The concept and methods of quality management were explained in Chapter 21 and many references to quality can be found in other chapters of our book. Nevertheless, the importance and the current issues of quality management warrant a separate chapter focused on quality management in consulting.

Most management consultants claim to embody the concept of quality in their objectives, placing considerable emphasis on the quality of people, on impressive experience, and on offering clients a highly responsive professional service. Yet the image of consultants among clients is patchy; while some clients respect the consultants’ service as useful and valuable, others regard them, at worst, as charlatans, or, at best, as smart alecks to be avoided.

In recent years, management consultants have begun to address the quality management of their own firms. “Physician heal thyself” is not inappropriate given that management consultants have taken the lead in devising and implementing quality management systems in their clients’ organizations. There are a number of reasons for this change. When the primary emphasis was on growth during the boom years of the 1980s, high utilization and the recruitment of many new people to management consulting resulted in inadequate attention to training and process disciplines. In a much tighter marketplace, consulting practices often need to differentiate themselves more on quality of service than on skills and experience. Pressure on margins is also driving consultants to manage themselves more efficiently and to look more closely at service delivery.

32.1 What is quality management in consulting?

Professional service quality is, above all, a characteristic of organizational culture, an approach to everything a professional does with and for the client. Aiming at quality is aiming at the best possible satisfaction of clients’ needs and requirements. If this concept of quality is adopted, responsibility for quality has

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to be vested in every professional worker. Indeed, quality is an inherent characteristic of all work that claims to be truly professional. In many instances, no one else will be able to judge whether the service actually provided is of proper quality or needs improvement. In this sense, quality management is essentially self-assessment, self-control and self-improvement.

However, the client has a contract with the consulting firm, not with its individual employee. The firm therefore needs to ensure that the same quality of service can be expected from all of its staff. Uncertainty and inconsistency as regards quality can be very damaging. Hence quality management is also a system of written and unwritten standards, policies, guidelines, controls, records, safeguards, incentives, sanctions and other tools and measures whereby quality is assessed, maintained and improved. Quality management may involve formal declarations of policies and principles. More important will be the myriad of small steps and interventions, most of them informal, in areas such as recruitment, consultant development, coaching, promotion, knowledge management, dealing with and listening to individual clients, problem analysis, helping poor performers to improve, reacting to clients’ complaints, and so on.

Indeed, quality management should be omnipresent. Whatever a professional firm does (or omits to do) has a quality dimension and direct or indirect impact on the quality of services provided to clients, as well as on client satisfaction.

Furthermore, quality management must address both the strictly technical side of consulting (the knowledge base, the practical know-how, the choice of correct data and procedures, the analysis of all relevant facts, the assessment of important alternatives, etc.), and the human and behavioural side of the consultant–client relationship (caring for the clients, listening to their concerns, dispelling their worries, respecting their priorities, being helpful beyond the scope of the contract, etc.). David Maister has pointed out that while most consultants meet the quality criteria as regards the first aspect (technical quality), satisfaction levels are low, and complaints numerous, when clients are asked about the way they were dealt with by their consultants.1

Increasingly, clients who have themselves invested heavily in quality expect their service suppliers to think the same way. For example, some of the leading commercial banks in the United Kingdom are asking consultants to provide details of their overall policy regarding commitment to quality, to indicate independent management responsibility for ensuring that quality is promoted and implemented, and to describe quality assurance procedures for project design, service quality and support. A growing number of public and private sector clients are requesting information on progress towards ISO 9001 certification (section 32.3) and on the extent of the quality management system. Some large client organizations, particularly in the public sector, who are major purchasers of consulting services, have begun to impose quality standards. In several countries, ministries require management consultants to hold ISO 9001 certification of quality or equivalent as a precondition of tendering.

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Primary stakeholders’ needs

Thus, quality is above all a question of meeting clients’ needs and requirements. This implies that the main focus of quality management must be on client services and satisfaction. After all, in the long run the success of the consulting firm and the consultants themselves is dependent on client satisfaction. Quality management also has an essential role in helping the firm to meet ambitious targets for utilization, profitability and consultant satisfaction, thus addressing the needs of all stakeholders (box 32.1). This concept is important: a quality management programme that does not address the needs of all stakeholders is unlikely to be successful.

Box 32.1 Primary stakeholders’ needs

Clients

●services and solutions that meet their requirements and expectations

●long-term relationships

●value for money

●contractual reassurance

Owners of the consulting firm

●client satisfaction

●higher utilization

●prompt payment

●repeat business

●adequate profits

●good image of the firm

Consultants

●job satisfaction

●client satisfaction

●rewards

●career prospects

Viewing quality as important

It should be self-evident that a consulting firm that pays serious attention to improving quality can significantly improve its viability and performance. In practice, quality management and management consultants are not always easy bedfellows for a number of reasons:

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●the recent history of many consultancies in both the business and public sectors is of high client demand and good rewards for owners and staff without any special effort to raise quality;

●some consultants do not value “process” highly and are often reluctant to cooperate in introducing what they may see as unnecessary and irritating “bureaucracy of quality”;

●more is demanded of management, an already scarce resource, which may resist more calls on its time;

●initial costs can be substantial, particularly in investment in non-chargeable time;

●quality improvement is a slow, gradual process, in terms of both application and results, and consultants often lack the perseverance required for lasting improvements.

Responsibility for quality

In a people-centred business, it is essential that every practitioner and support team member is clear about their personal responsibility for quality. Quality service delivery depends above all on individual performance. The four basic principles in assigning responsibility for quality are:

1.Responsibilities must be clear and clearly stated, so everybody knows who is responsible for what.

2.Top management must be visibly involved, giving credibility and clout to the importance of quality.

3.Continuity/succession needs to be assured, thus dealing with the inevitable problems emanating from absences on assignments, changes in assignment staffing during project execution, etc.

4.Quality assurance must be applied consistently, to all work at all times.

The main responsibilities for quality within a consulting firm are set out in box 32.2. In a large consulting firm, key responsibilities may be delegated to a central quality management team, comprising the quality directors of the different practice areas or business units. This provides a vehicle for ensuring consistency across the practice, testing new initiatives and promoting quality awareness. Every individual director or partner needs to be aware of his or her responsibility for quality, in particular regarding the monitoring and nurturing of long-term client relationships. Regular assessment of client satisfaction through meetings and interviews is a valuable input to sustaining the delivery of quality work.

The associations of management consulting firms have an important and influential role in providing guidance on quality issue for their members and in giving clients a message that management consultants are concerned about and are taking the lead in quality management.

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