The Top Consultant: Developing your Skills for Greater Effectiveness

OVERVIEW

As with any other business, a management consultancy has to be managed and, if only in the long term, the quality of management will influence the performance of the business. It is not the purpose of this book to rehearse the general principles of management; it is useful, however, to consider the critical elements that need to be managed. A useful general model of key elements in a consultancy practice is illustrated in Figure 2.1.

The model in Figure 2.1 shows that the function of a consultancy organization is to enable consultants and clients to add value to each other through harnessing the leadership, infrastructure and intellectual property of the consultancy practice. Within the infrastructure will be the critical processes involved in defining, selling and delivering consultancy services - the core of the business.