In the permeable world of consultants, each claiming the impact of its work or offering on the business of their clients, defining what strategy consulting really is, how it started & how it evolved, & what does the star cast look like constitutes a fascinating story, not just for its method, order & depth of research but, in my mind, in equal measure, for its slightly acerbic but always witty representation.
It was interesting for me to learn along the way how each firm looked at itself (McKinsey - the champions of C-Suite relationships, BCG - pioneers of many strategy constructs drunk on its own intellect, Bain - impact stock price over multi-year engagements & the like). The other interesting part was that this story is not just the story of consulting firms & their businesses. It is also a story of Harvard Business School & how its curricula, faculty, & the overall MBA program changed over the years on the back of Porter's contributions to strategy. Thirdly, nothing of any significant impact has been tabled supporting people as a strategic asset though right from Tom Peters & many others like him have never really had any dearth of constructs (The S Curve, for example) that center on people as a strategic asset. Along the way, came the stark definition of strategy parred down to "means of creating shareholder value" culminating in PE firms - the ultra-rational business - that became big recruiters of strategy firms. The breakdown of the value chain model of a business tying suppliers, financiers, businesses & consumers started to wobble with the coming of the internet & the ensuing search for a new model to led rather esoteric "network models" that nobody could implement.
The twenty first century story of strategy, as you'd imagine given the collapse of the financial system, is not the most redeeming. And while a bulk of blame might reside within both the actual financial services companies & the lax regulatory environment, Kiechel points out that these Financial Services companies were all great recruiters of strategy consulting firms, albeit by the time of the crisis, these firms were no longer in the C-suite as much as they used to be earlier. Having said that "strategy as risk management", many concede, was a concept that never really took off. The final chapter is really a lot of very interesting speculation on the future of strategy & how to build strategy in the DNA of organizations, how strategy needs to be "adaptive" & the kind of organization that'll thrive is a learning & a democratic one where strategic insights are fostered from just about anywhere & these are then assimilated into the organization's functions.
All in all, this is a story of remarkably gifted people, high on analytical ability, aggressive & champions of devising constructs that had a tremendous impact on many businesses & lifted the business school from the lower rungs of the academic ladder to one of the top ones.If nothing else, this one fact remains indisputable.
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