Consultants in pursuit of meaningfulness in work
Introduction from the book “In Pursuit of Meaningfulness in Work — The Individual Consultant’s Attitude to the Profession of Management Consulting” by Dr. Sebastian Müller-Bellé.
“Consulting firms are confronted with a high employee turnover while aiming to maintain competitive advantage through retaining their staff. At the same time, individual consultants struggle within the complex environment of their profession with issues which go beyond being confronted with long working hours and how to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
In my professional setting, I have been employed as a management consultant at one of the big four consulting companies for over 14 years. During these years I have gone through most of the levels which comprise a consultant’s career, up to the position of Senior Manager. I have experienced the profession both from the viewpoint of an inexperienced beginner, as well as an experienced and trusted advisor — a role which involves both giving advice to the clients and providing career guidance to other consultants within the profession.
During my years in consulting I have gained a lot of experience which I am highly grateful for. Dealing with a wide variety of industries and companies, business issues and, most importantly, people, helped to broaden my field of vision in a rapid manner. At the same time, I experienced many situations of ambiguity, uncertainty, and helplessness while working with colleagues and clients within the profession. Reflecting on these situations, I felt the need to investigate the matter from an academic perspective in order to identify potential causes and ways to support the individual consultant in a sensible way.
Consulting companies, including the company I am currently employed by, try to do a lot these days to attract new hires and retain their staff, ranging from various trainings offered, compensation and rewards for special achievements, counselling and ways of supervision. But the question remains: what is really important from the perspective of the consultant and what can genuinely help to support the individual?
My own experience in the field, together with information I have gathered in conversations with fellow consultants, suggest a missing experience of meaning related to the work inside the profession encountered by the individual consultant, who is at the centre of this research.
And I believe, if you work so hard then it needs to be meaningful somehow. Otherwise the point will be reached very quickly where you ask yourself, why am I doing this?
The statement above is taken from one of the 19 interviews conducted for the empirical part of this PhD study. The interviewee, a young consultant, left the consulting profession shortly after the interview was conducted. A personal follow-up confirmed what the consultant expressed with the statement above, that she was missing a sense of meaning in her work as a consultant.
While the above event took place after this study was initiated, other situations of ambiguity and uncertainty involving consultants across all ages and levels of experience led me to initiate this research. It was obvious from the initial review of existing research that the individual consultant’s attitude towards the profession was so far not recognised to the same extent as other elements of the profession. First results of the interviews conducted concretised the area of potential extension within humanism and positive psychology, being the individual’s perception of meaningfulness in work.
Current research in humanism and positive psychology regards meaningfulness in work as important for both the individual and the organization, a view which has so far not been related to the profession which is the focus of this research. There has not been any in-depth research yet on meaningfulness in work in relation to the profession of management consulting. Consequently, the main aim of this research is to close this gap, answering the question concerning what is required for the individual consultant to experience meaningfulness in their work, ultimately with positive effects for the consulting firm, as this research shows.
Conducting the interviews within my own profession turned out to be beneficial, especially with regard to gaining access to the interviewees, even if interview dates in some cases had to be postponed several times due to the tight schedules of the conversation partners. The interviewees included both consultants with no business relationship to myself, as well as consultants within my own team, or consultants I have worked with over the course of my career. Initial concerns that interviewees with a relationship to the researcher might be restrained in providing their answers were not borne out. In most of the interviews, I felt the strong need of the interviewee to share their views on the profession, to relate both the positive and negative aspects of their work. The feedback received from the consultants provides valuable insights into how our profession is perceived and could provide interesting food for thought for any consultant and even for clients.
As a practicing consultant in the field, my motivation is to spread the results of this PhD study as broadly as possible, with the aim of initiating a discussion on the matter at hand, through utilising my position and network within the profession. Being able to broaden the understanding of the profession of management consulting, with the ultimate aim of supporting the individual consultant to experience meaningfulness in work, was my motivation for carrying out this PhD research.”
Further articles accompanying the book will be published at mgmtc.org on an ongoing basis.
The book can be purchased including the following locations: Amazon.de, Buecher.de, Thalia, Cuvillier (publisher).
Please reach out to me for further information or if you want to share you view, experiences, thoughts on this topic.
