Strategy… small firm or BIG FIRM?
If you conduct an online search for the top consulting firms for strategy you will likely come across the Vault.com publication “2020 Best Consulting Firms for Strategy Consulting”. Vault lists the top four as McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, and Deloitte Consulting LLP, in that order. I call out the top four (not to be confused with “The Big Four”), because I had the pleasure of working in strategy at Deloitte for just under four years and can speak to my personal experience with Deloitte and their ability to deliver market leading strategic insight execution.
Depending if you are prospective client or potential employee, your needs and definition of strategy will vary, and the firms that rise to the top of your lists will change. If you are searching for a design strategist to better understand your customer needs and create a new product, then IDEO or Frog Design may appear as the leaders in the market. If you are a large corporation and you’re exploring a 10-year strategic plan to future proof your organization against competitors and emerging technologies such as the internet of things or implications with the accessibility and capabilities surrounding artificial intelligence, then McKinsey & Company is likely to be at the top. For my purposes today, I am defining a Strategic Firm as a professional services firm possessing the capabilities and capacity to deliver across various areas of strategy for mid and large cap organizations.
With the frame provided above, I would identify McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group and Deloitte as the top three strategic consulting firms. My assessment of these firms is not based on a detailed set of evaluation criteria, client interviews, or academic research. My assessment is an individual perspective based off of conversations with colleagues and friends from various professional services firms combined with my firsthand experience working at Deloitte. Across the industry larger consulting firms are continuing to acquire smaller design-centric shops that possess highly specialized forward looking capabilities to augment the services they may provide to their current client base while attracting new. I experienced at Deloitte through their acquisition of several highly capable and specialized firms that allowed them to quickly expand their breadth and depth of capabilities in emerging areas of client service while also serving as an attractant to fresh young creative talent.
A second reason I placed Deloitte on this list of top three is due to their investment in their people through professional growth. Over my time with Deloitte I essentially receive and MBA-lite through the leadership opportunities and client experiences I received. The few years has and will continue to pay dividends through my career journey. If you are searching for a top strategy consulting firm as a potential employer, than I would strongly recommend Deloitte, with Boston Consulting Group as a close second.
However, if you are a prospective client seeking a consulting team to help your business achieve growth. Then the issue will likely not be which firm, as all top firms will have highly capable and intelligent team members that may provide some level of value. But, your challenge will be where in these firms do the best client delivery teams for you and your organization exist? As with any professional sports league, there exist a set of top teams, and on those teams, there are the starters, the second string, and the backups. A consistent challenge for the client lies in their ability to network, interview, and find the “starters” and stack their team in order to achieve the best experience and strategic recommendations for growth.
Have you worked with or for any of the top consulting firms? What was your experience like?
