Management Consultancy

Where the gap usually sits

A plan approved at board level rarely fails because the thinking was wrong. It fails because nobody re-cut the reporting lines, the incentives still reward last year's behaviour, and the people expected to execute learned about it from a slide. We start by mapping the distance between the stated strategy and the operating reality: decision rights, cost structure, span of control, and the handful of processes that actually determine throughput.

That mapping is deliberately unglamorous. It produces a short list of binding constraints rather than a long list of opportunities, because a company can only pull three or four levers at once and pulling more is how transformation programmes quietly die.

Strategic planning that survives contact

We build plans that carry their own assumptions on the face of the document. Every material projection is tied to a named driver, and every driver has a trigger that says what happens if it moves. A plan written this way can be argued with, which is the only way it improves, and it can be revised without starting again when a currency moves or a regulator changes position.

In markets where the planning horizon is genuinely uncertain, we scenario the plan rather than point-forecast it. Three cases, each with a capital consequence and a decision date attached, beat one confident number every time.

Operating efficiency without hollowing the business

Cost programmes that hit a percentage target and stop tend to remove capability the company needs eighteen months later. We separate structural cost from cyclical cost, protect the capabilities that carry the competitive position, and take the reduction from the places where the work itself is unnecessary rather than merely expensive.

The test we apply is simple. If a cost line disappeared tomorrow, what would break, and how long until anyone noticed? Anything nobody would notice is a candidate. Anything that breaks something customers feel is not.

Change management as sequencing, not communication

Change programmes are usually presented as a communications challenge. They are a sequencing challenge. The order in which you move structure, systems, people and incentives determines whether the organisation absorbs the change or rejects it. Move incentives last and you get compliance without conviction. Move systems first and you automate a broken process.

We sequence the work so that each stage makes the next one easier, and we name the specific people whose behaviour has to change at each stage. Programmes fail in the middle, so the middle is where we put the attention.

Signals this is the right work

You are carrying two operating models because an acquisition never fully integrated. Decisions that should take a week take a quarter. Your cost base grew faster than revenue for two consecutive years without a corresponding investment thesis. A strategy was approved twelve months ago and you cannot point to what changed as a result.

What you get

• A constraint map separating the three or four levers that move the business from the twenty that do not
• A strategic plan with every projection tied to a named driver and a revision trigger
• A cost baseline split into structural and cyclical, with capability protected explicitly
• A sequenced change plan naming who has to behave differently at each stage
• A reporting pack the board can interrogate rather than receive

Common questions

How long does a management consultancy engagement usually run?

Most run between eight and twenty weeks. Diagnostic work occupies the first three to four weeks, and we would rather tell you at week four that the problem is not what you thought than spend a quarter confirming the original brief.

Do you implement, or only advise?

Both, but not automatically. We will run implementation where the client lacks the internal bandwidth, and we will decline where an internal team should own the change because they have to live with it afterwards.

How is this different from a large consulting firm?

You deal with the person doing the work. There is no leverage model underneath the engagement, which means fewer people, more senior time, and a written view rather than a consensus one.

Related work

Repricing Political Risk into the Plan →Corporate Diplomacy: How to Win in the Global Arena →

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