Today’s strategic problems cannot be reduced to a particular profession and narrative of few years. Organizations need to take gigantic number of factors and drivers of business, society, social-psychology, political circumstances and many more subject matter topics, and yet, conventional consultants are not trained to distinguish delicate ingredients of long-lasting and resistant solutions.
The future of consulting business is about the Renaissance approach in the age of rapid development, disruption, transformation and redefinition of ordinary things. COVID-19 is not the first and the last global disruption of the history. Strategies for resilience and progress require in-depth understanding of the axis cutting across sociology, technology, philosophy, science and engineering (among others). It is seeking more than ‘know-how’. We chase the Know-Why, we challenge the Know-How.
Know-How is well capable of developing great looking products and services, but it does not ask some critical questions to test if great ideas really work. For example,
- Why do self-driving cars cause more stress?
- Why does Blockchain technology offer various efficiencies but firms still resist implementing?
- Why do rewards deteriorate ethical sharpness of senior manager or employee?
- Why do we fail to foresee big but rare mistakes?
- Why do start-up accelerators usually fail to identify the next big thing? Why is it not a problem at all?