Why I Am Quitting Traditional IT Management Consulting

Traditional IT Management Consulting uses fear, doubt and powerful relationships to sell business leaders promises of game changing outcomes. They make the simple complex, extremely expensive and then get paid to simplify it again. Too many times getting paid to waste time and money to point the finger at their competitor, the IT department. How is this helping anyone? This is bullshit.

The way I see it, power is being stripped from IT departments by the business and transferred to consulting companies and outsourced service providers. Is that helping us mature IT capabilities an industry?

Internal IT departments should be a better consultant to the business than a for-profit enterprise. Why? Because they are the ones who understand the business. I am not saying that IT departments don’t need specialized help or that every IT department has what they need to support their business.

I am saying we need a fundamental change in the model.

I envision a new IT industry model where:

• Consulting provides specialized services, enables IT departments to improve on their own and teaches them to communicate and market to the business
• IT Departments act as internal consultants, have the operational capacity for continuous improvement and have established a value chain with the business
• The Business perceives the IT department as their strategic partner and has a committed relationship based on common goals and definition of value

In order for IT to meet the demands of the business and their consumers, the business must commit time and resources to the long-term improvement of IT Management capabilities. The capability and potential exists in every IT department.

IT Management Consulting must shift from the traditional consulting model that promotes “continuous dependency” to a model that promotes enablement and self-sustained “continuous improvement.”

We need to revolutionize the industry. We need to understand that customer dependency is not the way. The definition of consulting is “the business of giving specialized advice to other professionals.” “Give” should mean more than emailing a PowerPoint!

Think about it, consulting should be about transferring the actionable knowledge customers need to succeed. If the advice we give our customers enables them to grow on their own:

• IT improves capability and value perception
• Consulting companies create new specialties to meet advanced demand
• Businesses lower costs and innovate quicker than their competition

Join me in quitting traditional IT Management consulting and focusing on the new model.

This post originally appeared on Intact’s website on May 7, 2013. View the original post via the Internet Archive.