Too many consultants? - Deloitte US boss speaks

Jim Moffatt

In a Q&A interview, Deloitte CEO Jim Moffatt weighs in.

Initially best known as a global accounting firm, Deloitte has built a powerhouse in management consulting with tens of thousands of practitioners working in 100 countries. In the United States, consulting is its biggest business.

Jim Moffatt, chief executive of Deloitte Consulting, talked with The Washington Post about his long career at Deloitte, which traits make for an effective chief executive and whether the world has too many consultants. This was edited for length and clarity.

Q: What do you see as the biggest trend in consulting?

A: Globalisation. Also changes in technology are driving disruption at a pace we haven't seen before, and I think that creates opportunities for companies that are prepared to take advantage of it and threats for those that aren't.

Q: Deloitte has a good window into the economy. What do you see?

A: Continued uncertainty. The US economy is starting to be robust, but there's so much fragility around the globe - and we're so interdependent - that there's definitely some concern it will come back and dampen growth in the United States.

Every quarter there's some new event, whether it's geopolitical, economic, health-related. If you're waiting for everything to be perfect, you're going to wait a long time. Companies have to have the confidence to invest through uncertainty and develop the skills to deal with uncertainty.

Q: Has Deloitte increased hiring of the long-term unemployed?

A: We did. First, we hire 18,000 people a year, and we checked to make sure we had no unintended biases in terms of screening. We also focus on veterans.

If you have a big portion of the population on the sidelines, not contributing to the economy, that's a problem. And if you look at the people who get hired from the long-term unemployed population, they become very engaged, loyal, productive employees. So there's a good business case for it.

Watch: Moffatt talks with The Post about how consultants can become a crutch for companies.

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Q: What do you look for in people you hire? Have skills changed?

A: The underlying attributes we're looking for are similar, but I think what motivates people in their careers is changing. Millennials, in particular, want to be engaged in a different way. They want to see the commitment to invest in them. They want to be exposed to leading-edge techniques and analytics. But they don't have necessarily the long-term aspirations that many others did when they joined.

Q: What's the biggest management challenge you face?

A: The hardest thing is communication when you have 30,000 people spread around the world. When I took this role on, we reset the strategy. About a year and a half into it, we realised people got the pieces but didn't understand how it all hung together. I had to make a concerted effort to crystallise it on one page and to make sure that people understand.

Q: The best way to pick up leadership and management skills?

A: Nothing is better than real-life experience. An apprenticeship model is how I learned. I got dragged into situations with other partners when I was young, probably beyond where I should have been. I started out listening and observing, then gradually getting roles. In tough situations you get tremendous growth potential.

Q: Which CEO traits have you seen as effective and not effective?

A: Command and control just doesn't work anymore, except maybe if you're in a very troubled situation. That's very '80s and '90s. I think people want to see where the organisation is headed, where they fit in and why that's important to the company.

The best leaders I see have a clear destination in mind. They start with the North Star - that is, they get focused on the "what" before they get ground up in the "how." Too often in companies, people start worrying about the "how" before they've agreed on where they're headed.

There's a natural gravitational pull I see in organisations that will pull you back to a more-conservative answer if you don't push beyond where the organisation believes it can go.

Q: Are there too many consultants in the world?

A: I suppose yes. I spend a lot of time with clients talking to them about where they should use us and where they shouldn't. And I've spent a lot of time talking with our people about how we should only do work when we can really make a difference. If we can't, then it doesn't end up well for the company or for us. Not every consultant is good for every issue.

Our clients are really smart. They've gone to all the same schools we have. They've been working in the industry a long time. It's just that they're faced with an issue they've never seen before. That's where consultants come in.

I believe what you'll start to see is that the compensation for consultants will be more based on the value we deliver. Now, 20 per cent of our portfolio is value-based work. And we have been dramatically shifting to do more. It changes the dynamic. We become business partners, and it forces a clarity of expectations on both sides about what needs to get done.

Watch: Why the lesson still sticks with him; Moffatt talks about a mistake he made when working a construction job in college.

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Q: Do you wrestle with employee burnout?

A: People want to have both flexibility and predictability. Some people want to do work whenever they want, however they want, as long as they get it done. Other people don't mind being on a long-term project, but they want to plan ahead about their time with family or with friends. So we have our teams structure projects to give flexibility and predictability.

Q: What memory has influenced your thoughts on leadership?

A: I did hard-core construction in college. I was digging footings. It was hard work in the middle of summer in San Diego. We had to measure the footing, but we didn't have any tools. So I grabbed a brick off the pallet, and I made the mistake of grabbing a finished brick. I don't know what the cost was - it was probably 15 cents more than a normal brick. But the mason came over and read me the riot act: "College boy, you'll never amount to anything! What are you doing? You're not thinking!"

He was right. It was a good lesson in that I really should have stepped back, thought about it and gotten the right tool. Taken time to think, right? One of my mentors on my first consulting project made a similar point. We were all cranking on our analysis, and he just walks in and goes, "Shut the computer. Just step back and think. It's not just in the numbers. You actually have to get a chance to process."

Q: What's the best piece of advice you've been given?

From one of my partners. He said: "Every couple of years, pick your head up and make sure you're still passionate about what you're doing."