There is a deeply flawed model at the heart of management consulting. It’s called “gain sharing,” a structure where a firm’s fee is tied to the cost savings they identify. It’s pitched as a perfect alignment of interests, but it actively rewards the wrong behaviour.

It incentivises the easy win. Because let’s be clear, any business can cut costs. It is the most seductive, straightforward, and often the most damaging lever to pull. Stripping out expenditure provides a sugar rush of positive numbers on a spreadsheet that feels like progress.

But it’s often a poison pill.

The real skill is not in cutting costs, but in doing so without sacrificing long-term revenue or capability. That spreadsheet victory, which looks so good in a quarterly report, can be quietly dismantling the very engine of future growth.

This is the critical distinction. It’s the difference between short-term financial engineering and the real work of building a resilient, quietly functioning business.

Most firms will give you a playbook full of those easy wins. We know that real value is created in the execution, not just the document. Our focus is on delivering sustainable outcomes that strengthen a business from the inside out, ensuring the changes made today don’t become the crises of tomorrow.

The goal isn’t to leave a trail of fireworks. It is to leave a business that simply works better, where the internal team takes the credit.

And that is exactly how it should be.

#ManagementConsulting #BusinessStrategy #OperationalExcellence #Leadership #CostCutting #SustainableValue #COGENT