Warp and weft, diversity and alignment

Warp and weft – consulting and executive management skills

We are consultants who work closely with executive managers, in a wide range of sectors. Like all professional service firms, we recruit smart people who can grow into impressive, high-performing consultants. Our young consultants learn the craft of consulting with its myriad of micro-skills and behaviours on the project teams that they are part of. Many of these skills and behaviours go unnoticed and unstated, but they are essential building steps through the climb to professional excellence.

But we have learnt that like a woven carpet with its warp and weft (vertical and horizontal weaves), combining deep executive management expertise with deep consulting expertise will provide a stronger, more effective consulting offer. So, we recruit people who are more senior in their career who bring a deeper expertise either in particular industries or functions, that add substantially to our capability and the quality of our work. The lateral hires bring strength in a deeper understanding of the client context and mindset, along with their long-developed capabilities from the industries they have worked in.

Sadly, not all of our senior lateral hires are successful; sometimes the weft breaks. We have learnt over the years that there are two critical questions:

• What skills and character can make the transition from executive management to senior consulting smoother? On this question, we have developed many insights which mean that we make far fewer recruitment mistakes now than in the past.
• How do we invest in the person in their early months at Nous, so as to maximise the likelihood of their success? We are doing this better now than ever before, but suspect that we will do it better again in 2 years’ time.

Quality and character; diversity and alignment

Excellent consultants must be both high quality (i.e. intelligent, smart, well-educated) and have a positive, ethical and engaging character: head and heart. One without the other is incomplete. We seek both and do not prioritise one above the other. Of course, these two characteristics are not at odds with each other, but they don’t always come together. To be Nousers, we know that we must have quality and character, at an elevated level.

But when we achieve the outcome of quality and character for every individual, we are not done. We have a further step to take. To serve our clients well, we must aim to reflect the diversity of our clients and of their customers. If we are all the same, our homogeneity will in itself fail our clients. Like warp and weft, diversity brings strength and insight to our consulting. But diversity is far more multidimensional; we think of it as 5, 6, 7-dimensional warp and weft.

But even then, with quality, character and diversity, we are not complete. While we seek for diversity in our people, we know that when they join we must aim for an alignment or consistency of purpose, of professionalism and of quality for clients. Yes, we should be different, but we should “do” consistent quality.

For Nous, our Reasons for being: Positive influence, Intellectual stimulation, Energy and growth, Care and connection, and Revenue and profit (i.e. delivering results) create the foundations of our alignment. In joining Nous, our people know why we exist through our Reasons for being (RfBs). In joining us, they choose to sign up to and if not immediately, then over time, align with our RfBs. We constantly reinforce our RfBs, as we know that we cannot take our alignment for granted.

Sustained success takes sustained effort and a constant questioning: are we all we can hope to be? The answer is almost always no, or at least not quite. That answer prompts us to change and improve.

The endless search for improvement keeps us alive.

Nous Group is a management consulting firm operating across Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, Canada and Mexico. This year, we turn 25. Surely an age at which philosophical reflection comes naturally!

We are proud of the outcomes we have achieved with our clients over our last 25 years. We are also proud that we are now 750 highly talented professionals, who genuinely enjoy working together and feel part of one international, professional community.

But rather than resting on our successes, we are driven by learning that will inform the future. At the age of 25, we have asked ourselves, what are the big lessons we have learnt over the last quarter of a century that should guide us in the future?

Check out some of our other learnings below:

• One of the most important lessons we have learnt along the way is to regularly reinforce the why and bring ourselves back to our founding purpose.
• A persistent dissatisfaction with the present and a joy in change is essential for growth. We cannot stand still.
• Ethics are forever and essential to maintaining a high bar for standards across our industry.