Management consultants are not in a class of their own

Dusseldorf They are in a class of their own: the consultants. They have to be smarter, more creative and faster than their customers and therefore faster than everyone else. Otherwise they cannot give advice and cannot sell their consulting services for a lot of money.

But now the world’s largest strategy consultancy McKinsey and the world’s leading IT consultancy Accenture are facing layoffs on a larger scale for the first time: up to 2,000 employees at McKinsey and up to 19,000 employees at Accenture. And that with continued single to double-digit growth rates and high profitability.

The strategists of these societies show that they are no longer a special class. It’s finally becoming clear that they’ve grown unbridled over the past two fat years – following the 2020 Corona slump. McKinsey even admits to having to review its own business model.

The consequences: With 45,000 employees, McKinsey is now three times larger than it was ten years ago. And Accenture has taken over more than a dozen smaller and medium-sized competitors in the German-speaking region alone in the past three years, and is now more of a colorful conglomerate than a smart consulting group.

Now that the insane pace of growth is slowing down – even the biggest competitor and shooting star of recent years, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), grew by only eleven percent in 2022, after 25 percent in 2021 – the responsible managing partners are stepping up with layoffs the brake.

Welcome to the Crisis Club!

McKinsey, like Accenture, is not planning any cuts in the operational units, i.e. among the consultants and specialists with customer contact. Significantly more than half of the job cuts are to be attributed to employees from the so-called “back office”, i.e. the internal service units.

Wait a minute, you want to tell us what we have to do, but you don’t have your own shop under control either?

And yet: There is unrest in the company’s own ranks, and the customers frown. Ultimately, the consultants show weakness, they admit that they have grown too haphazardly, that they are not resilient enough. You would actually be a godsend for consultants, especially for communication consultants, by the way.

The consultants have to be careful not to become too ordinary. There is certainly a kind of bonding effect, i.e. an emotional (new) connection between consultants and those being advised, especially in the tech industry, which was also hit for the first time. Because of: Welcome to the crisis club! Now you can deliver on your own behalf and fire people. However, this first effect could quickly turn into the consideration: Wait a minute, you want to tell us what we have to do, but you don’t have your own shop under control either?

It remains to be seen whether job cuts are the best idea and sufficient in a business that, according to the company, is controlled by the “smartest minds” and given the lack of specialists and managers everywhere, remains to be seen, as with the racing driver, who only brakes and does not take countermeasures.

The fact is: The consultants have also arrived in the lowlands of ordinary business on their own behalf. But as the saying goes: Once the reputation is ruined, you live (and work) unabashedly. The question is whether the reputation of the consultants was ever good.

More: Boston Consulting Group grows only eleven percent

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