HR for Strategy consulting: what to set up first

A strategy boutique looks small from outside. Two or three partners, a few engagement leads and a pool of analysts building models and slides for board meetings. The work is sharp and short. The people questions stay quiet until someone leaves, and then they arrive together.

Teams are tiny, so one weak coaching pairing spoils a whole engagement. Deadlines stack before the board date, with late nights and a weekend. Analysts are bright and compare notes with friends at bigger houses. Pay is high for the market, so stakes feel higher. The strategy consulting page describes the roles and strains.

1. 1

   1. Feedback inside the engagement

   Fix two short written talks per engagement, one at the midpoint and one at close. Ask three things: what worked, what to change in the next storyline, what to learn next. Train leads to do it in ten minutes.

2. 2

   2. Coaching for engagement leads

   Leads are picked for client skill, not coaching skill. Run a session on reviewing a deck, asking for a redraft with reasons and handling a late night without sulking.

3. 3

   3. A written ladder

   List what analyst, associate and engagement lead can do in research, modelling, storyline, client handling and coaching. Two lines per skill. Share it.

4. 4

   4. Plain pay information

   Show the grade ranges, what moves a person up and how bonus is decided. Silence produces rumour.

5. 5

   5. Sector notes

   After each engagement, one page: the question, the approach, the surprising finding, the data sources and the client people who helped. Keep them in a shared folder.

6. 6

   6. Alumni and recovery

   Plan rest after a peak and keep a list of those who left, so the firm can invite them to events or ask for referrals.

Follow the order. A pay review before feedback often fails, because analysts say they wanted to hear about the work first. For deeper design, see how performance management runs in strategy consulting and the page on manager development for engagement leads.

Research: Analyst finds and cites reliable sources. Associate designs the research plan.
Modelling: Analyst builds a clean sheet. Associate builds and tests a scenario model.
Storyline: Analyst drafts slides. Associate writes the answer-first storyline.
Client handling: Associate runs an interview. Engagement lead runs the steering meeting.
Coaching: Associate guides an analyst. Engagement lead gives written feedback.

Write these in your own words and test them against two real people. If you cannot place a current consultant, the lines need work.

• Engagement leads: the real coaches, and the most stretched.
• Research and data staff: often sidelined, yet they decide the quality of the numbers.
• Slide and graphics specialists: absorb the last night redraft before the board meeting.
• Proposal staff: carry unpaid weeks without recognition.
• Executive assistants to partners: hold the diary and know the firm's mood.

• Paying a bonus before explaining the grade ranges.
• Promoting the best analyst to engagement lead with no coaching support.
• Expecting partners to give feedback with no time set aside.
• Treating proposal weeks as free, so the same people write them every time.
• Leaving slide specialists with the late redrafts and no rota.

Each is cheap to fix. Put feedback time in the partner diary. Add proposals to the staffing sheet. Share the redraft rota. Analysts notice when the firm notices their effort.

Pick one live engagement and run the mid-point talk exactly as described. Ask the analyst afterwards how it felt. Pick one finished engagement and write its sector note in under an hour. Pick one person and place her on the ladder, then compare your placement with hers.

These three small trials expose most of the problems. If the mid-point talk felt awkward, the lead needs practice. If the sector note took three hours, the template needs trimming. If the ladder placement differed, the lines need rewriting. Fix those before you roll anything out to the whole boutique.

Share the results at the next partners' meeting, with one change agreed per trial. A boutique moves quickly when partners see the effect on their own engagement, and slowly when HR hands them a binder.

Keep expectations modest in the first year. A boutique that runs mid-point talks on most engagements, holds a written ladder and writes sector notes for half its projects is already well ahead of its peers. Add the alumni list and the recovery rule in year two. Improvement that sticks beats a large launch that fades by March.

Partners sometimes worry that all this slows the boutique. The reverse tends to happen. When analysts know where they stand, they stop asking sideways questions in corridors, and engagement leads stop second-guessing who is ready for a client interview.

Read the hub for management and business consulting firms for the other four patterns, or send us your requirements for a first conversation.