There has never been a more exciting—or challenging—time to be a leader in the consulting industry. The nature of project delivery is going through a period of fundamental change; the boundaries between consulting, technology, and other categories of professional services are breaking down, to the point where some have even questioned whether the term “consulting” is still a relevant one.
At the same time, firms are finding themselves having to grapple with increasingly complex client challenges and clients, themselves, are becoming increasingly sophisticated buyers of consulting services. Many of these challenges can only be solved through close collaboration—both between different service lines and capability teams within a firm, and between firms and their ecosystems of technology partners.
But none of this will be possible without a new approach to leadership.This is the first of a two-part report series that explores how consulting firms are rethinking what it means to be a partner—and how those partners can best be empowered to provide meaningful leadership at a time of profound change.
This first report looks at the role that partners play within their firm’s wider business, and the changes taking place in how firms leverage their partnership to produce commercial success. The second report—“The Leaders of Tomorrow”, published soon— will explore the evolution of the partnership itself, and the ways in which today’s partners look, act, and think differently from their predecessors.
