Uncertainty and unreliability are very different. In an uncertain world, hope springs eternal; waiting can theoretically be better than acting. In an unreliable world, nothing can be trusted; hope is not simply irrelevant but dangerous; action is imperative. For consulting and professional services firms, having lived and worked through the pandemic, the boom that followed it, and the rollercoaster ride of the last two years, uncertainty is nothing new. Unreliability is new. 

And who better to explain the difference between uncertainty and unreliability than David Maister, author of The Trusted Advisor, a book that, decades after its publication, still enjoys totemic status in the higher—and older—echelons of professional services firms. Of the three characteristics of a trusted adviser, the first is reliability. A reliable consultant is someone who does what they say they’ll do: They’re trusted to act. An unreliable consultant is a flake, someone who you can’t be sure of because they have let you down in the past; someone you’d never hire.  

An unreliable world is a low-trust world. It’s one in which you have to act pre-emptively. Doing nothing isn’t an option because you have to assume that that the worst-case scenario could happen, even if there are moments of apparent reprieve. 

The watchword of an unreliable world is security. Political unreliability means that Europe will spend billions re-arming itself on the assumption that the US will no longer guarantee its borders. But security isn’t just about defence—it involves securing technology, resources (materials, people, etc.), and public infrastructure and services. Security is what the UK prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, talked about when he introduced the plan to restructure parts of the NHS this week.  

Where does this leave the consulting and professional services industry?  

Data gathered for our US Market Trends report on the consulting market in late January saw client confidence surging in the US and plummeting elsewhere. It will be interesting—to put it mildly—to see whether our next quarterly client survey, due in April, shows that data changing, and whether corporate America, in particular, now fears the immediate consequence of the 89 executive orders that President Trump has issued in his first 50 days (compared to 220 over the whole of his earlier term). We’ve described elsewhere on this blog three scenarios that we think are most likely to play out.  

The first, polarisation, will see most clients either confident they can weather this storm (perhaps even exploit it) or very frightened about their organisation’s future. Both polarisation groups will spend heavily and quickly on consulting support because they recognise that the speed of their response will be critical. In our second scenario: paralysis, most clients still see the world as uncertain, rather than unreliable, so they’re waiting to see what happens before they react and consequently will delay investments. Finally, our partnering scenario is more focused on the long-term ramifications of both polarisation and paralysis and argues that clients of all persuasions will need to restructure their operating and organisational models to become significantly more flexible and scalable in the face of rapid changes in consumer behaviour, government intervention, etc.   

In an era of unreliability, the polarisation scenario becomes more probable. It’s likely to lead to higher demand for external support but greater client concern around the impact of that support (will consulting and professional services firms deliver what they’ve promised and are being paid for?) and around affordability (as costs rise and profits shrink, where will the money come from to pay advisors?).  

For consulting and professional services firms, that will translate into huge pressure to simplify, automate, and accelerate how they work; provide more evidence that tangible results can be delivered; and to offer outcomes-based payment. In other words, clients will be looking to consulting and professional services firms to absorb the unreliability that they, themselves, can’t yet handle—that’s a prospect that’s exhilarating and frightening in equal measure. 

What can firms do next? 

If you are interested in understanding more about how your clients’ needs are changing in an unreliable market and how Source’s growth model could be applied to your firm, then contact us for a bespoke leadership briefing.