Consulting News

Why is it that some consulting firms have more success getting their consultants into business school than others? What makes it so that the “name brand” firms seem to have a steady flow of consultants through the best schools?

Where will consulting firms find the talent they need to stay competitive? It’s already out there – in the ranks of top-notch minority students and professionals who haven’t traditionally considered consulting a viable career option. This untapped resource represents a new frontier – one the consulting profession must cultivate or risk being outpaced in the race for talent.

It’s a question that haunts many consulting organizations: How do consulting leaders keep their people connected to the organization when as consultants they spend most of their time surrounded by the client’s people, offices and culture? For us, the answer lies in actively building a culture within the consulting organization – call it a “user-friendly culture” – that keeps people connected to the company in ways that deliver tangible benefits to the individual. Such connections include substantive tools for their current and future success, connections to their home community and avenues for progressive and friendly collaboration with people who can mentor them or otherwise help them to grow professionally.

More than 120 years ago, Arthur Dehon Little and Roger Griffin came together to forge a brand-new kind of company – one devoted solely to assisting other organizations in improving their own processes and products. The idea that “management engineers” could rescue ailing organizations didn’t just strike a chord. It inspired a legion of like-minded visionaries – men like James McKinsey, who formed McKinsey & Company in 1926, and Andrew Thomas Kearney, founder of A.T. Kearney, who sought to provide management advice to the chief executives of leading organizations across several industries by applying cumulative client learnings to the assignments at hand. By the end of the 1930s, these management engineers were going by a new name, courtesy of one Marvin Bower — “management consultants.” They were as well laying the groundwork for a particular methodology now widely known as

As the automotive industry's road map to profitability becomes increasingly convoluted, can consultants navigate the way?

V.P. Kochikar and M.P. Ravindra of Infosys Technologies believe that too many companies are siloed in ivory towers.