The Best Management Consultant Is Industry Agnostic

Conventional wisdom on hiring a management consultant suggests that firms need access to experts from their industry. The notion is this will help companies to develop strategies that will separate them from the competition. Nothing can be further from the truth!

I’ve enjoyed a fulfilling career as a management consultant being industry agnostic. Rather, I brought clients all kinds of problem-solving frameworks, strategic planning paradigms and implementation methodologies. All of this is aimed at helping my clients think differently about how to move their organizations smartly forward.

When your approach to selecting management consulting begins by requiring industry expertise, the best that you can hope to achieve is a “keeping up with the Jones’s” proposition.

I knew nothing about Home Improvement Retail, for example, until I got a gig with The Home Depot. Yet, I helped them to realign their store operations to be more female-friendly. This is a good thing, given that women make about 2/3 of the buying decisions (according to the research that I did during the engagement) on any home improvement project.

Yes, I think differently than you do and that is good for your business. You need me to offer ideas that you and your team would not otherwise consider.

As you read the piece, you can see that finding an advisor that thinks differently is the only way to surface your blind spots.  The lack of great awareness can hinder you from devising the strategies that enable disruption.

After all, if you can disrupt your industry, you gain the opportunity to seize the market share that separates you from the competition. If you’re able to sustain that separation, you can become indispensable to your customers – for they will always come back to the businesses that they can’t live without.

Read the published piece.