Strategy and technology: a salutary tale from the energy and resources sector
By Fiona Czerniawska 26%. That’s the proportion of clients in the energy and resources sector globally who think that strategy firms deliver poor-quality work, twice the level of clients on average,...
View ArticlePaving the way for more women partners
By Fiona Czerniawska Consulting firms have made huge efforts over the last decade to increase the proportion of women in their businesses. By the standards of most industries they’ve been highly...
View ArticleKorn Ferry and Hay Group: The HR consulting market turns a corner
By Fiona Czerniawska It’s just the latest deal in a wave of consolidation that’s been washing over HR consulting for a decade or more – but it’s one that could signal a shift in the market. The $7.5bn...
View ArticleThe role of the consulting brand: it’s not what you are, but what you do
By Fiona Czerniawska 40% of senior executives say that a firm’s overall brand has a significant impact on their opinion about the firm, and a further 43% say it has some bearing. That makes brand more...
View ArticleIndustry knowledge: plenty of room for improvement
By Fiona Czerniawska Finding points of difference between consulting firms is something clients have always struggled with, but there’s one characteristic that’s coming up again and again in our...
View ArticleEnter the orchestrator?
By Fiona Czerniawska Clients want to have their cake and eat it. They regularly tell us that they’d like to use specialised firms, but in practice they tend to stick with larger ones (and the bigger...
View ArticleCyber security: the next consulting blockbuster
By Fiona Czerniawska When does a big consulting service become a blockbuster? The simple answer is that it’s when it ticks four boxes: It resonates with a widely-recognised issue in society: ‘just’...
View ArticleChristmas on the cusp of disruption
Santa, Many thanks for your time yesterday. It was very useful to get feedback from you and your colleagues around our interim findings, and I thought it would be helpful to summarise the key points of...
View ArticleCounting the cost of generalisation
By Fiona Czerniawska Clients love a specialist. In a previous article on this blog I’ve discussed how the extent to which clients’ rating of the quality of consulting work is very influenced by whether...
View ArticleWhy Blue Monday could be a red letter day for consultants
By Fiona Czerniawska Consultants are notoriously optimistic. Years ago, I had the partner I was working for up against a wall (metaphorically speaking, you understand), when he overused the phrase,...
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