Blog

Imagine visiting your doctor for a routine exam. Upon entering the exam room, your doctor proudly points to a framed diploma and various certificates. “See those,” the doc says, “They confirm I know how your insides work. Now, let’s take a look …”

We take for granted that doctors know their stuff (or at least most of them). That’s because most professional services — medical, law, engineering, accounting — require some form of licensing to demonstrate acceptable and measurable competency. You might make note of their experience, but rarely would you question their baseline expertise because licensing has already set that bar.

Management consulting, on the other hand, remains a buyer-beware type of business, one that relies on firm handshakes and white papers to convey professional acumen. As a result, consultants routinely pull a Sally Field-like yearning for validation — “you like me, you really like me” — by touting expertise that should be readily apparent.

Nowhere is this more apparent than global consultancies promoting their geographic strength or “knowledge” of clients’ industries. Specialist firms do that because they’re small and focused, and thus need to reinforce their boundaries. Global firms, on the other hand, feel compelled to tout “expert” status in every industry and all around the world. In Consulting’s Olympics, there are no silver or bronze medals.

We focus on rating service capabilities. Our clients (buyers of consulting services) sometimes ask us to evaluate providers in certain industry sectors. Or, providers may query us on the size and growth prospects in certain geographic regions or countries. But rating the “best” global consultants by either of those dimensions seems rather perfunctory. If consultants don’t already deeply understand the client’s industry or work in local business culture, they really shouldn’t be invited to the table.