Evolution of consulting industry and takeaways from the world of medicine

There is a popular perception and people have told me that the consulting industry is in regression and getting jobs as consultant has become very difficult. I agree to the second part but I can never agree with the first. Consulting for me is a form of art and an art form will die out only if all the proponents of the art either stop practicing it or if their population becomes extinct.

According to dictionary, consult means to “seek information or advice from (someone, especially an expert or professional)”. This has existed for ages, from the time we became intelligent and moved out of stone age and into agriculture. The best example of this is in the caste based society of India. Each caste is created based on the occupation each person chose and certain number of occupations are grouped under the umbrella of a caste. It’s a completely different aspect that this was used to elevate certain class of people and trod upon the other classes of people to create division in the society, but irrespective of all that, if the services of a blacksmith is needed, only a blacksmith can solve the problem. This is good age-old consulting. The best example though, is that of doctors. Forget caste, creed, religion, skin color, doctors are universally believed to be the Gods on the planet, the ones who can heal the world. If consulting has to die, the entire doctor fraternity has to die and if that happens humanity will become extinct in no time.

So what has changed in consulting? People have become smarter because their knowledge has increased and also because we are becoming more sensible. Someone I know told me that she is constructing a new single storeyed house. I know she has two children so I asked her why and she said they both have grown up and will leave home soon. If they come back to stay at any point in time, let them make the house bigger. This is called being wise and people don’t need someone with the tag of a consultant to advise commonsense. Take the case of the field of medicine and how it has evolved. Natural treatment methods are traditionally based on diagnosing the diseases using the 5 senses of the doctors. But that has evolved considerably with the advances in technology. Diagnosis in any form of treatment is based on X-ray, scan and blood test reports among a slew of methods that exist now. Natural remedies work at the root of diseases to pry them out and it is a time intensive process. It does not make sense to tell someone suffering from severe migraine to keep suffering and wait for natural remedies to start taking effect, now that immediate relief for pain can be found through tablets. So natural treatment methods have changed to the point where the patients are first asked to seek immediate relief through allopathy and then switch to natural remedies for rooting out the problem. So, as a normal person I have also become smarter. First, I get the disease diagnosed that I (or my parents) have, take allopathic medication for immediate relief, look up on the internet to understand the root cause of the disease and then decide on the best course of treatment. Consulting in medicine has evolved. Why? Because there are more options for treatment, more knowledge is available and people have become smarter. This is what has happened in the consulting industry as well.

We can equate doctors with business or IT consultants but how would it be like to equate a consulting company to a hospital? We go to hospitals for diagnosis and treatment. In the world of consulting industry, there are companies that do the diagnosis and companies that do the treatment. Here, diagnosis is done on the basis of business models and the constraints they impose. Then the diagnostic report and their recommendations goes to the companies that do the treatment. If the constraints in the recommendations are not or cannot be imposed correctly, the treatment methods will also not bring the desired results. This is the disease that has been plaguing the consulting industry for a long time. The industry had evolved into two streams, companies that develop strategies and companies that implement strategies. There is a world of difference between conception and implementation. For every construction that is done, be it for house or office space, capital costs shoot up by atleast 20%. It is similar to the difference in book value and market value of a property. This is the area where the consulting industry has taken the hit. The financial meltdown of 2008 and it’s ripple effect in the financial market through the subsequent years has forced companies to go into consolidation mode, which in turn have made them smarter. They have started identifying the problems in their business themselves rather than seek outside help. What they don’t need now is someone doing playback of their problems to them and what they need are 1) Solutions to their problems 2) Successful implementation of those solutions and most importantly they need the execution to be done by a single entity. This means, for example that IT consulting companies can no longer hope to sit back and solve IT related problems only. They have to provide and implement solutions that solve business problems.

This effect has cascaded downstream to the individual level as well. Prospective employees should no longer look at completing under graduation, working for 2 years, taking up a management program and hope to become consultants. Theoretical knowledge will have to be backed up by hard core work experience with proof of contribution at the business level. Even programmers will be expected to demonstrate how the work they are doing has improved the business environment of the clients they are working for. Consultants working for the top consulting companies still have the pedigree but I believe it will not last long. Agile methodology has taken over the world, companies are streamlining their structure and operations and management levels are becoming leaner. Consultants will be expected to build strategies and create plans to implement their strategies and execute them. This is where the role of Consulting Managers will become more prominent in the times to come.

I believe consulting is not just the game about identifying problems and solving them. This can be best exemplified by how natural treatment methods work. The fundamental insight natural treatment methods have is that medicines alone cannot cure diseases. That is why they impose changes in food and lifestyle during the course of the treatment. The keyword here is change. Secondly, how the doctor bonds with the patients actually complements and enhances the effects of the medicines. The keywords here are understanding, empathy and compassion. These doctors become famous by word of mouth alone and the ones who exhibit these critical qualities become more renowned. This is what the consulting industry needs to take away and imbibe from the world of medicine. But now, the situation is at the opposite side of the spectrum. Allopathic treatment does not cure but only suppress diseases. Fever is a sign of the body immunity acting against a foreign substance that has entered our body. Paracetamol tablets only suppress the fever but does nothing against the actual cause of the fever. We live in a world where suppressing a symptom is more important than curing the disease. Patients flock to allopathic doctors who charge more consulting fee under the assumption that more money means better treatment. This is exactly similar to how top consulting companies charge more to provide solutions to clients. I have never understood the logic of more money translating into better or improved results. The business world has started awakening to this absurdity, I don’t know when people will start seeing this for medical treatment. But change is on the way. Information is out that chemotherapy does not cure cancer, chemotherapy doses are made from mustard gas and what can really cure cancer is cannabis. The world is evolving and so will consulting, but there is no cause for alarm, it is not going anywhere.

My tribute to a friend who walked into the sunset

The news of any death is disturbing. If the death is of someone we know, the feeling is more pronounced. The death of a family member is devastating. But what hurts the most is the passing on of a friend. A friend and classmate from school of mine chose to move on quietly into afterlife yesterday night. The end was in sight, a cancer that was diagnosed at stage 4 two years back had battered and ravaged his body to the bones. He had held on with all the strength he could muster but the killer disease got the better of him eventually. It is quite an overwhelming feeling for me. When someone who grew up with us leaves the world it does leave a gaping hole in our minds.

I have always asked myself what is so special about friends. I used to always think that we don’t even have the choice to choose our parents and the families we are born into so what control will we have over our lives. Then I read somewhere that we choose the lives we want to live because there are things we need to learn from this world. With families, we need to meet their expectations, have respect, emotional bonds, gratitude and obligations. With friends, absolutely nothing. Zero. The relationship just grows like magic. We just need to be there for each other. Even regular conversations are not required. As we grow older, we realize and accept the fact that our parents and relatives will leave the world before us under normal circumstances. The ones we grow old with are with our friends. Maybe that’s why it feels like a part of me has gone with him.

A trivial and silly squabble had led to the breakdown of our friendship in school. I had a lot to deal with after we finished school and I got engrossed in working out my life. I got to know that he was married and settled with a kid and I was really happy for him. That the marriage had broken down and he was under severe stress for a long time became known to me only when he told me 2 years back, after his cancer was diagnosed. I knew the reason for the cancer instantly. Articles explaining the real reason for cancer are being revealed now on social media. The science behind it was discovered way back in the 1920s but it had been suppressed till now because the pharmaceutical industry has been beefing up their bank accounts at the expense of our lives. When our body becomes more acidic, our cells become starved for oxygen and that’s how they turn cancerous. Radiation treatment kills only more good cells than the cancerous ones. The stressful life he led must have had made changes to his body that eventually turned out to be his killer.

It dawned on me a little too late. I know that if I had not let him out of my sight, he would have been alive and living his life fully now. People will say that this was his destiny but I will never be able to wrap my brains around the concept of destiny. Even the existence of the Universe depends on mathematical probability so why is it not possible that we are presented with a number of possibilities before us and the choices we make defines our road ahead? He was easily the best student in my batch but the idiot never saw it. He was the one I always wanted to top the class, not because he was my friend, but I knew he had it in him.

I had an extremely disturbing night yesterday. I felt as if someone had woken me up from my sleep. After I went back to sleep, I saw vividly in my dream that I was bidding farewell to someone. I didn’t see who it was though I knew it was a guy. I was shaking his hand and hugging him before sending him in a lift. And the first thing I saw today morning on Facebook was the post about his demise. Coincidence? Or did he really come to say good bye? I may never know. My friend, no one stays in this world forever. My time will come too, in some time. In a way, I am glad that you have finally attained freedom from the insurmountable pain you have had to endure. Be at peace now. This sinful world and its miseries hold no more relevance to you. Au revoir my friend…..till we meet again.