C ove r Sto ry
C o n s u l t i n g
Ja n u a r y / Fe b ruary 2004
15
While New York City sustainedan enormous bl ow some twoye a rs ago,it has since lost noneof its hard-nosed swa g g e r.
Now, that temperament long epitomizedby New York ’s sharp-tongued citizenry
appears to be ebbing somewhat — anintriguing development that many believeis now altering the psyche of Gotham.H o w e v e r, what is defanging NewYorkers, we are told, is not OrangeAlerts or treacherous acts of terrorism,but an information resource commonlyreferred to as 311 .It may be too early to access the fullimpact of the high-tech offering — akind of public hotline on steroids —but few doubt that 311 is now alteringthe relationship between the city’sg o v e r n m e n tand its citizens.In effect, New Yorkers have lessreason to shout, or at least they believethat their government may have finallygotten the hearing aid it’s always needed.Arecent page one
New York Times
article
discussing 311 ’s growing positiveimpact quotes New York City mayorMichael Bloomberg as saying, “It is themost powerful management tool everdeveloped for New York City.”Yet the experienced managementp r o b l e m - s o l v e r s ,specialized systems ana-lysts, and programmers who werel a rgely behind the tool’s creation anddeployment escape any mention in the
Ti m e s
article. So goes the all-so-hiddenlife of consultants, the invisible knowl-edge brokers who trace their organizational
roots to the early part of the last century —a time when men like Edwin Booz andJames McKinsey first disting u i s h e dthemselves as trusted advisers to bothAmerican business and government,and established partnerships groundedby shared values and principles.H o w e v e r, unlike the independentpartnerships that came to define con-sulting during the past century, thec o n s u l t a n t sbehind 311 belong to amore commercial species — one thatanswers to clients and shareholders inall parts of the world.
Nothing Like It in the Wo r l d
Of course, it wasn’t always that way.The purveyor of 311 wisdom has con-sultingroots that run deep into the past.And if truth be told, its roots run nearlyas deep as those of such enduring partner-shipsas McKinsey & Company and
Booz Allen Hamilton. But for thec o n s u l t i n gfirm known as A c c e n t u r e ,its American roots became an obstructionin the way of its global future, or atleast it seems to have appeared thatway to thosewho’d prefer to have usbelieve that Accenture cameinto being a mere four years ago.This is perhapsa pesky footnote to amuch larger and grander tale of a con-sultancy that arg u a b l y, unlike any firmbefore it, is outwardly exposing to theworld at large the impact consultantscan have on business, government, andthe world’s economies.“How the consulting professiongrew up — developing smart peoplewith broad general skills — is not theway it will succeed in the future,” saysAccenture Chairman & CEO JoeForehand, beginning what’s become afamiliar discourse on how, in theworld of consulting, specialized con-sultants are now trumping the impactof “generalists,” or those consultantsthat typically fill the rank-and-file of strategy partnerships.“No one ever thought that consulting— in the industry that we are in — thatthere were any advantages to scale, andwe’re now changing the game throughscale,” says Forehand, emphasizing thelatter half of A c c e n t u r e ’s one-twopunch: specialized skills and globalreach. It’s a wallop that has given riseto a new species of consultancy, onecapable of supplying governments andbusinesses around the world with theeconomic knowledge and infrastructureneeded to compete globally.T h e r e ’s never been anything quitelike them on the planet. Within thebusiness world’s sea of knowledge, weare being compelled to think of globalconsulting firms as the Gulf Stream —a massive and freewheeling currentpushing knowledge from continent tocontinent, from boardroom to board-
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