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What is Strategy consulting?
Strategy consulting involves working on key opportunities and challenges with CEOs, executives and boards of directors.
What is strategy consulting?
The earliest “strategy consultants” were in fact typically operational improvement experts, diagnosing inefficiencies in the production lines of the early twentieth century.
Consulting grew from the roots of strategic management found in Taylorism and the ideas of Deming (applying a scientific approach to management). Strategy consulting as most have come to understand it, grew from the portfolio analysis and its micro-economic underpinnings as defined by Igor Ansoff and Bruce Henderson. Later, competitive strategy would be further defined by the lectures and writings of Michael Porter.
Of course there are a great many other influential strategy writers and thinkers. And strategy consulting has grown to incorporate a wide variety of theory and practice.
We define strategy consulting as working on the top issues of boards of directors, the CEO and executives. Popularised as the issues that “keep the CEO awake at night,” such issues might be a mix of true strategic and operational issues. By virtue of the fact that they rank as top issues (typically the five top priorities), even operational issues on this agenda require a strategic response. This strategic response requires marshalling the use of scarce corporate resources, significant change management and must put the company in a better competitive position.
It is difficult for those that have not participated in the strategic analysis and development process to imagine how it takes place. Good, practical strategies are not the results of brainstorming, creative brilliance or insights based on experience. Global Advisors develops strategies based on immensely rigorous analysis and through building buy-in to defined execution plans.
Organisations use strategy consultants for different reasons. Some might want access to top talent that is scarce or difficult to free up in house. Others might want an external view of a problem that elicits emotional and political responses from people in the company. Many want to leverage the experience consultants bring from other client engagements. Some might want to attach the credibility of a recognised strategy consulting brand to a set of strategy recommendations.
As such, being a Global Advisors strategy consultant is a tremendous privilege – and requires exceptional individuals capable of adding measurable value to top executive teams.
Some strategy consulting tools we use can be found at the link below.