Building a sustainable business in 2024 is challenging. Late in 2021, we started a pivot towards becoming a more responsible company which I shared in a recent article, Our Direction in Sustainability – Blue Monarch Management. Our company is cycling through its fourth iteration and is about to engage in a period of sustainable high growth – a fifth iteration. Despite being a knowledge company staffed with uber-bright, ambitious, and creative management consultants, building an operating model that could meet the needs of today’s modern professional consultant has been one of the more complex challenges we have faced to date. This complexity to meet the needs of our professional staff (and more broadly, workers in general across most industries) has shifted significantly over the last decade, particularly in response to disruptive global events. Well-researched trends and trajectories have emerged, and businesses have invested heavily in trying to understand them – one foot in the past pining for a return to the ‘good ole’ days we understand’ and one foot in the future that we don’t yet understand while simultaneously trying to anticipate where to go next to create some advantage. It is hard to criticize the modern executive, inundated by the exponential volatility and uncertainty of managing not one but several ambiguous and highly complex shifts in the competitive landscape. Go ahead, pick a few favourites:
- The War for Talent.
- Hybrid work environment.
- The ‘Gig Economy’.
- The ‘Sharing Economy’.
- The Great Resignation.
- Generative AI.
- Robotization.
- Increasing awareness of mental health issues and the need for better supports.
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusiveness.
I have worked for many years with the professional bodies representing Canadian (and now global) Certified Management Consultants. I review industry reports. I shape policy and professional development initiatives, and I am watching the industry shift rapidly with the disruptive introduction of many new forms of consultants – some take on the flavour of traditional management consulting, but many others are displacing traditional management consulting through technology, automation, changes to how information is sourced or accessed. There has also been an infusion of new consultants drawn from a many different career backgrounds (science, health, engineering, the arts, etc.) because businesses demand specialized knowledge outside of the realm of traditional business, strategy, and leadership. At an industry level, this is cause for great celebration as consulting, particularly management consulting, is an excellent career path for people seeking challenge, empowerment, income, and insulation to the whims of company business cycles. The industry changes also afford modern businesses greater access to portable knowledge, the ability to grow and shrink their workforce with more flexibility, and an increased level of disruption that can improve the resiliency of a company. Management consulting, as a global industry, is valued into the hundreds of billions of dollars with strong growth projections and fundamentals, so I feel secure in the knowledge our company will remain relevant, albeit awash in competition requiring focus on adaptability and agility as a permanent state to remain relevant.
What do these trends have to do with building and operating a sustainable business and why is management consulting important here?
It’s still about the People.
People inspire, operate, and sustain businesses. And businesses don’t always understand the needs of their people or how to unlock the full potential from their workforce. Josh Bersin’s recent HR Predictions for 2024: The Global Search For Productivity – JOSH BERSIN article is very insightful, and his annual trends and predictions are always an excellent read. He cites a stark rise in employee burnout from 2019 to 2023 and highlights key trends such as (younger) employees taking back their power to ‘act as they wish’ and quietly leave for another company. His key message in this report was that companies are hunting for productivity gains – and this is critically important – the speed to reinvent faster than the competition.
Bersin’s team recommends that companies focus on building a high-retention model (playfully named ‘labour-hoarding’) to allow for career growth. They emphasize that it is essential for top leadership to better understand the ‘needs, desires, and demands’ of their workers with better focus on listening and delegation (read: empowerment). Some compelling supporting evidence identifies that the top needs of the workers are the desire for career advancement, personal empowerment, and to have a societal impact.
To a professional advisory firm like Blue Monarch, the implications are twofold. First, we need to be in tune with who we hire and what our team members need. Our organizational structure, career development, culture, learning and mentorship practices, operating model, values, and leadership must absolutely acknowledge these needs and trends. Our organizational culture needs to be tailored whenever possible to the unique requirements of each person in our firm. The task is exhausting and complex and is absolutely essential to get right. The imperative is critical when you consider that as professional management consultants operating as trusted advisors and working on strategy and tactics with business leaders, our people can have tremendous impact on a great many companies and communities. Long-term relationships built on trust and knowledge transfer matter – so retention and productivity matter. Quality matters. Additionally, we work with clients to help them better understand and develop their own people. This implies that businesses we work with also need to pay attention to the needs of their people and make smart, well-timed investments that address the evolving needs of today’s modern workforce. That is sustainability.
About
Jeff Peterson is the Founder and CEO of Blue Monarch Management and is a professional Management Consultant specializing in Strategy, Governance, and Organizational Development for companies designing and driving transformational investments.
