More than 20 years ago, the annual revenue of the global management consulting industry was about $50 billion, and now, it has already exceeded $400 billion. About 50% of the world's top 500 companies have their own long-term cooperative management consulting companies.
What makes a consulting firm making so much money on earth? What is the company that the consulting company sells us? We analyzed the answers by McKinsey, a global consulting firm.
What is the consulting company?
Strategy consulting firms is the existence of a unique, different from it and a lot of professional services companies, advertising companies sell us is made and put in design and advertising; investment bank sold to us is to assist the auditor to complete the transaction; sell us is audited financial reports; lawyers sell us is legal services, to help us deal with the contract or a lawsuit.
So, what is the strategy consulting firms McKinsey sold to us?
About the consultant, there is a joke:
What the consultant does is look at your watch and tell you what time it is. This is part of the truth, but why do we need consultants, and do you need McKinsey? This is because our watches may not be so easy to understand, and we need experts from special methods to help us and teach us how to look. Maybe it is, although we understand it, we want someone to help reconfirm it from a professional point of view.
The consulting company sells "methodology"
The selling of consulting firms is not "advice" nor "treatment" or "trust". The selling method of consulting companies is "methodology". In the history of Chinese enterprises, HUAWEI may be paying the highest amount of consultants to a consultant on a consulting project. Since 1998, HUAWEI has asked IBM to become a consultant to help the company import the so-called integrated product development (IPD). This project has been promoted for 10 years. HUAWEI has paid IBM consulting fees and IT tools costs up to nearly 2 billion yuan.
With the introduction of IPD, HUAWEI has transformed from an enterprise with a millet plus rifle to a company with the ability to operate internationally. This project, the consultant brings a clear methodology, a set of mature technology product development methods. It is the cornerstone of this product development mechanism that HUAWEI will have the opportunity to become a super giant with an annual income of nearly 400 billion yuan.
This methodology has made HUAWEI's research and development more systematic and helped HUAWEI to make a leap. What HUAWEI has paid is not just a consulting fee for IBM. In the project 10 years, HUAWEI is required to pay, the whole company "literally", let the foot for shoes, with advance IPD, do not attempt to modify this methodology. Ren Zhengfei said: "the first rigid, after optimization, and then cured," HUAWEI "literally".
In the Internet era, due to the rapid change of environment and industry, judgement and solution become more and more important. People who decide to leave for battlefront are going to go down. Consulting is giving them methodology and providing reference for their self-learning.
Therefore, what McKinsey and other consulting companies really offer is not "suggestion," but "methodology". If you are a consulting role, but all advice would be wrong; if you are a customer, you want consultants to help you make your decision, it is wrong.
Why the methodology is important and the conclusion is not important
We first discriminate two concepts: Theory and methodology.
The so-called management theory is a "specific case of causal statement", under such conditions, if you do this, it will get the result.
The so-called methodology is, in the current situation, how we get the conclusion step by step, how we carry out the conclusion step by step. The theory is about causality, and why (why); methodology is about how to do it and how to do it (how).
In business practice, the vast majority of the problems we are addressing are "how to do". We can't rely on others to help us make judgments, but to find out how to find out how to do it by ourselves. What we have to learn from others is not a conclusion, but a methodology.
Internet entrepreneurship, only to see the conclusion is especially a problem. This is because, for other areas, change is slow. The conclusion we see is that its premise has not changed, its environment has not changed, and the conclusion is effective. But in the field of the Internet, you see a conclusion that its premise, environment, technology and competition have changed, and the conclusion has failed. In many cases, the conclusion is invalid, but the methodology is still effective.
Let's take a look at a concrete example. mobiles Internet entrepreneurship, do you want to be a App? From 2012 to the end of 2016, many of the early years' discussion articles were taken out as a conclusion because there was no clear time explanation. Now people are looking at App because WeChat has launched the "small program" function.
Now the conclusion is: if it is not a large scale, use the type of Internet Co, do not do App. And four or five years ago the conclusion is: if you have enough financial and technical skills, recommend App. However, please do not pay attention to the conclusion, but it is important to get the methodology and the analysis process of the conclusion.
Do or do not do App, the real problem is, what method can we get to the user. Four or five years ago, App, though expensive and difficult to develop, could get users at a lower cost. Now, although the development cost of App has been reduced, the cost of acquiring users has been greatly improved. And for unnecessary App, users are not willing to download new ones. Instead, users are contacted with users through super App such as WeChat, and the cost is relatively low.
On the whole, the consulting firm such as McKinsey really provides not a "suggestion," but a "methodology". The conclusion is not that we should learn from others, it should be our own, and the methodology is that we can learn from others.
