Two hundred years ago Britain was the workshop of the World. A vast proportion of our GDP came from manufacturing and the economy was relatively stable. Since that time, with a few blips our economy has moved with increasing speed towards a service focused environment. We have relied heavily on monetary input from the financial and service sectors and largely ignored manufacturing and agriculture as at best tertiary adjuncts. Still valid but of far less significance to overall productivity. We have seen over recent years the negative side of this process. The collapse of the financial sector has hit us far harder than is yet being admitted, and what is being admitted is pretty bad, but there is more fallout to come, and it is my opinion that if we are not very careful the service sector could very well be in for a rocky ride as well.
There are a couple of reasons that I think this could be the case. I have, for some time been worried by the appearance of so many "Consultancy" businesses and I have begun to wonder if they are not some sort of "Make work" scheme whereby businesses are persuaded that they need to "transform" their processes and practices making work for consultants and advisors when in reality, if you are running a business and you don't know yourself whether it needs to change or not, perhaps you shouldn't be running a business in the first place. Many of the techniques and strategies offered by consultants are based in real world situations where, predominantly, large corporations have internally found a need to change and have analysed the problems and found solutions. The key point here is that they have done so internally without recourse to external agents. I'm thinking here if Motorola, mentioned in a previous post, Ford, GM, Microsoft, Bell, Toyota, Mitsubishi and so on. The solutions that each found tended to be specific to that individual company rather than being a "Magic bullet" solution that could be tailored to suit any business.
A similar pattern is found in the therapy industry. It may seem odd to hear what is supposed to be a caring profession described as an industry but it is my opinion that that is what it has become. There are endless masses of small start up therapy companies offering everything from Hopi ear candles to NLP all built on the principle that a little understanding is all you need to be able to "fix" people in the same way that business consultancies work. This is simply not the case. As with business consultancy, personal consultancy has no "Magic bullet" quick fix. Therapy needs to be implemented on a case by case basis utilising a wide range of techniques and it is not easy to do without a significant amount of understanding and practical application. Something that many therapists don't have in the same way that many consultants don't have the breadth of experience and knowledge required to significantly help a company.
So, in my opinion there is a question over the sustainability of the whole of the consultancy sector within the UK economy, and if a significant proportion of it fails, that is going to once again cause significant impact and hardship. Watch this space.....
There are a couple of reasons that I think this could be the case. I have, for some time been worried by the appearance of so many "Consultancy" businesses and I have begun to wonder if they are not some sort of "Make work" scheme whereby businesses are persuaded that they need to "transform" their processes and practices making work for consultants and advisors when in reality, if you are running a business and you don't know yourself whether it needs to change or not, perhaps you shouldn't be running a business in the first place. Many of the techniques and strategies offered by consultants are based in real world situations where, predominantly, large corporations have internally found a need to change and have analysed the problems and found solutions. The key point here is that they have done so internally without recourse to external agents. I'm thinking here if Motorola, mentioned in a previous post, Ford, GM, Microsoft, Bell, Toyota, Mitsubishi and so on. The solutions that each found tended to be specific to that individual company rather than being a "Magic bullet" solution that could be tailored to suit any business.
A similar pattern is found in the therapy industry. It may seem odd to hear what is supposed to be a caring profession described as an industry but it is my opinion that that is what it has become. There are endless masses of small start up therapy companies offering everything from Hopi ear candles to NLP all built on the principle that a little understanding is all you need to be able to "fix" people in the same way that business consultancies work. This is simply not the case. As with business consultancy, personal consultancy has no "Magic bullet" quick fix. Therapy needs to be implemented on a case by case basis utilising a wide range of techniques and it is not easy to do without a significant amount of understanding and practical application. Something that many therapists don't have in the same way that many consultants don't have the breadth of experience and knowledge required to significantly help a company.
So, in my opinion there is a question over the sustainability of the whole of the consultancy sector within the UK economy, and if a significant proportion of it fails, that is going to once again cause significant impact and hardship. Watch this space.....
No comments:
Post a Comment