The Hindu Business Line : Sell the ‘Pyramid’

Vipul Sawhney topped all the offers at campus that year to covet a high-end management consulting assignment. After ten years of reputation for hard work, he was denied elevation to a ‘consulting partner’ for the third year in a row because he failed to sell the ‘pyramid’.

A qualified ‘partner’ should be orchestrating a potential to attract contracts at ever-higher premiums by setting up a distinguished practice staffed by ‘pyramid’ of competent ‘consultants’ under him. Vipul, the principal consultant, is expected to ‘gun’ his team of consultants through stimulating work justifying premiums for the time clocked with their clients. Essentially, the partner must run less and get his team to run harder than ever for him. Selling the pyramid implies creating such an organisation to demonstrate sustainable growth.

Profiling their deployment (X-axis) against the returns (Y axis), Vipul unearthed the cues to maximising the returns on his pyramid.

Premium plus consultants constituted Vipul’s dream team. They were self-propelled and fused well into the political environment of their clients, spotting trouble or opportunities alike and resolve them quietly and profitably. As a well-oiled machine, they grew the business through referrals and earned ‘extra’ for undertaking work that originated ‘outside of the contract’.

Spot merchants were the innovative and high profile cream that floated to the top end of earnings. Their contribution to business was redoubtable; the rub, however, lay in its sustainability. Serendipity of work and unexpected premiums on short-term engagements raised alarms about building up expectations ahead of credible delivery capability. It was risky to say the least.

The Under valued lot griped forever that Vipul was never doing enough for them to help them get their due. Their demand for excessive supervision could not be ignored altogether lest they be lost as attrition.

Nursing a guilt about his own inadequacy to shore up their self-confidence, Vipul recognised the delays it entailed in attending to the other essential activities necessary to put him ahead of the business.

Gratis Persona could neither be dismissed as ‘hopeless’ nor granted an indefinite ‘benefit of doubt’. They were the perpetual work-in-process that never arrived but remained an expensive and dispensable redundancy. They did not conclude any assignment to be ‘marketable’ nor ‘billed’ enough to cover their own expenses.

I was accused by my peers of being ‘soft headed’ in not precipitating their departure soon enough.

If ‘Improved returns on intellectual capital’ getting to grips with these, why did he not do it earlier, wondered Vipul?

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