Traditional Consultancy Model

The Role of the Traditional Consultant

We established what we probably already knew, that we couldn’t know much about the market. But this position is reflected by few consultancies. Let’s look at the model of Checkland’s Soft System Methodology to understand how consultants typically operate, as this provides a meta-model for a traditional consultancy engagement. (6)

Figure 1. How traditional consultants work to formulate strategy

The client engages the consultant to answer a question like, “How do we improve our operational performance?” or “What should the company’s strategy be?” The consultant approaches this by modeling the company or area of interest to develop the ‘as-is’ model – this may be a simple spreadsheet of existing costs by area, a detailed value stream analysis of a business area, or a dynamic systems model of the company.

The consultant then uses this to drive the options analysis. Note, this is about options and not hypotheses based on their experience of the market (it may also include engagement of the organization’s employees). These options help to determine the ‘to-be’ models that provide the desired benefit to the client’s question. There may be some discussion of the options to ensure they result in an acceptable outcome from the client’s perspective before proceeding to the next stage – mapping the ‘to-be’ model back into the real world to define the target end-state.

Finally, there’s the definition of the roadmap, which moves us from the current ‘as-is’ to the future ‘to-be.’ This may be outlined as a five-year strategic roadmap (after all, this project was expensive, so you need to get value for your money). The plans are then developed. The leaders of the organization begin work to deliver on the strategic objectives, or engage another consultant to support implementation, someone who has a wonderful planning approach and great Project Management Office (PMO) capability that would be a great fit.

The problems start at the beginning. For one, the options outlined are only based on the experience and knowledge of the consultant. Even workshops intended to engage employees can be shaped by the consultant’s existing thinking. They do not include the outliers or ideas that may lead to a revolution of the business. There may well be talk of embracing good or best practice, but that does not mean that they are current practices and there is a saying, ‘best practices are someone’s past practices.’ Also the work is typically based on a small set of examples. Therefore, the applicability, in this context, is not tested; it is basically an inductive model.

The approach is fundamentally based on an idealized end-state model that assumes that we can second guess the market, that we have largely perfect knowledge, and that we can affect the market with the consultant’s limited strategy. As Paul Ormerod and Bridgett Rosewell’s paper indicates, this is inconsistent with reality. We need a new model that reflects the reality that we exist in today and allows us to discover, as Dave Snowden suggests, “The evolutionary potential of the present.”