Consultancies are very good at creating practices in PowerPoint. AI, cybersecurity, data, digital workplace, automation, whatever sounds good on the website this quarter. Changing the website navigation does not constitute building a practice. A sales deck can describe an ambition, but somebody still has to deliver it.
A real capability requires people with relevant experience and leadership that knows what good delivery looks like. Those people need standards, architecture patterns, reusable approaches, and training, with enough sales enablement that the offering can be sold responsibly. References matter, as does having someone who can answer the hard questions when the marketing deck runs out of slides. If you decide on Tuesday that the company has an AI practice and spend Wednesday trying to find somebody who can deliver the work, you do not have an AI practice. You have an AI landing page.
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.