What Is Consulting?

To understand what consulting is, first imagine you are a CEO. You are beginning to lose market share on your key product. Marketing urges you to increase advertising and reduce prices. R&D has high hopes on a new product and wants more financing. Finance is worried about your debt levels. Human Resources does not find enough qualified people to support your development. And you have just been offered to buy (at a good price, of course) one of your competitors in the US.

What do you do? First, you'll have to make choices. Then, you'll have to ensure that these choices will give you the proverbial competitive advantage. Maybe you need to trim costs. Maybe you need to spend more to innovate. Maybe you need to expand to exploit economies of scale. But whatever you do, you will have to do it better than the competition.

Business strategy consulting is done at very high level in the organization, typically the Board and the CEO. These are the ones making the choices. Below, the organization focuses on implementing the decisions (sometimes assisted by other consultants).

Business strategy consulting is about facts and common sense much more than vision or dreams. Facts make decisions easier. Dreams without facts make them tougher.

Business strategy consulting is tailor-made thinking. What works for one company will not necessarily work for the other, even in the same industry. Strategists use tools, but tools don't make the strategist. Only the quality of the people matters in this business.

The following video perfectly sums up what consulting is all about. Take a look!