Best New Consultant
Consultants can give up a lot trying to make their mark in the profession.
Iain Kirwan is working as an advisory, business effectiveness and
procurement manager for KPMG in Germany. It means spending a lot of time
away from his wife and young son, who are back home in the Midlands.
“To succeed as a management consultant you must be motivated and accept that
to have empathy with clients and colleagues, it can mean being away from
home for long periods,” says the 33-year-old, who joined KPMG in May 2007.
“I arrange regular flights home and my family visit me, so things are
working out well, but it can sometimes be tough.”
Kirwan had more than 10 years of procurement experience within industry,
having worked at BMW Group and JCB before joining KPMG. As a consultant he
has honed his skills in sourcing, supplier relationship management and cost
reduction across the automotive, telecoms, oil and gas, manufacturing,
construction and retail sectors. In July he completed an MSc in procurement
management.
He says the social skills he brings to a project are as important as his
technical expertise. “There can be scepticism among clients at an
operational level as people worry about their jobs,” he says. “It means you
must be sympathetic and explain your role and your objectives. People need
to know you are there to support them, not to replace them.”
Clients also need reassuring that the consultancy team are experienced enough
to deliver what they promise, he adds. “There should always be a good blend
of youth and experience, with a mixture of people with relevant industry
background and consultancy talent.”
He loves a challenge and cites his recent work for an international oil
company as an example of how important it is to have the right team in
place. “It meant long hours and tight deadlines, as the client wanted
activity that would usually take 16 weeks crammed into six,” he says. “This
was also a difficult environment to work in because we had to understand so
many different people’s agendas.”
One of the awards judges, Paul Vincent, procurement director, recruitment
consultancy and professional services at BT, says Kirwan appreciates
clients’ difficulties because he translates his industry experience into his
consultancy role: “It is important a client feels a consultant understands
their problems and is not just taking them through a process. Iain has been
there and done it, and is committed to making genuine change.”
Future Consulting Leader
There are turning points in everyone’s life and for Craig Bush, one of them
came in September 2001. Having left the University of Nottingham, he was
offered the chance to work at financial services firm JP Morgan at the World
Trade Center in New York. Had he taken up the offer, he would have started
work on September 10, 2001.
He decided instead to join Accenture on the day before the attack on the Twin
Towers. “Ultimately, consultancy appealed to me more,” says the 28-year-old.
“The dramatic events of 2001 made me even more determined to succeed.”
His consulting experience now includes working across a broad range of
industries for clients in the tobacco, publishing, telecoms and consumer
goods sectors. He is confident his familiarity with supply chain management
will serve him well as he targets a more senior role.
Future consultant leaders, Bush says, must be able to show they can develop
their own company’s business too. He decided to focus on sustainability and
assess the ethical and ecological impact companies have. He began working
with Coop Financial Services, which published a sustainability report in
2007, and convinced Accenture to create a sustainability practice.
Bush leads the European sourcing arm of this practice, attracting clients in
the public and private sectors. “It is important to keep your brain fresh by
being involved in something away from your core projects and this has helped
me make my name.” He says the greatest obstacle he meets is the fear of
change he senses when he enters many client organisations. “You have to
reassure people because some staff will throw themselves into your ideas and
work with you, while others will block you straight away.” He also feels
that management consultancy must address an image problem: “We all need to
work harder to communicate more effectively why there is often need for
change and the real benefits good consultants bring.” Awards judge Alyson
Gerner, deputy director, commercial group at the Department for Children,
Schools and Families, says Bush has a confidence that appeals to clients and
“a game plan to become a future leader. He is not leaving anything to
chance”.
Best Partner/Director
A light-bulb moment eight years ago changed Gib Bulloch’s career path. He was
on sabbatical working as a business adviser for the Voluntary Service
Overseas in Macedonia - and his big idea was to create a nonprofit
consultancy practice and use Accenture’s consulting expertise to help
nongovernmental organisations and charities.
The challenges he faced launching this initiative propelled Bulloch from
senior manager in Accenture’s strategy consulting practice to partner, a
position he reached three years ago.
He had a lot of persuading to do on both sides of the project: to get other
consultants to work in the not-for-profit arena for six months on half their
normal salary and to win over sceptical charities. They rarely have a budget
for management consultancy and had to be convinced that paying for
Accenture’s services would improve their performance by making them more
efficient.
“I knew if we got the business model right, our people would want to get
involved and we could get organisations to buy our services,” he says. “I
produced a feasibility study in 2002 to show that the numbers would work.”
Six years on, the director of Accenture Development Partnerships has helped
more than 500 consultants get work in partnership projects for organisations
such as Unicef. He must ensure the practice breaks even, but it has also
turned into a valuable recruitment and retention tool for the company.
“It has been a real eye-opener because this is such an unusual business model.
Many of today’s consultants are more interested in making a difference than
making a fortune, while the clients benefit from getting our expertise and
services at a fraction of the market rates,” he claims.
Bulloch, 41, says the challenges faced by the nonprofit and private sectors
are similar. “Charities too face supply chain issues, perhaps around the
distribution of vital drugs, or problems linking IT and new technology in
locations around the world. The main differences are cultural because we can
be viewed with suspicion initially.”
He feels that the lines are blurring between the commercial world and
not-for-profit organisations, and management consultants are well placed to
bring the two sides together. “We will have more of a brokering role in
future and with our contacts across the private, public and the third
sectors we can help forge mutually beneficial relationships and coalitions
for different clients.”
Bulloch joined Accenture in 1996, having spent time in industry at Mars and
BP. He accepts it is becoming harder for consultants to make it to partner
level. “It has always been difficult but a few years ago it was more about
results and driving revenue,” he says. “Today it is crucial you can display
soft skills as well as hard skills. The less I have actually thought about
promotion and just concentrated career-wise on what I believed in, the more
it has happened. Taking risks will always pay off.”
