Organisational Design: Delivering Solutions, Not Services

Abstract

There seems to have been another revelation in the consulting industry recently, with lots of people leaping up shouting ‘we deliver solutions, not services’. At first sight, it seems a pretty cosmetic change — after all, putting together customised services for clients is what has largely fuelled the growth of the consulting industry of the last 20–30 years — but the practical implications are rather more substantial. Creating and delivering solutions on a sustained basis, for entire markets rather than single clients, presupposes that your organisation can redirect its resources as opportunities arise. Rather than having to pull people out of different parts of a rigid organisational structure into one of those unconvincing multi-disciplinary teams where no one has actually worked with anyone else before, the ‘solutions’-based organisation treats its people as a portfolio of different skills, allowing them — amoeba-like — to reform where market needs dictate.

There’ll be a further broadening of what we mean by ‘consultancy’, caused by consulting firms adding new services to their existing portfolio, particularly in outsourcing. Why would a parcel distribution company, like FedEx, launch a consulting firm to launch a consulting service? Because it realises that it’s delivering ‘solutions’ as much as parcels. No business in its right mind is today defining itself simply as a provider of a discrete service. You don’t go to your travel agent simply to purchase a ticket, but to have someone who can provide a ‘solution’.

Betsy Kovacs, Chief Executive, Association of Management Consulting Firms