Building a consultancy is about focus. Being a consultant is about flexibility.
Every service business faces a tension between solving client problems and delivering a standardised service.
We can resolve this tension – by recognising the difference between what we do as consultants and what we design as service creators.
For example, in our previous businesses, we’d listen to clients, see what they needed and create new services to help them.
Energy contracting. Bill validation. New connections. Demand Response. Water services. There was an endless list of problems that clients needed sorting.
As a consultant, this was interesting work.
But it was hard to scale, forced us to spread resources, and was sometimes unprofitable.
In our current business we focus on one thing. Turning messy, real-world data into structured data that can be used for reporting and decision making.
We work with partners who focus on value streams that they’re good at.
And together we do a better job than if we tried to do the whole thing ourselves.
This is what we should recognise – consultants discover problems, but businesses deliver solutions.
Flexibility helps you learn.
Focus helps you scale.
Handcrafted insight 