al berrios & co. / Why / Engage a consulting firm?

Difference - Our Position on Strategic Advice

Working With Consultants

So what is strategy and how do you consult on it? For starters, one must understand that when one engages a consultant, one is actually engaging a teacher.

Not surprising, the professional teacher's tools and product is information. In order to properly teach, information must be collected before the teaching, but as part of an engagement.

Once the information is collected and reviewed in context, the consultant must relay it to the client. This, in consultant-eeze, is referred to as

increasing the efficiency and velocity of knowledge. This is 50% of what you're paying for.

Once relayed, the consultant then uses their objective perspective to pinpoint opportunities in maintaining their current investment directions or alternatives in which to redeploy their resources (the firm's strategy). This, friends, is strategy consulting (and the other 50% of what you pay for).

But You've Got Very Smart People on Payroll

Many clients are also employers of MBAs, also trained as consultants, but unfortunately not trained to think of anything else other than their duties at the client firm in the context of what's going on in the industry or functional area. They're spectacular project managers and producers, but because they're not mobilized to look at the big picture, they're also unqualified to displace the role of an outside advisor.

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