a

Consulting Staffing Model: How to Avoid the Short End of the Stick as the "Little Guy"

A lunch conversation today led to this question: what is the best management model setup for a consulting firm?

The standard consulting answer would naturally apply: it depends. But for a large firm with thousands of employees, is there a setup that is most ideal for both leadership and staff?

We examined the structure of one firm, let's call it Firm A as compared with another (Firm B) from the staff's perspective:

Firm A: your life is determined/managed by your director/partner, which automatically places you into an industry, and then a service line.

Firm B: your life is determined by your service line, which is overseen by a number of partners, and then industry.

The conclusion we reached was that the Firm A setup could potentially be ideal, IF your director was awesome and loved you. I reasoned that the probability of this happening is actually higher than in the other model, due to the fact that the revenue you generate would directly benefit your director. Therefore, the director would have much greater incentive to keep his "little guys" happy and give them more things to do (as long as the "little guy" has no plans to switch out of the director's predetermined industry and service line....). The personal relationship has potential to play a larger factor here, but switching to something else is basically a non-option, leading some young employees to feel "trapped".

Conversely, the Firm B model could potentially be ideal, IF there were good projects in your predetermined service line and industry, and the managers of those projects were awesome and loved you. The probability of this occurring may or may not be high, depending on the project. The managers obviously have close to zero incentive to let staff leave their project, as it causes issues for them (explanations to the client, knowledge transfer, just dealing with it in general). In addition, the revenue you generate is spread across several partners, so they may not necessarily care where you are at. I also think that this model may make staff more dispensible, as it is easy to hire more people to cycle them into this model. Personal relationships with partners are not always high, as staff must struggle to get to know several partners (who knows who is going to have the best project next??). However, there is greater potential for variety in your career if you play it right, and you may have an increased degree of control over your fate.

Which leads me back to my original thought: the career progression of a consultant is about 30% effort and 70% sheer luck, and I am not exactly the luckiest.

Labels: BearingPoint, consulting, Deloitte, management model

posted by Ashley @ 1:32 PM