they (the consultants) look to the C-Suite with the goal of becoming the trusted advisors of that C-Suite. They do this by compiling the great ideas of their project owners and (sometimes) presenting them as their own. It’s a dynamic that creates extremely low trust with the primary beneficiaries (the project owners), thereby reducing the actual impact the solutions can have once delivered.
We instead focus on creating a RIPPLE EFFECT (more to come on that…) which we believe is in opposition to this traditional model. One of our clients, Jason Trusley (VP of Consumer Strategy) at Columbia Sportswear said,
“I always knew there was a different way of consulting than the one that I knew. Your team proved that. I always felt like you had Columbia’s best interest in mind and I also knew you cared deeply about me and my career. I really do see a difference in what you’re delivering to Columbia – strategy that we can use out of the gate rather than a collection of interesting insights and ideas that we have to figure out how it applies to our marketplace, our brand and our employees. Since I’ve been in consulting so much of my career, it’s really encouraging to see the tides changing away from consulting as a way of getting someone to validate what we already know to consulting as a way of generating and sustaining value. Our efforts with Excelerate will pay off many times over what we budgeted.”
Consultants Think They Are Smarter Than You
Consultants have somehow created a name for themselves that they know better than their clients about their businesses. They often think they are the smartest people in the room and this generates a tense dynamic between them and their clients.
At Excelerate, sure, we’re smart. And so are our clients. We are 100% in the trenches with our clients, and they know it. We are dedicated to their success and their success within their organizations. We stand so firmly in this space that it’s part of our mission statement – it’s what we call our ripple effect. Our ripple effect is to grow the shared economy of this ecosystem. To do that we make everyone better in the process. Our relationship with our clients is a true partnership, and one with shared success. Together, we are finding solutions and learning from each other. That is how we show up every day.
Another of our clients, Aušra Jakuboviene (VP of Transformation) at Under Armour said,
“I love how you show up, ready to deliver excellence. You are the force multiplier for my team and support us in achieving our goals. You make us better by fitting into our culture and honoring who we are in the process.”
Consultants Don’t Know How to Execute
Pontificating is not as valuable as executing. There is a time and place for thinking and it is important that we are thoughtful and do that well. But many can think of great ideas, few can execute to bring those ideas to life. Our laser focus on execution serves us well. We don’t stop at strategy. We translate that strategy into actions, and we drive execution to tangible results, which is where you find the return on investment. We pride ourselves on being a firm that is unafraid to ask – “can you really do that?”. Whether the constraint is resources, technical capacity, change readiness, talent, time or money - if the answer is no, then we need to find another solution. At the end of the day, the best strategies are the ones that can be executed. If you can’t deliver then you cannot actually benefit from a return on investment. It stays theoretical in nature and results on a missed opportunity. It also generates resentment within the company’s employee base – they're left wondering... “I spent all that time providing ideas and thoughts to this engagement, with little to show for it.”
The era of hiring consultants to generate great ideas (that may or may not be viable to execute) thus putting the burden of unraveling the idea, unpacking the assumptions, and then actually delivering on the organizations themselves - is over. It is not time or money well spent on behalf of organizations with competing priorities and very little bandwidth. Two of our clients say it better than we can:
John Gonsalves (VP of Direct to Consumer) at TaylorMade said it simply,
“you get real work done. You implement and there are tangible outcomes of your work that are measurable.”
Shawn Dixon (Chief Operating Officer for San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance) said,
“We appreciate that the recommendations from you have been so seamless for our team to leverage and execute. The way you take our team members on a journey alongside you results in them truly owning the outcome and the execution of it. It’s rewarding for everyone involved.”
A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats
Change is necessary. There is a better and brighter future in which tough problems get solved through actionable planning and consultants are leveraged as the force multiplier to get those goals accomplished. Jennifer Schulz, (SVP, Director of Commercial Client Experience & Strategic Performance) at Umpqua Bank said,
“You are strategic thought partners that remove barriers and obstacles to accelerate execution. In our first year working with you, you helped me build the strategy and then in the second year you taught my team the skills needed to implement that strategy.”
We are building a shared ecosystem where we continue to learn, grow and win alongside our clients with a strong belief that a rising tide lifts all boats. That’s where the future is.
So if the end of consulting as we know it is dying, what does the consulting of the future look like? Where will we be in the next 5-10 years? We are headed in a new direction. And it’s one that we made a bet on when we started Excelerate nearly 7 years ago. An idea to be different. Different in our approach. Different in our values. And different with our people. We’ve always been different and it’s time to really highlight that.
—Jana De Anda
