Consulting practices give people shared expertise, leadership, and focus. They become a problem when they turn into little financial kingdoms, with every request for help triggering a negotiation over revenue credit, commission, or whose employee gets to bill. The client hired the company and does not care which internal team gets the credit. If solving the problem requires three practices to work together, your accounting arrangements should make that possible.
Internal mobility is how that principle becomes useful. Many companies know someone’s title, practice, and certifications without knowing much about what that person can do. If one team needs a skill while another has someone available with that experience, immediately hiring another person should not be the default. Before asking who you can hire, find out who you already have.
A searchable skills inventory would be a start, supported by managers who are expected to share talent. People should be able to express interest in other areas, take short-term assignments across practices, and grow into adjacent technologies without having to resign and get rehired elsewhere. This needs to be a normal way of working, not a favor negotiated between two managers. Your organizational chart should help people find expertise and make it easier to use.
This post is part of my 25 lessons from 25 years in consulting series, exploring what it takes to build a consulting firm that delivers for clients and supports the people doing the work.
From leadership and employee experience to sales and delivery, the series comes back to one idea: a consulting company should be its own best client.
Have a lesson of your own? Share what has worked, what hasn’t, or what you wish more consulting firms understood in the comments.