The Future of the Firm

To continue our discussions around brand in professional services, David Redhill, ex-Global CMO at Deloitte, joins us for this podcast episode. We explore whether firms can truly use their culture as a differentiator, the extent to which expertise is related to brand, and how mid-sized firms can compete in an increasingly crowded market.

Has anything truly disrupted the consulting industry in the years since Clayton Christensen's groundbreaking article in the Harvard Business Review? To discuss the issue of disruption within consulting, Fiona Czerniawska is joined by Julian Birkinshaw and David Lancefield from the London Business School.

Our latest research reveals the greatest shake-up in what clients tell us is important when working with a consulting firm since we started tracking this metric seven years ago: Having an innovative approach has been replaced by brand & reputation as the most important attribute. Could this signify a flight to brand, caused by the pandemic? To discuss the topic of brands in professional services,...

The question of who and what we're willing to trust is one of the defining issues of this digital age. In the context of professional services, trust has always played a critical role in the purchasing decisions of clients, and the pandemic has only served to cement that. In this episode, we are joined by J.C. Lapierre, Chief Strategy & Communications Officer for PwC in the United States, to discu...

Historically, the professional services industry hasn't been a place of gender diversity, but things seem to be changing. This podcast episode, recorded to celebrate International Women's Day, features Rachel Barton, Europe Strategy Lead at Accenture, and Alison Huntington, Director of Client & Brand Insights at Source, to discuss what it's really like to be a woman in the consulting industry toda...

It will come as no surprise that t he pandemic has resulted in a major rethink about the nature, and future, of work. In this podcast episode, we are joined by Jean-Marc Lao uchez, President of the Korn Ferry Institute to explore this issue further , and to hear about how Korn Ferry are contributing to this change.   

Clients are becoming more demanding of their consultants than ever before. Clients are looking for partners to assist them with their thorniest challenges, and consulting firms need to step up. In our first podcast episode of 2022, Fiona Czerniawska is joined by Source expert, Margaret Cameron-Waller, to discuss what the year has in store for consulting firms and their clients, and the key drivers...

Clients in Japan have always tended to be relatively conservative in their use of consultants, and have historically been somewhat reluctant to invest in large-scale consulting programmes. In this episode, we're joined by Kenji Katsura, the leader of PwC's technology consulting business in Japan, and Yann Bonduelle, a Senior Advisor to the firm, to discuss how changes are reshaping this market—and...

Is it time for the consulting sector to undergo its own behavioural revolution? In this episode, we're joined by Andros Payne, Managing Partner and Founder of the consulting firm Humatica, to discuss what a more behaviour-centric model of consulting would look like, and how a richer understanding of human behaviour could help consultants more effectively deliver change for their clients.

Thought leadership has always been a critically important brand-building tool for consulting firms ; and, increasingly, the same is also true in the world of legal services. In this episode of the podcast, we're joined by Leor Franks, Business Development  & Marketing Director at the law firm Kingsley  Napley ,  to discuss the history and the future of the legal thought leadership landscape.  And...

In recent years, the private equity market has started to become an increasingly important buyer of consulting services . The recent surge in deal making in the wake of the pandemic has created both opportunities and challenges for the firms that serve this market. At the same time, investors  are  becoming more and more  interested in building environmentally sustainable portfolios, and often nee...

Moments of crisis have always brought with them  opportunities for consultants operating in the forensics and litigation space; when businesses are put under strain, underlying  issues have a tendency to reveal themselves.  Today, we'll be examining the various ways in which the pandemic continues to reshape the landscape of forensics, disputes & litigation consulting work—as well as some of the l...

In today's consulting landscape, clients want their consultants to create real, tangible, and measurable value—value that persists long after your team finishes the project. Generally, clients are highly sceptical about whether their spend on consulting services is generating a positive financial return on investment. So any firm that is able to define, measure, and ultimately create, value is lik...

The pandemic has acted as a sharp remi nder of just how fragile the world's economy and our global infrastructure truly is. Layer on top of that the ne w  kinds of threats that have emerged—from immediate dangers such as cybercrime, through to long-term, planetary issues like climate change and geopolitical realignments—and it's easy to see why  it's often argued that we're living through an "age...

Since the beginning of this year, the consulting market has bounced back faster than many had anticipated—leaving many firms struggling to find the resources to keep pace with client demand.  While the  so-called  "war for talent" is not a new phenomenon in this industry, the problem does feel more acute now than ever before.  So, o n this episode of the podcast, we're joined by Amanda Gethin—the...

The pa n demic has made COOs and CEOs acutely aware of their human capital depe n de ncies, and  many have turned to  technologies like artificial intelligence and robotic process automation as a means of building more resilience  into their businesses.  And that's been great news for the new generation of specialist automation consulting firms and "automation as a service" providers.  In this epi...

Over  the past decade, digital transformation has been one of the most important drivers of consulting spend; our latest data suggests that the digital transformation market makes up over a third of the total global market for consulting services.  However, the  pandemic has had some profound effects on the digital priorities of clients—and, in many industries, has led to a significant acceleratio...

For many of us, strategy work is what we immediately picture when we think about consulting . However, like every facet of this industry, strategy consulting has moved on a great deal over the past few decades. Indeed, for many clients, the word "strategy" itself has a very different set of connotations than it once did.  In this episode of the podcast, we're joined  by Jonathan Goodman—Chair of M...

Thought leadership is a crucial part of the brand-building strategy of the modern professional services firm. And over the past year and a half, it's taken on a new level of importance; for many clients, it has played a vital role in helping them successfully overcome the challenges of the pandemic. On this episode, we're joined by Francis  Hintermann , the Global Managing Director of Accenture Re...

As issues of   racial justice have taken on a new level of importance in the public consciousness, consulting firms have become more aware of the  need  to confront the  sector's historical failings . In this episode, we're joined by Ekow Sanni-Thomas, founder of  Inside Voices ,  a platform dedicated to holding companies accountable for their diversity pledges. We  discuss the practical steps tha...

Over the past few years, the boundaries between freelancers and established consulting firms have become a lot more porous than they used to be. Spurred on by a desire  to create more flexible resourcing models, large consulting firms have adopted a much more proactive approach to bringing freelancers into the delivery of their client engagements. And that's been facilitated, in part, by the arriv...

I n the modern consulting industry, it's vital that firms understand how to help clients unlock the innovation potential within their  organisations . Increasingly, clients aren't just looking for consultants who know how to write a compelling PowerPoint deck; they want to find partners who can provide them with the practical support necessary to develop, launch and scale radically innovative prod...

Over the past twelve months, the global Black Lives Matter movement has forced businesses in every industry to ask themselves some hard questions about their track record on issues of diversity and inclusion. For the consulting sector, these questions feel particularly pertinent, given the way in which a firm's success is directly rooted in the human capital it has access to. On this episode of th...

Whether you're a leader within a consulting firm or a consultant who advises clients on  questions about management and leadership, there's a good chance you've spent a lot of time over the last year thinking about the topic of employee engagement. Engagement might not be a new concept, either for consultants or their clients, but it is one that feels more relevant right now than ever .   T he pan...

Since the very beginning of the pandemic,  there was talk in both the private and public sector about the need to "build back better" and ensure a "green recovery" from COVID-19. Now that we're starting to get a better sense of what a post-COVID future could look like, clients are asking themselves tough questions about what, exactly, a green recovery will mean in practice—and how to balance compe...