The 25 companies profiled in this book are all management consulting firms, but the precise services they offer to client managers vary considerably. Popularized by BCG and McKinsey in the 1960s, strategy consulting has for the last 20 years been seen as a kind of elite consulting, bought by top client managers for top dollar rates. The work can be rather conceptual and glamorous. Consulting teams are ususally small. Individual consultants tend to be generalists, moving from industry to industry.
Results are often hard to measure.
Fifty years ago, the craze was for time and motion studies. In the 1990s, the buzzword was reengineering. Quite often, operations consultants are industry specialists, people who really know how to make a certain kind of company hum. Human Resources consulting for many years focused on compensation and benefits advice. In recent years, as people have recognized the importance of attracting, motivating, and retaining high quality employees for a company, HR consulting has blossomed.