Part I: Is There Room for Disruption in Consulting?
featured blog
Part I: Is There Room for Disruption in Consulting?
—
By Aparupa Chakravarti, Director, Botho Emerging Markets Group
December 15, 2020
This is the first piece in a series where Botho Director Aparupa Chakravarti explores what a paradigm shift in how consultants consult could look like in the 21st century, especially given our tendency to superimpose linearity on a world that is, more often than not, circuitous at best.
My first introduction to qualitative research was at the age of 15 and, boy, was I thrown into the deep end. I joined the International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) as an intern to work on something that had nothing to with diarrhea, but everything to do with understanding the vulnerability of transgender (hijra) sex workers to an HIV epidemic.
My main point of contact for the 2 months I spent at ICDDR,B was a member of the hijra community named Joya. I have since carried the lessons Joya imparted to me on how to conduct qualitative research through university, graduate school and nearly a decade of consulting in various shapes and forms. She taught me that when you’re working with people, you never use your own agenda as the point of departure. She taught me the importance of establishing rapport and trust. She taught me to swallow my teenage hubris and recognize that when you’re entering other people’s spaces, they’re the experts, not you (although, to be fair, at that point I wasn’t an expert in any space).
And then I became a consultant.
I bombed my first interview with a Big 4 consulting firm while at graduate school, but I nailed the second one - or so I thought. The interviewer sat across from me holding a bunch of cards containing crucial information that would be revealed to me piecemeal every time I asked the “right” question. I got all the cards. I got the right answer. Imagine my consternation when I was then told that I didn’t get to the answer in the right way.
Therein lies the central tension point of my love-hate relationship with consulting - a seemingly inexorable tendency towards linearity that simply doesn’t translate in a world that is frequently, frustratingly and beautifully messy and ambiguous. Don’t get me wrong - I am undeniably a consultant. A pretty good one at that, as someone recently pointed out to me (although, in hindsight, that was probably a backhanded compliment). But I am also an anthropologist by training and, in some fundamental ways, the manner in which consultants consult and anthropologists - uh - do what they do are antithetical to each other.
I have spent the past few years at Botho thinking about what it means to build a distinctive consulting practice in an industry that was defined many years ago by a handful of players and a world where consultants are - no offense - a dime a dozen. My conclusion has been that an impactful way for us to distinguish ourselves as an advisory firm is to problem solve for clients in a way that isn't standard or easily replicable.
In the course of this vision quest of sorts I have experimented quite a bit with different methodologies - drawing on principles of design thinking, prototyping and ethnographic methods, among others. And though the way we problem solve as a firm has proven to be extremely effective time and time again, I find that, ironically, in some ways, I have been succumbing to the same linearity that so shocked me during that Big 4 interview I erroneously thought I aced many years ago.
This was especially apparent to me when I recently came across a fascinating article that also felt like a personal attack on me (it wasn’t), when the author pointed to the “visible tension in anthropology [...] between academic purists [...] and the ‘quick and dirty’ role of ethnography in business and innovation”, in particular “those trained in anthropology who make a living from uncritical use of their disciplinary tools.” Phew. Guilty as charged - to some degree.
Which brings me to my central, existential question: what could a paradigm shift in how consultants consult look like in the 21st century (global pandemic notwithstanding)? Especially for consultants, who - like us, at Botho - advise clients that need us to help them achieve systemic change, which requires a level of methodological fluidity that isn't all that common in the consulting field.
I think the answer lies not in multidisciplinarity - which is the cornerstone of many consulting practices today - but, rather, transdisciplinarity, i.e. bringing together different disciplines to co-create an approach or concept that is not discipline-specific. It is only by being transdisciplinary that we’ll be able to find a productive equilibrium between a hyper structured, linear, and replicable process versus an approach that allows for “agility, improvisation [and] incompatibility.” Applying a rigid, linear process to solve problems that affect people in all their complexity and multiplicity is fundamentally inadequate, because it leaves little room for discord, disruption, and tension, which are essential for real transformation. In the absence of these, we’re making incremental changes, at best.
So, how do you deliberately make room for disruption (including challenging existing power dynamics, which are all too real in the companies and organizations we work with) to create “sites of transformation”? How do you establish empathy, while also creating distance in a way that’s informative and analytical, so that you can recognize and account for the ways in which your presence - as consultant/researcher/facilitator - distorts the spaces you’re trying to investigate? And - because us consultants still need to keep the lights on - how do you package this super awesome, nuanced, nimble, potentially revolutionary approach to clients, who ultimately just want you to meet their specs within budget and move on?
Unfortunately, at this point, these questions are mostly rhetorical. But I believe - and maybe this is just my inner consultant rearing its head - that sometimes asking the right questions is more important than having all the answers. At least, for now.