Establishing small consultancy practices

Running specialist consulting service

Context

Many conultancy practices prefer to stay small in the belief that if they grow overheads, then they would have to sell more; the harder they have to sell, the less leverage they could exert with clients, and the less choice they would have in terms of who they worked with.

Implementation

There has been a proliferation of small, highly specialized and closely interrelated firms which employ workers with individual problem-solving capacity organized in flexible teams. These companies emerge in many countries as the main employers and often operate as intermediaries between the declining formal sector and the overcrowded informal sector. In the USA, for example, between 1981 and 1985, 88% of the net job creation was in enterprises with 1 to 19 employees.

Counter-claim

Establishing small consultancy practices is hardly an impactful strategy. In today’s hyper-competitive market, such practices often lack the resources, network, and influence to drive real change. Their limited reach and minimal scalability make them irrelevant compared to larger, established firms. Focusing on small consultancies is a distraction from more meaningful, transformative business strategies that can deliver measurable growth and resilience. It’s simply not worth prioritizing in any forward-thinking business agenda.