Consulting firms have always competed with one another for talent, but according to new research from Source and Penna, there are a growing number of consultants leaving the industry to work for clients. The report, “A new front in the war for talent” found that 76 per cent of consulting firms believe clients are actively trying to attract consultants away from their firm and 30 per cent have already changed their business model in response to this new front.

These figures demonstrate a continuing demand for consulting skills at a time when many clients are keen to spend less with consulting firms. According to the report, one of the factors behind this demand is the growth in popularity of internal consulting divisions, which have narrowed the distinction between a consulting firm and client and led to changes in what a client needs from a consulting firm. Client demand is now for high-level consulting talent with even more experience than their in-house team and for consultants, typically at a more junior level, who can plug gaps in the client’s own internal resources.

Edward Haigh, Director at Source and author of the report, said: “Instead of the traditional pyramid-shaped consulting firm, clients want one that’s more like an hour-glass – biggest at the top and bottom, but pinched in the middle.”

Sally Wilson, Head of Penna’s Associate Consulting Practice, also noted that: “As consulting firms have shifted their emphasis towards junior talent, there has also been an increase in demand from our consulting clients for experienced associates to deliver work. The flexibility of the associate model appeals to clients who can draw on resources as and when they need it.”

Additional findings from the report include:

• Just 15% of respondents from consulting firms said that remuneration was now one of the most effective ways to attract talent away from industry. More effective are thought to be diversity of work (35%) and the opportunity to work alongside high-quality consultants (25%).

• 58% of new recruits into the consulting industry come from consulting firms rather than clients (23%), showing that where recruitment is concerned, competition remains between consulting firms.

Source:  www.top-consultant.com

Arthur D. Little successfully completed its Management Buy-Out (MBO) with Altran Technologies on 30th December, 2011. In its 125th anniversary year, the world’s first management consulting firm has once again become a Global Private Partnership, with 100% of the ownership of the company now held by its Partners. The MBO deal involves all of its offices worldwide and includes the prestigious Arthur D. Little brand.

Since the 2 November announcement by Altran, that it had entered into an exclusive negotiation of an MBO led sale of Arthur D. Little to its Partners, the firm has been actively and successfully preparing its new independent Global Private Partnership. The financial commitment required from the Partners has been oversubscribed and Altran Technologies will be providing vendor financing to support the company’s development in the coming months and years.

The firm will be led by a newly elected global CEO, Ignacio Garcia Alves, leader of the MBO team that successfully managed the acquisition of Arthur D. Little by its Partners.

“I am honored by the trust and confidence of the Partners and am very excited by the prospect of leading this firm into the next stage of its rich history. Our objective with the MBO is twofold: 1) Taking the firm’s destiny and governance back in the hands of the Partners; 2) Accelerating growth by attracting key talents or aggregating smaller firms in targeted industries, functions and countries” declared the new Global CEO.

The positioning of Arthur D. Little will be centred on its historical core of Innovation, offering its unparalleled and unique value proposition of linking Strategy, Innovation, and Technology. In the current global economy, this value proposition is the only way companies and countries can improve their sustained competitiveness. This is true in Europe and the USA where new growth platforms are desperately needed as well as in fast growing economies, such as BRIC countries, that seek to catch-up and move into innovative, added-value products and services.

Source:  www.top-consultant.com

Global management consultancy Arthur D. Little (ADL), currently marking its 125th anniversary, has just completed a major revamp of its website to better display the variety of content and depth of intellectual capital the firm holds around the future of innovation management.

“As part of our broader strategic approach to communications, this positions us well for the new era in which engagement and interaction with various stakeholders becomes ever more important,” said Marion Sommerwerck, Global Director of Marketing and Communications, Arthur D. Little. “We’ve consciously moved away from the notion of a website as a company brochure to showcase the full range of our expertise as we have seen a major shift in target groups and the way they need to be approached in the digital world that we cater to.”

Modelled on the classic news portals, the site’s layout has been explicitly designed to communicate to visitors which sections are most relevant for their needs. The main concept of the site is to provide an info-portal through which visitors can access the full range of Arthur D. Little’s content across a number of devices and channels.

The new-look website acts as a social media platform for Arthur D. Little and is part of the wider communication strategy the company has decided to follow; giving users easy access to the Arthur D. Little Twitter and Facebook pages.

The site now also features an enhanced HR-section allowing potential employees to find out about the firm, its work culture and career opportunities. Marie Jerusalem, Global Director Human Resources says: “Applicants today take a careful look at the company and its website prior to applying and the new site covers everything someone interested in joining us needs to know.”

Source:  www.top-consultant.com

Roland Berger Strategy Consultants has appointed 26 new international partners. The new partners are based in the worldwide offices of the international consultancy company, from Paris to Beijing, Dubai to Tokyo. In addition, five international partners have been promoted to the next partner level. With these appointments at the International Partner Meeting in Munich, the strategy consultancy will further strengthen its worldwide presence.

Fabrice Asvazadourian (45) joined Roland Berger as a Partner in the Paris Office. He has more than 15 years of experience as a strategy consultant in the financial services industry, advising his clients on topics covering strategy, commercial effectiveness and operational efficiency. Fabrice Asvazadourian has managed major transformation and restructuring programs at several financial institutions, and his client portfolio covers major banks in France and Benelux. He was also Chairman and CEO of an industrial medium-sized company. Fabrice Asvazadourian holds an engineering degree from the École des Mines de Paris.

Cécile André-Leruste (45) comes from the Société Générale banking group, where she held the position of Deputy Head of Strategy, Head of Development Debt Capital Markets, Head of Banking and Insurance Advisory and Deputy CEO of Equipment Finance. After completing her studies at École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Paris (HEC Paris) and Wharton/Lauder, she started her professional career at a leading management consulting firm in Paris. Cécile André-Leruste has more than 10 years of operational experience and seven years of consulting experience with a strong focus on banking and insurance. With this expertise, she will support the Financial Services Competence Center in the Paris office of Roland Berger.

Jacob Bruun-Jensen (44) rejoins Roland Berger as a Partner in the Consumer Goods & Retail Competence Center in London. He joined the company in 1997 and worked in the London and New York offices for 6 years. Jacob Bruun-Jensen has 10 years of experience in consulting, with expertise in consumer goods & retail and media & entertainment. He has also worked over 10 years in the industry for some of the world’s largest retailers and consumer goods companies, including Kraft Foods and PepsiCo. Jacob Bruun-Jensen also successfully co-founded a soft drinks company in the UK. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and two Master’s in Management degrees from Henley Business School and ESCP Europe Business School.

Maxim Bychkov (42) is a Partner in the Financial Services Competence Center in Roland Berger’s Moscow office. For over 15 years, he has advised insurance, investment and leasing companies as well as banks in Russia and CIS. He has held several executive positions at investment and corporate banks and moved into strategy consulting in 2004. Maxim Bychkov’s expertise covers strategy development and business planning, organizational solutions, restructuring and post-merger integration, sales, marketing and distribution.

Bruno Colmant (50), former Deputy CEO of Ageas, CEO of the Brussels Stock Exchange, Chief of Staff of the Minister of Finance in Belgium and Executive Board member at ING Belgium, has rejoined Roland Berger. As a member of the management team at the Brussels office, the well-known expert in corporate finance, financial markets, risk management, accountancy and tax law will be responsible for the Financial Services Competence Center. Bruno Colmant holds a Master of Science degree in Applied Economics from the Solvay Business School. He also has a Master’s in Fiscal Law as well as an MBA and a Ph.D. in Applied Economic Sciences.

Eric Confais (42) is a Partner in the Energy & Chemicals Competence Center in Roland Berger’s Paris office. He started his career at a consultancy specializing in corporate restructuring, then joined the energy practice of a management consultancy. Eric Confais joined Roland Berger in 2001 and has more than 12 years of experience in management consulting, focusing on projects in the energy, water and waste sectors. He is an expert in mergers and acquisitions, the results of market deregulation, developing new offerings, improving performance and cutting costs. He graduated from the École Centrale Engineering School in Paris.

Mark de Jonge (36) started working for Roland Berger in 2006 and is now Partner in the Financial Services Competence Center in Amsterdam. He has more than 10 years of experience in strategy consultancy and focuses his consulting activities on financial services, telecom and corporate performance. Mark de Jonge holds a Master’s degree in Applied Physics from Delft University of Technology (the Netherlands) and holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (USA).

Kiarash Fatehi (43) is a Partner in the Financial Services Competence Center in Frankfurt. He started his career at Daimler and has worked at a global consulting firm for almost 10 years before joining Roland Berger. He is a top management and strategy consultant with a solid focus on the financial services sector and strong international experience, having worked in the US, UK, Switzerland, Germany, France, Asia and Africa. Kiarash Fatehi holds an MBA from INSEAD, a Ph.D. in Mathematics and Economics and a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering.

Alexis Gardy (34) joined Roland Berger’s Paris office in 2001. As a Partner, he will further focus his consulting activities on tourism, hospitality, leisure and entertainment. Alexis Gardy graduated from ESCP Europe in Paris in 2001 and began his career in investment banking at Société Générale Hambros in London. He has more than 10 years’ experience in consulting and supports a number of global players in designing their corporate strategy and improving their performance and value.

Nikolay Grachev (36) is a Partner based in Roland Berger’s Moscow office. He started his professional career at a leading international consultancy in Berlin, before moving to the Moscow office of Roland Berger in 2005. He focuses his consulting activities on the electric, oil and gas sectors, serving both leading international players and major local players in Russia and Ukraine. Nikolay Grachev is an expert in strategy, post-merger integration and governance optimization. He studied Business Administration in St. Petersburg (Russia) and Berlin (Germany) and completed his Master’s of Political Theory at the London School of Economics (LSE).

Stephan Köhler (44) is a new Partner in the Operations Strategy Competence Center in the Munich office. After completing his degree in industrial engineering, he began his career in 1995 at a German consultancy where he became Managing Director and Partner of the firm’s Munich office. During this time, he expanded the firm’s business in telecoms and media as well as its industry expertise in supply management across all industries. As an expert on change management, he has supported comprehensive excellence and change initiatives at many large corporations.

Serge Lhoste (37) is a Partner based in Roland Berger’s Paris office, where he focuses his consulting activities on industrial products and materials. Prior to joining Roland Berger, he was a Principal at a leading American management consulting firm. In his more than 10 years in the consulting industry, he has become an expert in strategy, due diligence and cost optimization. Serge Lhoste advises clients in the chemicals, process and high tech industries. He holds a Master’s in Engineering from École Supérieure d’Électricité (Supélec) and an MBA from the École Supérieure des Sciences Économiques et Commerciales (ESSEC) in Paris.

Dr. Andreas Moritz (47) joined Roland Berger in Düsseldorf (Germany) as a member of the Operations Strategy Competence Center in 2011 after having spent several years at Management Engineers, where he became a Partner in 2008. He studied mechanical engineering in Aachen (Germany) and began his professional career at a German consulting company. He was also head of central logistics for Federal-Mogul. As a Partner, Andreas Moritz will continue to support the Operations Strategy Competence Center with his expertise in automotive and operations-related topics.

Ali Rekik (37) joined Roland Berger in 2000 after working for several investment banking institutions. Based in Roland Berger’s Paris office, he advises clients for the Aerospace, Defense and Transportation Competence Center. In more than 11 years in consulting, he has become an expert in corporate management, supply chain, manufacturing, and transformation plans as well as collaborative model and joint improvement plans. He holds degrees from the École Polytechnique and École des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris.

George Ren (38) has been working with Roland Berger in Shanghai for five years. As a Partner in the Consumer Goods & Retail Competence Center, he leverages his expertise in brand management, channel management and growth strategy to help leading international and Chinese clients in consumer goods and retail industries. He had worked in consulting for more than 5 years prior to joining Roland Berger. George Ren holds an MBA from the Fudan University in Shanghai and from the MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge (USA).

Oliver Räuscher (48) is a Partner in the Corporate Finance Competence Center in Berlin, focusing his consulting activities on joint ventures and M&A in several industries. Prior to joining Roland Berger in 2007, he was Director of Corporate Finance at one of the leading auditing companies, focusing on M&A and IPO advisory, carve outs and valuations. In addition, he worked in the legal department of the German Trust Agency in Leipzig (Germany), where he supervised privatization negotiations. Oliver Räuscher studied law at the University of Berlin.

Jochen Schönfelder (35) is a Partner in the Corporate Performance Competence Center of Roland Berger in Düsseldorf (Germany). He started his career at Roland Berger in 2002 after finishing his Master’s of Economics at Maastricht University (the Netherlands). Jochen Schönfelder focuses his consulting activities on restructuring in the renewable energies, engineered products and automotive industries, supporting clients on international projects.

Kushal Shah (40) is a Partner based in Roland Berger’s Dubai office, working for the InfoCom Competence Center. He started his career at a professional services organization in London and later joined the world’s largest professional services firm in Kenya. He also worked at a leading global management consulting firm in London and Dubai for more than 10 years. Kushal Shah’s main areas of expertise include strategy development, M&A and financing process support, post-merger integrations as well as restructuring and reorganization in the telecommunications sector. He holds a Master in Economics from Cambridge University (England).

Jürgen Thiele (41) joins Roland Berger as a Partner in the Financial Services Competence Center in Frankfurt (Germany). Before joining Roland Berger, he worked at a leading management consulting firm, where he was responsible for the property and casualty insurance platform in the DACH region. Jürgen Thiele has helped insurers increase their competitiveness in property and casualty insurance, auto insurance and claims management. His consulting focus includes strategic issues as well as designing and implementing large scale operational excellence programs. Jürgen Thiele holds a degree in Business Management from the University of Cologne (Germany).

Michel Vlasselaer (48) joined Roland Berger in November 2011 and is based in the Brussels office. He has more than 20 years’ experience at several leading consulting companies. As of 2002, he had held several management positions at IBM Global Business Services. Michel Vlasselaer is a recognized expert in business transformation and change management with a passion for transformation projects like post-merger integrations. He holds a Master of Science in Management from Solvay Brussels School and completed the Program for Executive Development at the International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland.

Rong Wang (39) is a Partner in Roland Berger’s Beijing office. Before joining the company in 2008, he was Strategic Planning Director for Siemens in China. He has broad experience in the real estate, energy, fast moving consumer goods and engineered products industries and is an expert in the functional areas of corporate strategy, sales & marketing, organization & governance, M&A and operations management. He holds a Ph.D. in Finance from the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

Marcus Weber (42) is a Roland Berger Partner in the Engineered Products & High Tech Competence Center in Munich. After studying Business Administration and Industrial Engineering at the University of Karlsruhe (Germany), he started his professional career at Daimler before turning to consulting in 1997. Since then, he has gained more than 14 years’ experience at leading consulting firms and has become a recognized expert in the renewable energy and engineered products & high tech industries. Marcus Weber’s core competencies include programs for performance improvement, corporate and business strategies as well as organizational design and business transformation.

Marc Winterhoff (43) is a new Partner in Frankfurt (Germany) who will be contributing his expertise to the Automotive Competence Center. He studied electronic engineering and business in Darmstadt (Germany), and started his career in the software industry in America. He then worked for an international management consultancy for over 11 years, focusing on the automotive industry. In 2007, he became head of the company’s European automotive business and in 2010 was appointed Global Head of Automotive. At Roland Berger, he supports the Automotive Competence Center, focusing on the North American market and advising on sales and marketing issues.

Dmitri Zaitsev (39) is a Partner in the Financial Services Competence Center in Moscow and the Country Co-Head for Russia and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). He was the head of the management consulting practice at a global management consulting firm in Moscow. Dmitri Zaitsev has more than 17 years of experience in consulting the financial services industry. He is an expert in financial services and has experience in retail, utilities and telecom industries, and his consulting focus includes corporate strategy, organization, corporate governance, sales & marketing as well as operational excellence.

Luca Zuccoli (41) comes from a leading American management consultancy where he developed the retail banking business at the international level. Luca Zuccoli has more than 13 years’ experience in consulting, with a special focus on retail and business banking, strategy, marketing, brand, distribution and risk management. He holds an MBA from INSEAD, a Master in Statistics from the Carnegie Mellon University (USA) and a Master in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Pavia (Italy). At Roland Berger, Luca Zuccoli will support the Financial Services Competence Center in Frankfurt.

Partners promoted to the next partner level

Alfredo Arpaia (41) has been working with Roland Berger for four years in the Milan office. He is a Partner in the InfoCom and Consumer Goods & Retail Competence Centers. He holds a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Napoli (Italy) and MBAs from the University of Michigan (USA) and Rotterdam School of Management (the Netherlands). Alfredo Arpaia started his professional career at a leading consulting firm. He focuses his consulting activities on the telecommunications, media and services industries, providing expert guidance on customer relationship management and information technology strategy.

Alexander Belderok (42) has been working for Roland Berger since 2006. As a Partner in the Amsterdam office, he focuses his consulting activities on consumer goods and retail, operations strategy and specialty chemicals. Alexander Belderok studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Twente (the Netherlands) and completed his MBA at Twente School of Management (TSM). He started his professional career at Unilever as a marketing manager and then as a business technical manager. He has an additional seven years of experience at a leading international consultancy.

Klaus Kremers (42) is a Partner in the Corporate Performance Competence Center in London and a member of the Global Investor Support Group. He has almost 14 years’ experience in strategic, operational and financial restructuring in turnaround situations and transactions and advises international sponsors, financiers and European corporate clients across a range of industries. Prior to joining Roland Berger in 2000, he worked in Transaction and Corporate Recovery Services in Frankfurt for one of the leading international auditing firms. He holds a degree in international business administration and a master’s in business administration.

Watson Liu (44) is a Roland Berger Partner in the Energy & Chemicals Competence Center in Beijing. He started working for Roland Berger in 2007 and has broad experience in international consulting. In the past, he worked for major industrial companies such as Procter & Gamble, DHL and Siemens. Watson Liu focuses his consulting activities on the energy & utilities and oil & chemicals industries, advising clients on strategy, operations, post-merger integration and supply chain topics. He holds an MBA from the University of Cambridge (UK) and a Master’s in Supply Chain Management from the Cranfield School of Management (UK).

Satoshi Nagashima (43) is a Partner in the Automotive Competence Center in the Tokyo office. Satoshi Nagashima holds a Master’s and a Ph.D. in Engineering in Material Science from Waseda University (Japan). Prior to joining Roland Berger 15 years ago, he worked as an assistant in the Kagami Memorial Laboratory for Materials Science and at the Department of Science and Engineering at Waseda University. He is an expert in the automotive, logistics, oil and chemical industries and focuses his consulting activities on sales and marketing, research and development, corporate planning and operation.

Soure:  www.top-consultant.com

Changing an entire large organization is never easy; only about a third of all such transformations succeed. One problem many organizations run into as they implement a change program is faltering momentum because employees just don’t change the way they work. Sometimes they don’t want to, and sometimes the reason is a poorly structured plan that makes change harder. Our recent experience at a European retail bank shows the benefits of starting to implement change by focusing on the employees who have the most influence over the daily work that needs to change. This approach can ensure that a successful transformation happens faster and that employees remain engaged in the long term.

That’s what eventually happened at a national bank, which had more than 6,000 branches and was facing increasing competition from local banks that were perceived as more attuned to local-customer needs. In an attempt to close the gap, the bank developed a new organizational model that was designed to remove layers of centralization and supervision and give branch managers much more authority to tailor bank offerings, marketing, and other promotions to local interests. The bank’s top managers rapidly communicated to the whole staff the principles behind the new organizational model and the model itself, including how roles, such as those of branch managers and their supervisors, were supposed to change. The top managers did this through a series of road shows, along with other traditional methods, such as memos, articles on the bank’s intranet, and a stand-alone publication that featured all the new organizational charts. Everyone received the same information, and everyone was expected to adopt the new model at the same time.

When the top managers assessed progress a few months later, they realized that most employees simply hadn’t changed how they worked. For example, the new structure simplified how credit decisions were made: branch managers were supposed to send their recommendations directly to the final decision maker (one of a series of committees with the autonomy to authorize different levels of credit) instead of through several intermediate intervening layers (as many as five, depending on risk). But the managers, afraid of making mistakes or annoying colleagues in the intervening layers, were still using the old structure. What’s more, the regional-level supervisors of the branch managers now weren’t supposed to tell branch managers what to do—instead they were to act solely as coaches, but neither the supervisors nor the managers had made this change successfully. Many supervisors didn’t have the skills they needed to coach, and many branch managers similarly didn’t have the skills they needed, such as time planning and communications, to run things on their own.

The bank’s leaders realized that they didn’t have the right model for delivering a transformation: they were seeking to change too much at once instead of scaling up after seeing how the new methods worked in practice.¹ Knowing the bank needed a different approach to reach its goal of greater local autonomy, it decided to shift focus to the employees who could facilitate change the fastest.²

Starting change in the middle

Who were those people? The bank’s leaders looked at three criteria:

• Which roles have a direct, substantial impact on the desired business results?
• Which roles are connected with a large number of different subgroups in the organization?
• Which roles can decide how people get the relevant things done?

Our experience with a range of organizations shows that it can be tricky to identify the right pivotal role for a given change program. For instance, you might think that regional managers or branch supervisors would have been the logical choice for the bank, but they weren’t, because they didn’t have a direct impact on daily activities in the branches. That meant they couldn’t affect results directly and arguably lacked the credibility they needed with frontline employees to drive change.

In other industries, the pivotal role can vary widely: in power generation plants, for example, maintenance supervisors are the people to focus on, while in retail sales of petroleum products, it’s the service station manager, and in retail apparel, the store manager. And these aren’t always the seemingly logical choices: in retail apparel, for instance, you might think of sales clerks as pivotal because they have direct interactions with customers and influence sales. But sales clerks typically don’t influence other employees and don’t interact with their companies outside their own shops.

The European bank found that its branch managers were the people to focus on because they had the right combination of managerial impact and local control to meet the program’s goals. So senior executives decided to revamp their top-down rollout process and to reorganize their plan for managing change—communications, timing, and capability-building efforts—so that it focused on the 6,000 branch managers. The bank later restructured those activities for all the other roles, so that employees could understand what was being asked of them in light of the changes the branch managers were making. In this way, the bank could still reach out to 2,000 more senior managers and 30,000 more branch employees but from a point with greater leverage.

For example, instead of creating a single program designed to change employees’ mind-sets and behavior in order to make them more customer focused, the bank developed upward of 20 programs, each focused on the specific needs of a different role. For branch managers, the training process began with sessions that explained exactly how the new organizational model would affect them. Then they discussed the overall commercial skills they would need, such as how to determine which products or services mattered most to their local customers; credit and asset-management capabilities; core principles of quality and customer satisfaction; and practices such as managing people, communications, and handling conflicts to make sure they’d be able to put the new approach to work. The bank also created an online community where branch managers could discuss common issues related to these changes.

Not until branch managers were able and ready to change (six months later) did the bank focus on encouraging their employees and supervisors to change as well. The content of the programs was specifically tailored to address the particular needs or priorities of different roles (for example, the regional-level supervisors were taught collaborative leadership and commercial planning). Similar alterations were made at all stages of the change program.

This approach created a substantial risk for the bank. The leaders were asking branch managers to make fundamental changes in how they worked, by adding a new focus on customers and self-management—and all this in an environment where others weren’t embracing a new way of working. The branch managers were concerned that their colleagues would continue to avoid change or perhaps become even more hostile as they were forced to accept it. The bank addressed this issue by including in its revamped change program a focus on building individuals’ self-esteem and their trust in the company. It did so by discussing with them their careers and their connections to the bank, by providing coaching about their development, and by helping them understand how branch managers had gained responsibility and autonomy as a result of the reorganization. The latter, particularly, had a very positive impact on the managers’ perception of the overall change initiative.

Eighteen months later, relationship managers (branch managers’ lieutenants and the employees with the closest direct relationships with customers) were able to spend 30 percent more time with customers because of the newly streamlined process, which in turn improved the bank’s sales effectiveness, increasing the number of products sold per branch by 15 percent. The time spent making credit decisions fell by 25 percent. Customer responsiveness to marketing campaigns more than doubled. And a national survey showed a 20 percent improvement in customer satisfaction at the branch level. The bank has gained some longer-term benefits as well: it now has a number of people it can rely on to lead change at any point in the organization; creating autonomous networks among employees has fostered knowledge sharing and encouraged mutual support; and the change program ultimately has made the bank more receptive to ideas from the front lines.

What other organizations can learn

The experiences of this bank and other organizations lead to two lessons that any organization can use to help implement change successfully:

• Change the pivotal people first. Identifying what your change program’s pivotal role is and making sure that the people in it have both the tools and the willingness to change is often essential to ensuring that the rest of the organization changes. In this case, the branch managers were at the center of the revenue stream that the bank wanted to improve; once they had the right skills and attitude, they drove change quickly. Without this step, even the best organizational model will fail.
• Build a comprehensive program. You must also ensure that the goals of the change program are clear and meaningful and that the links between the people in the pivotal roles and the changes the rest of the organization must make are addressed clearly and comprehensively. Otherwise, the initial positive momentum won’t last—no one can create meaningful change in a vacuum.

 Source: 

Marco Gardini, Giovanni Giuliani, and Marco Marricchi, McKinsey & Co

Roland Berger Strategy Consultants introduced its new career website yesterday. As part of its new employer branding campaign, Roland Berger is launching this website together with its global HR Facebook presence. These activities are designed to give potential candidates more information about what it’s like to work as a consultant. Besides information about career opportunities and how to join Roland Berger , the new website has blog entries and videos by consultants that provide insights into the multifaceted world of management consulting.

“Our new career website and Facebook presence are designed to reach talented individuals all over the world and get them excited about consulting,” says Per Breuer, Partner at Roland Berger. “In this age of social media and Internet, we want to speak to our target group where they hang out: on the web.”

Focus on personality

The online recruiting presence of Roland Berger is driven by the firm’s slogan: “It’s character that creates impact”. Per Breuer: “Our web and Facebook appearance is designed to truly convey our corporate philosophy and values. We are looking for a variety of people with different interests and skills – People with “get up and go” who want to make things happen. This is the only way to ensure that we provide our clients with long-term success.”

The corporate philosophy is communicated on the website by various consultants from the currently 45 Roland Berger offices in 33 countries. In videos, they talk about exciting experiences around the world. “This plays a huge role for high potential when selecting an employer,” explains Breuer. “This is why it’s important for us to present many stories of individual consultants on our career website.”

Internationality adds value

Greater emphasis on the rising internationality at Roland Berger is being presented on the career website and Facebook. The consulting firm is not only portraying individual consultants from around the world. Global development programs and current recruiting events are also being shown to provide complete information online. “We want to clearly show Roland Berger’s international growth strategy on our website and Facebook page,” claims Per Breuer. “Only in this way can we motivate the best talent around the globe to check out the world of consulting and attract new employees. And dialog via social media is critical.”

To achieve this, Roland Berger’s new Facebook career page is designed to encourage dialog with interested target groups. This living and up-to-date platform provides the right answers to the many questions about strategy consulting.

Source:  www.top-consultant.com

The latest Labour Market Outlook from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) makes for disturbing reading. Private sector growth is slackening; confidence in the public sector is through the floor.

According to public policy adviser at the CIPD Gerwyn Davies the figures point to a “slow, painful contraction in the jobs market”. Employers are apparently locked in a “wait and see” mode and this is leading them to postpone all employment decisions, not only not hiring but not making redundancies either. That has to be the most mixed blessing: knowing you are underutilised but being kept on nevertheless, with the Sword of Damocles hanging over your head.

The spectre that is stalking the land is uncertainty. And while it’s not good for employers and stressful for individuals, the knock-on effect on service suppliers like recruiters, trainers and consultants is disastrous. At least recruiters and trainers suffer a swift death. For consultants it can be the death of a thousand cuts, as decision cycles stretch out towards infinity.

What can consultants do to alleviate this corporate constipation? Well, we all know fear is a great loosener of bowels, so there will always be a few clients coming through who realise that they can no longer put off vital decisions about their business. The financial sector remains lively, because of the near-constant application of fire to its feet from regulators and markets.

For the rest it’s not so easy. One thing consultants can’t do much about is reduce the general air of uncertainty. Make an appointment to see a client about the crisis in the eurozone and by the time you get to their premises, a rescue package will be agreed. By the time you’re back at the office, it will have fallen apart.

The second line of defence is obviously managing whatever uncertainty you can get any kind of a grip on. Recruiters tell me any kind of risk specialism is in great demand despite the relatively poor showing of that profession recently. But risk isn’t all about externalities. Companies are littered with internal risks from basic health and safety hazards, which are liable to take great lumps out of people, to more subtle risks such as poor access to information leading to bad decision making.

Of course, it would be lovely to enter a downtime with all this sort of stuff having already been sewn up. “Mend the roof while the sun is shining” is a great motto, but people only tend to come out with it once the rain has set in. And that’s also a good time to mend the roof.

Companies that are otherwise in a state of stagnation would do well to get some of these sorts of projects going, if only to give terminally bored staff something to do. The question is how can consultants either help to inspire this process and insert themselves into it and ensure it is done well.

The first rule for any consultant should be to maintain client contact at all costs. Well, maybe except one, which is future business. We’ve all seen over the last few years what happens when people start cutting fee rates in response to a recession—they stay down. Risk-reward or gain-sharing can help here and has gained a lot of ground in recent years but tends to be seen in the context of larger projects that put a lot of pressure on cash-flow. In the current context, activity needs to come to a more granular level: think offering to stick your hand down the back of someone’s sofa and share the spare change you find. If a way can be found to maintain customer intimacy that provides benefits for both parties, then it can only lead to greater cooperation in the future.

But all this is dancing round the edges of the real problem: rainy day activities for bored kids in the holidays. Sooner or later the kids are going to look up and ask: what if it never stops raining. What if very year is like 2011, where it pours down on the August Bank Holiday but we get gorgeous sunshine on Remembrance Sunday? What if our crisis is the new normal?

I’ve talked a lot about the lack of a “next big thing” in consultancy, and that’s because these normally don’t come about unless they’ve been preceded by some sort of paradigm shift, in which what was normally seen as unchangeable goes into flux, while what we expect to change becomes set in stone.

Growth is seen as the natural condition of economies and companies, and to be against it is seen as an anti-materialist or anti-capitalist. Yet we all see negatives to growth, not simply in destruction of resources but more subtle areas: the dilution of company culture, the loss of customer intimacy, the growth of internal bureaucracy. It’s not clear whether customers or clients even like growth: I may be fond of my local butcher but the last thing I want is for him to open a chain of meat shops.

So the steady-state business has at least something going for it? What about eliminating the negatives? Consultants have done a lot towards making employment more flexible, but that has been a fairly one-sided affair with a lot of the uncertainty falling to the side of the employee. More recently, companies asked, and got, a lot from their staff to help them survive the recession in terms of short-working, pay cuts and sabbaticals. Could ways be found to incorporate the lessons from that period to fundamentally reshape the ways that people are employed, so that even an organisation with a fixed headcount could still be a dynamic place to work?

For too long now the debate about new ways of working has been framed in largely reactive terms. There’s a potential to create something new, potentially to attack our problems from a different direction rather than simply wait for the growth fairy to turn up. Otherwise it’s difficult to see where this will all end.

All views expressed in this article are those of Mick James and do not necessarily reflect the views of Top-Consultant.com and Consultant-News.com.

Source:  www.top-consultant.com

MUNICH — Alexander Dahlke is a new Partner at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants effective September 1, 2011. He is joining the global InfoCom management team.

Alexander Dahlke (41) comes to Roland Berger from a leading American strategy consultancy, where he had been working since 2000, ultimately as Partner in telecommunications/media/tech (TMT) and private equity. In these positions he developed corporate and functional strategies as well as operational excellence programs. The latter focused particularly on marketing, sales and post-merger management. In addition, he headed the company’s Marketing & Sales in TMT practice for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Dahlke studied engineering management at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, graduating in 1996 with distinction. He began his professional career at German telephone company Talkline GmbH, where as Head of Business Administration he was responsible for the Internet business segment. Later he held positions as Chief Marketing Officer and managing director for areas such as marketing, product management, customer relationship management and strategy/business development.

Roland Berger’s newest Partner has more than 13 years of professional experience in the telecommunications industry plus more than four years’ experience in private equity. With this expertise, Dahlke will be providing the InfoCom Competence Center with fresh energy as part of the global management team.

Source:  www.top-consultant.com

Management and technology consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. announced preliminary results for the first quarter of its fiscal 2012 with solid revenue and earnings growth over the comparable prior year period. Booz Allen also reported strong backlog of $11.2 billion as of June 30, 2011. Booz Allen’s fiscal year runs from April 1 to March 31, with the first quarter of fiscal 2012 ending June 30, 2011.

Revenue in the first quarter of fiscal 2012 was $1.45 billion, compared with $1.34 billion in the prior year period, an increase of 7.8 percent. Booz Allen said it continued to grow revenue organically across all markets.

Net income increased to $51.1 million from $28.2 million in the prior year period and Adjusted Net Income increased to $58.0 million from $41.7 million in the prior year period. Diluted Earnings per Share (EPS) and Adjusted Diluted EPS in the first quarter of fiscal 2012 were $0.37 and $0.41, respectively, compared with $0.23 and $0.34 in the prior year period.

Ralph W. Shrader, Booz Allen’s Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President, said, “We are off to a good start in our new fiscal year, growing revenue in all of our major markets. Booz Allen remains focused on quality growth – providing high-value, differentiated services to our clients on missions that matter. From a financial management standpoint, we continue to grow organically, our total backlog is at an all-time high, and we continue to generate strong free cash flow.”

“The US federal government remains our core business,” Dr. Shrader said, “And we continue to grow in defense, civil, and intelligence markets despite the challenging federal budget environment. Our services help government agencies improve efficiency and effectiveness. Beyond our core federal government market, we believe that we have attractive opportunities serving commercial companies and are focused on the financial services, health, and energy industries where we see strong intersections between public and private sectors – as well as government and industry in the Middle East.”

The non-compete agreement between Booz Allen Hamilton and its spin-off, Booz & Co., ended on July 31, 2011 and Booz Allen may now access all markets and clients worldwide.

Booz Allen reconfirmed prior guidance for fiscal 2012 EPS, with diluted EPS expected to be in the range of $1.40 to $1.50 per share and Adjusted Diluted EPS expected to be in the range of $1.55 to $1.65 per share.

Source:  www.top-consultant.com

Growth at global strategy consultancy Simon-Kucher & Partners continues to outpace the market average. From January to June 2011 the firm’s revenue climbed to almost €58 million, up by 20 percent compared to the same period of last year. Incoming orders topped the €61 million mark.

“It was by far the best first half-year in our history,” affirms Dr. Georg Tacke, CEO of Simon-Kucher & Partners. “We expect 2011 to be another record year for us.”

Tacke reports that all of the company’s divisions and practices contributed to the rapid growth, and that business in almost all countries grew at an outstanding rate. Simon-Kucher generates half of its revenue in its home market of Germany, and the remainder in its many other markets around the world.

Simon-Kucher & Partners has added considerably to its workforce to meet the growing business demands: In the first half of the year 97 new employees joined the company. A total of 160 new hires are planned worldwide for 2011 as a whole.

The business outlook for the medium term is excellent. Simon-Kucher & Partners recently conducted its largest-ever pricing study (to be released soon), with respondents from almost 4,000 companies from a wide range of industries worldwide. The findings reveal that the majority of companies do not manage to achieve market prices that are in line with the value they offer. “This is where our core expertise comes in,” states Tacke. “We help companies to receive what they deserve. And it looks as though we’ll have more than enough work to keep us busy in the coming years.”

Source: www.top-consultant.com