37.1 What should consultants learn?

A remarkable diversity of personalities, clients, subjects handled, intervention methods and consulting firms’ philosophies is a prominent feature of the consulting profession. Because of this diversity, there are probably as many different paths to individual proficiency as there are consultants. As in other professions, some individuals will learn faster than others and achieve higher proficiency, owing to a happy concourse of a number of circumstances: talent, drive, educational background, complexity and novelty of assignments executed, and leadership and support provided by the consulting firm.

The training and development policies of consulting firms, and of the profession at large, tend to respect this diversity, offering a range of choices that permit learning to be harmonized with individual needs and possibilities. At the same time, the profession has aimed to achieve the necessary minimum level of uniformity and standardization, reflecting the common and prevailing needs of consultants at various stages of a typical professional career. Leading consulting firms and professional associations have devoted a lot of energy to these questions. As the profession is a young and rapidly evolving one, and distilling common needs and principles from constantly changing diversity is not easy, the task is far from being completed. Nevertheless, some useful guidance and support materials, outlining the consultants’ professional profiles and common knowledge base, are available.2