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Services Industry News: Quick Takes

By Michael W. McLaughlin on July 6, 2011 in Business Life, Industry Trends

Here’s a brief roundup of links and news from around the services industry.

24% say they’d rather give up sex than sit through another PowerPoint presentation.

The Economist offers advice to consultants as demand for services rebounds.

Job market for consulting shows real signs of life.

What consultants are earning at 4,956 companies.

Accenture’s earnings beat expectations. Booz Allen’s profit surges.

PwC gobbles up consulting firm PRTM. The financial details are hush-hush, but you can bet some people will end up with bags of money.

Consulting Magazine selects its top 25 consultants for 2011. Mostly a vanity award?

According to the Boston Consulting Group, consumer sentiment is currently all over the map.

What do executives want from their CIOs? PA Consultants’ survey says cost savings, increasing operational efficiencies, and delivering consistent, stable IT performance.

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Retaining Top Talent in Professional Services

By Michael W. McLaughlin on June 14, 2011 in Industry Trends, Managing Your Business

For the last few years, consultants at many firms were barely hanging on. Some dodged layoffs, survived cost-cutting measures, and withstood client pressure for fee concessions. Now, many of them think it’s time for firm leaders to recognize their sacrifices.

In their report, Professional Service Firms–Re-engaging and Retaining Employees, researchers at Towers Watson have some advice for firm leaders wrestling with this issue. With retention levels creeping back to pre-recession levels, firms must put renewed emphasis on keeping their best people. According to the report, though, firms that simply throw more money at top performers are missing the boat.

Certainly, financial rewards play a pivotal role in retention. But firm leaders must also look at how they’re helping people with career development, work-life balance, and workload. Effective retention practices include an array of strategies, not just pay raises.

Equally important is for firm leaders to strengthen the bond of engagement between employer and employee. Better engagement, the report says, leads to improved retention. That’s not exactly an “aha” finding. But the research offers specific ways for firm leaders to boost engagement, including giving people a say in the selection of their work, fostering an environment in which people can express their opinions, and ensuring that all employees are treated with respect.

The report wraps up with a warning: Firm leaders who fail to recognize the seriousness of the retention issue risk losing their top talent. For some firms, the approach to employee engagement needs reinvention. And the time to do that is now.

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Services Industry News: Quick Takes

By Michael W. McLaughlin on June 9, 2011 in Industry Trends

Here’s a brief roundup of links and news from around the services industry.

New Kellogg/Northwestern research: Visionary leaders attract more followers, especially in times of crisis.

A jab at outsourcers: 77% of IT staffers say that outsourcers invent work just to make more money.

Consultants get a Showtime “comedy” series: House of Lies is likely to be pretty dark humor.

Deloitte survey: Two out of three workers actively looking for new jobs.

Resumes are dead: The bio is in.

About 30% of consulting firms fail each year. Here’s some basic advice for averting failure, though it may not be nearly enough for many.

Tech news: Survey reveals 68% of global organizations planning to adopt cloud strategy.

A client’s perspective: Five questions for assessing consultants.

Eliminate Your 3 Biggest Time Traps for Good.

Six Business Technologies That Don’t Work.

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Services Industry News: Quick Takes

By Michael W. McLaughlin on May 3, 2011 in Business Life, Industry Trends

Here’s a brief roundup of links and news from around the services industry.

CPAs: Half of our clients are still in crisis, in spite of improving business conditions. More than 25 percent of CPA firms are in crisis too, according to AICPA.

Smart people make the worst teams, according to MIT researchers.

Ever wonder just how much content is on the web? Here’s the answer.

Three stages of commoditization for consulting services, according to industry analyst, Fiona Czerniawska.

IBM is jumping into the Business Process Management business. Is any firm not in this market?

So, you want to be a consultant? One person’s lessons learned.

Research report: 75 percent believe IT projects are doomed before starting. Ouch.

ComputerWorld: 7 dirty consultant tricks (and how to avoid them).

Sparking creativity in teams: An executive’s guide, by McKinsey & Company (registration required).

Who’s using all those iPads?

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CEOs:Things Are Looking Up

By Michael W. McLaughlin on April 8, 2011 in Industry Trends

PwC released its 14th Annual Global CEO Survey, which shows strong confidence in the growth prospects for the global economy. CEOs are almost as confident about growth as they were before the global economy tanked.

It’s understandable why CEOs are bullish. For instance, in North America, corporate earnings are at record levels and profit margins for non-financial S+P 500 companies are expected to climb to their highest levels in at least 18 years, according to Bloomberg.

Find out more about the PwC survey report.

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Quick Takes for Service Providers

By Michael W. McLaughlin on April 6, 2011 in Industry Trends, Managing Your Business

Is McKinsey & Co. the Root of All Evil? A catalogue of McKinsey-inspired strategies gone wrong.

Exposing the CULT in ConsULTant. A lawyer’s take on the myth of the business consultant.

How to Become a Management Consultant. If it was this straightforward, everyone would do it.

How to lose a client–fast. Some obvious points, but good reminders.

What do “social media” consultants actually do? Here are a few clues.

According to M2 Consulting, most independent consultants (76%) are satisfied or extremely satisfied with their career choice.

How much do management consultants earn? These numbers seem low.

Six Ways to Identify a Company in Decline. Add over-reliance on consultants to the list?

Good IT consultants can make bad employees. Is independent thinking an impediment to being a good employee?

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Podcast: Daniel Burrus on Seeing the Future

By Michael W. McLaughlin on March 4, 2011 in Industry Trends, Management Consulting News, Managing Your Business, Podcasts

Meet the MasterMinds: Daniel Burrus on Flash Foresight

Dan Burrus, futurist Daniel Burrus is the author of the bestselling new book, Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible, and Technotrends.

Dan is one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and business strategists. He’s the founder of Burrus Research, a firm that monitors global advancements in technology-driven trends to help clients understand how technological, social, and business forces are converging to create untapped opportunities.

I asked Burrus how we can use the futurist’s tools to guide our businesses and help clients find those new opportunities.

Run Time: 18 minutes

Find out more about Daniel Burrus at www.flashforesight.com and www.burrus.com.

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The Best (Large) Consulting Firms to Work For

By Michael W. McLaughlin on March 1, 2011 in Industry Trends

Last month, Fortune magazine released its annual list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. Eight consulting/accounting firms earned a place on this year’s list. For most of those firms, job growth in 2010 was non-existent. Ernst & Young, for example, reported a 7% reduction in jobs, and KPMG shrank by 5%.

Most job growth was concentrated in the pure consulting firms–not in the full-service professional service firms. Boston Consulting Group grew jobs by 2% and Booz Allen Hamilton by 9%. These two firms were also offering the highest average salary of the consulting/accounting firms, but not the highest among the top 100 companies. For instance, a senior account executive at SalesForce.com (#52 on the list) reportedly earned an annual salary of $318,323.

Ranking and Firm	Average Salary	2010 Job Growth
# 2 Boston Consulting Group	$154,501	2%
#26 Plante & Moran	$ 64,300	-4%
#63 Deloitte	$ 81,622	-1%
#73 PricewaterhouseCoopers	$ 86,826	-4%
#77 Ernst & Young	$102,593	-7%
#85 Booz Allen Hamilton	$112,728	9%
#86 KPMG	$ 73,300	-5%
#99 Accenture	$ 83,500	4%

Most of the firms on this list are still struggling to align their businesses with the market realities they face. So executives had to make tough decisions about how to size their practices and serve their markets most profitably.

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The Top 4 Leadership Characteristics

By Michael W. McLaughlin on February 28, 2011 in Business Life, Industry Trends

The shelves in most bookstores are full of leadership books, but some really stand out. For me, the work of James Kouzes and Barry Posner is among the best on the topic of leadership. In their book, The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner report on a survey they’ve conducted around the world for many years.

Using a list of 20 leadership characteristics, they’ve asked more than 75,000 survey respondents to identify the qualities that they “most look for and admire in a leader, someone whose direction they would willingly follow.”

What’s striking is that the same four leadership characteristics that people admire and look for have remained consistent from year to year, regardless of demographic, organizational, or cultural differences. The authors conclude that there are a few “character tests” that people must pass before they’re viewed as a leader.

Below are the 20 leadership characteristics that the authors use in their study. Can you identify the top four characteristics that people consistently look for in their leaders?

What Are the Top 4 Leadership Characteristics?
Independent	Competent	Ambitious	Determined
Cooperative	Self-Controlled	Loyal	Dependable
Honest	Straightforward	Supportive	Mature
Intelligent	Forward-Looking	Caring	Courageous
Fair-Minded	Imaginative	Broad-Minded	Inspiring

If you want to learn more about the authors, you can read the interview I conducted with James Kouzes.

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Recent News in the Consulting Industry

By Michael W. McLaughlin on August 27, 2010 in Industry Trends

Last month, consolidation in the HR consulting market continued as Aon Corporation scooped up HR consulting giant Hewitt Associates for $4.9 billion. According to reports, Aon plans to integrate Hewitt with its existing consulting/outsourcing business, creating a new entity called Aon Hewitt. Current Hewitt CEO, Russ Fradin, would then become CEO of Aon Hewitt.

That transaction follows on the heels of Mercer’s acquisition of IPA, the health and benefits administration technology provider. And, in January of this year, Towers Watson completed the merger of Towers Perrin and Watson Wyatt.

Speaking of Hewitt, according to a recent Hewitt study, global employee engagement and morale are nose-diving as the economy picks up steam. Almost half of surveyed organizations reported a drop in employee engagement levels at the end of June 2010. It’s the steepest drop-off Hewitt has reported since it began conducting employee engagement research 15 years ago.

Hewitt’s analysis shows a link between employee engagement levels and financial performance. Organizations with high levels of engagement (where 65 percent or more of employees are “engaged”) outperformed the total stock market index even in volatile economic conditions.

In a moment of clarity, executives at consultancies A.T. Kearney and Booz & Company ended talks about a possible merger. The two firms have danced around a possible combination before and reached the same conclusion. It’s doubtful that this latest round of talks did anything more than create unnecessary firm-wide turmoil at a time when both firms need market focus, not political intrigue.

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