How to Succeed as a Management Consultant
Yesterday I was a presenter on a national Zoom ‘webinar’ on the ‘High Cost of Ethics Lapses’ in the management consulting profession. I was presenting on several of the very high profile, high-cost lapses that have hit the media. They are ugly and unfortunately define the costs associated with inappropriate behavior in consulting, which not only damages their reputations but smears all consultants. McKinsey, fined nearly $1bn for their involvement with opioid ‘crisis.’ PwC Australia sold their Government Advisory group with $300mn (AUD) annual billings for $1 (AUD). That’s the one-year price of embarrassment, not even counting the present value of future profits to partners.
Back in the early 70’s when I started in management consulting the worst reputational hit we took was in the form of some jokes told at our expense. You know them, “A consultant is one, when you ask for the time of day, will take your watch, read you the time, and keep the watch.” Not really funny to a practitioner. Another one stung more, “A consultant is one who knows 50 ways to make love and doesn’t have a lover.” Ugh. The jokes persisted. Then books about consulting and TV shows. Then more books, The Big Con, When McKinsey Comes to Town, and so forth.
Through it all, management consulting survived and indeed thrived. IBISWorld report Management Consulting in the US of October 2023 for NAICS #54161 (management consulting) and subsections states annual revenue of $366.6bn, 2mn employees, 1mn firms with $23.5bn profit and a 6.4% profit margin in the US alone.
Big business indeed. IBISWorld also points to a good future as “countercyclical demand ensures steady performance,” with “low volatility” and “above average GDP growth.”
With low barriers to entry coupled with low regulation (particularly state or Federal licensing), new entrants into the industry are all but guaranteed.
Yet, as a professional it is this very fact that causes me heartburn. Not that new entrants are expected, I’ve faced them for over 50 years of consulting. It is the no- to low-regulation factor. I am not a proponent of regulation but I am a proponent of professionalism, consulting competence, and, well, doing the right thing for yourself, for your clients, and indeed for society at large. Unlike attorneys, CPAs, professional engineers and, at least in NC, barbers and cosmetologists, management consultants are not licensed on a competency basis.
There is an answer, though, and it is up to each and every management consultant (whether a solopreneur, working in a small to mid-sized boutique consulting firm, in a large professional services firm as a consultant or even within industry or government as a consultant) to recognize and simply to add five things for your practice:
Follow a worldwide standard Competence Framework that is about how you consult not what you consult in;
Understand and adhere to an enforceable Code of Ethics (which, btw, as I noted in previous blogs, had the consultants at McKinsey and/or PwC Australia followed, it is very likely those severe costs enumerated above would not have happened, and more importantly, reputations would not have been damaged);
Live up the international standards of a professional Code of Conduct associated with consulting behaviors;
Seek to up your game by becoming a Certified Management Consultant® or, if in a firm, a CMC Firm; and, finally,
Get trained in ISO 20700, the only international professional services standard.
Consider then, if you will, in the US with approximately 1mn firms and 2mn consultants, how do you differentiate yourself and your practice from all the others? I do and very successfully compete. More importantly, I have been vetted by professional peers to meet international standards and that puts me on the course for ‘doing the right thing in the right way’ especially in an unlicensed profession.
How about you? Perhaps I should throw down the professional gauntlet. Join me in membership at IMC USA and automatically fall under the enforceable Code of Ethics and Code of Conduct. Have access to training programs, our Mastering Management Consulting as one example, and become a better consultant – the how you consult.
BTW, it is relatively easy – if you believe in your practice and want to do the right thing in the right way. Now is time as more entrants will be coming in every day. Step up, do the right thing. I, for one, will welcome you as a peer.
