You versus the professional services firm - part 2: talent development
- Summary:
- Talent development as an essential part of the professional service firm experience.
Great thought/subject matter expertise emergess when several of the following occur:
- Frequent job/assignment rotation – A consultant can’t be a thought or subject matter expert if they’ve only worked on one problem at one client for years on end. Experts see a variety of examples of a client problem from many firms in many different settings. Experts learn what the common elements of a problem are versus client-specific nuances. If you needed a heart surgeon, would you choose the doctor who has only had one patient or the one who has treated hundreds for the same ailment? Does your service firm aggressively rotate your assignments?
- Increasing responsibility – An expert moves through the various stages of a client problem and can speak to all manner of side issues. They know about the economic, technical, political, etc. challenges a project will face and can offer guidance in many of these dimensions. Does your service firm offer this or is it hiring you for permanent placement into a slow/non-evolving or repetitive position?
- Increased understanding of the world – Great consultants understand the worlds of their clients, prospective clients, competitors, technology providers and more. In a word, these professionals must be ‘cosmopolitan’. Does your service firm support your efforts to attend third party conferences? Are you permitted to visit other clients with similar issues? How does your service firm keep you current on new technology?
- Exposure to non-firm experts – Would your firm let you sit on a conference panel with a competitor? Many service firms will not. Their management thinks this activity dilutes the firm’s brand. Some firms are scared you might get exposed to a better firm or expert. Some think that this might somehow make you want to leave their employ. None of these are legitimate excuses. But, when firms keep employees in the dark about the external world, they do themselves, their employees and most importantly, their clients a disservice. How good can one’s expertise be if it is not allowed to be scrutinized or challenged by competitors or others? Any of us may be capable of developing 90% of a great idea. But, to make it to 99%, we need to capture the perspectives and wisdom of others.
The really large consultancies/integrators may have a great disadvantage here when it comes to talent development. When you’re hiring 50,000+ new people annually, you’re probably not attracting just the best and brightest anymore. A significant number of these hires are average folks being hired to fill specific, slow-to-change roles. The firm isn’t going to groom these folks into thought/subject matter experts. No, these folks are hired to do a ‘job’. This isn’t a consulting ‘career’ no matter what the recruiting brochure says.
Yes, some bright folks might make it out of this and actually achieve some modicum of success within the firm. A few might even capture some renown. However, for many, these roles will not permit individuals to do much, if anything, to enhance their personal brand or balance sheet. Sadly, these positions offer a salary and little else.
There are other problems with big firms.
How many thought/subject matter experts does a large firm want or need? It turns out that it may not want or need many at all. In fact, in the larger firms, you’d be hard pressed to find a few tenths of a percent of their headcount fills this description. Only the most senior-level executives possess these accolades. If you crave a career in anonymity, this situation could be perfect.
Very small firms often try to push the pendulum too far the other way. I was reviewing the web site of a local consultancy today. They claim to be in 9 verticals, have dozens of market offerings/solutions, etc. and yet only possess a few hundred personnel. Upon further review, I noticed a couple of people consistently generated the bulk of their thought leadership. In other words, for all their thought leadership positioning, it really is the stuff of a dedicated few practice leaders.
The best run service firms have a handful of real thought/subject matter experts in every market offering they have and in every industry they purport to serve. You can verify this just by looking at their websites and the LinkedIn profiles of their subject matter experts. You should see more than just the practice leaders in their writings/speeches/etc. Some of the more junior staff should be tweeting, blogging, speaking, etc. too.
In big firms, the thought leadership has been ‘industrialized’. A slick group of professional writers (who rarely knows what actually happens at clients) interview firm management and after months of re-writes and revisions creates a highly sanitized and aesthetically pleasing paper. One major consultancy then loads this into a system where specific client engagement executives can have their names and titles added to the piece.
All of this is to give the air of expertise to executives who probably don’t deserve it. Proponents of this approach cite its efficiency – but, in my opinion, neglect to see the morally bankrupt nature of it. Fortunately, smart prospective clients can tell that the person in front of them couldn’t have penned this paper.
Big firms also possess the financial wherewithal to place external thought leaders and academics on their payroll. These individuals may have a contractual relationship with the company to appear at a set number of prospective client meetings or speak at the integrator’s events. I cringe at these.
The big firm has abdicated responsibility for creating its own thought/subject matter experts and is borrowing from the brand power of outsiders. What sort of message is this sending to current and future employees? The message I believe that is being communicated is “We don’t invest in our own people, their brands or their career, but we will throw money to those who actually did the hard work to create their own.”
Are you sure you want to work for this kind of firm?
Image credits: Talent card with colorful background with defocused lights © gustavofrazao - Fotolia, Dart board blue talent development © tang90246 - Fotolia