Crisis in the workplace? Need to develop a business strategy? To understand the market, or develop a vision for the future? Increasingly the response of companies to any of these is not to talk to their staff, but to cry ‘bring in the consultants!’ 98% of the top 200 companies in the US and UK have used management consultants,  advising on ‘restructuring’, identifying ‘key stakeholders’ and ‘adding value’. And the use of consultants continues to be on the increase in workplaces across both the public and private sector, not to mention government.

But has management consulting reached the professional level of medicine and law to which it aspires? Or, as some critics have claimed, are consultants ‘witch doctors’ suffering from ‘physics envy’ and spouting vacuous jargon? Do management consultants ‘add value’ with their business expertise, or should management teams have greater trust in the experience and judgement of their own staff? Have consultants become a crucial part of the 21st century management function? Do they really know ‘what it takes to be a Tiger’? Or are they just the product of timid companies nervous of decision-making, and taking the easy option of outsourcing difficult decisions to ‘experts’?