Letter: Tongue-in-cheek explainer on the consultant’s toolkit

As a former (recovering?) management consultant, I would like to congratulate Rana Foroohar for so aptly displaying our famous “toolkit” in her recent article “A many-sided crisis in consulting” (Opinion, June 3).

Step one. Start with a hypothesis. So Foroohar notes the profession “may very well be in for secular decline”.

Step two. Provide intuitive sounding insight to back up this initial position (“companies very often hire consultants so they can blame someone else . . .”). If possible back this up with insider experience, such as her time as a consulting firm client.

Step three. Provide data to support key arguments (“revenue growth halved to 5 per cent, etc”).

But feel free to wave your hands with loosely relevant details when it’s just a hunch. For example, the evidence provided for consulting’s problems going “even further back” is simply that the industry has existed for decades.

Step four — and to conclude — hedge your bets by presenting two or more scenarios that all but guarantee one of these future paths will be realised. In this case, caveating 750 words on the downfall of consulting with the catch-all counterpoint: “It’s possible that a recession will give the industry a new life.”

All that’s missing is a clear call to action (the “so what?”), and the not-so-subtle hints at a follow up project.

Tom Savory
London SE15, UK