Non-standard consulting company
A fresh view on consulting business activity
INDUSTRIESINSIGHTS
In 2002, Torsten Widt and four of his friends set off on a path that led up a mountain - narrow and full of obstacles. At least, that's how it looked from the outside.
These five were going to provide services in the field of strategic consulting to the largest companies in Scandinavia. And this meant that they would have to compete directly with the leading international consulting empires, whose intellectual capital, list of achievements and number of clients among Fortune 500 businessmen can intimidate and tremble any novice consultant with any ambition.
But Torsten and his friends had a secret weapon: they were different. Others do not mean smarter, more persistent or more ambitious than competitors (this is hardly possible) - no, just different. In Torsten's company, this dissimilarity is described by the corporate saying "man bites dog"; the same is the name of the monthly nomination, in which the team whose "bite" turned out to be the most outstanding is awarded.
This principle helped them grow relatively quickly to a team of 150 strategy consultants, merging their firm Copenhagen Consulting Company (CoCoCo) with their fiercest competitor, Quartz Strategy Consultants, to form QVARTZ. Among their regular customers are Carlsberg, Maersk, Novo, LEGO and Vestas. The bonds with clients are so strong that some of those clients have agreed to have the firm's meeting rooms bear their names and be decorated with items that symbolize their activities.
A person who bites a dog - what does it mean? Imagine you saw a newspaper with the headline: "Dog Bites Man." Would you buy such a newspaper? Unlikely. But if it says: "A man bit a dog", such a headline is much more likely to attract your attention. It is this effect that Torsten and his colleagues successfully beat in their work.
"There's a man-bites-dog element in every task we do," Torsten explains. — "Each of our consultants is required to think creatively, to be different from others and to create something non-standard. A boring PowerPoint presentation is not about us; we strive to avoid patterns, and we are willing to go to great lengths to do so. More than once, we took risks and did very daring things, holding presentations or fulfilling customer orders."
For example, they once made a presentation to a potential client, competing for an order with an international company — one of the leaders in the industry. The topic of the presentation was the optimization of logistics, and the project manager decided not to display the infographic on the screen in the form of slides, but to hang it on the walls of the meeting room as a physical illustration of his ideas.
"It was a risk - we could face disapproval. We turned everything upside down in the client's meeting room - and that was before we won the order. But the client accepted our terms, was impressed and chose us - partly thanks to our non-standard nature. Our fundamental principle is to be on a par with the best in the world of essentially solving problems, but to be better than them in terms of form and energy,” says Torsten.
The QVARTZ company applies the same approach to itself as it does to its customers - from the inside it is also non-standard. For example, there are no positions.
"Our hierarchy has a situational nature: a leader is someone who can lead others in a given specific situation. Any of us can be a leader today and a subordinate tomorrow; this principle is called "lead and be led," Torsten explains.
And no one at QVARTZ has their own office or parking space. Even the owners of the company.The results of this approach are impressive: QVARTZ is a real magnet that attracts talent.
"We have never resorted to traditional job advertisements. People come to us themselves because they are attracted to our style," says Torsten.