From Nine Partners to One Team, Transforming Competitive Consultants into Collaborative Forces
The secret choreography of herding consulting tigers
Summary
Two years into a critical finance transformation at a major restaurant chain, I witnessed something that still makes me cringe. Nine elite consulting firms dismantled their own program through territorial behavior and ego battles. With millions of dollars on the line and a rapidly approaching go-live date, these powerhouses needed to start working together, and quickly.
After years of facilitating transformations across industries, I've developed a theory. Human dynamics undermine most transformation programs.
When Brilliant Minds Don't Align
Let me illustrate notable dysfunction in the consulting world.
Imagine sitting in a meeting where two senior partners from competing firms discover they've spent the past month working in parallel without communicating about final deliverables and hand-offs. That's hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted because two elite companies didn't share their project plans.
That was just the start of what I witnessed.
The most expensive word in consulting is "assume." In this case, partners assumed others would manage integration points, key decisions, and escalation paths. What happens when nine firms make assumptions simultaneously? Complete disorder.
Every partner claimed to be "committed to the program's success," but I've learned to watch actions, not words. Each firm was optimizing their own piece, unaware of how their decisions impacted others. Critical handoffs were missed. Dependencies were discovered too late. The July go-live date looked unachievable.
What killed me was that these were brilliant, world-class experts from top firms. Their collective genius was wasted because they couldn't or wouldn't work together. I've seen this pattern before. When you put elite companies together, ego and competition overshadow teamwork.
Breaking Down Barriers Between Strong Leaders
Have you ever tried getting nine alpha dogs to get along? That was my task. My job was to facilitate a conversation and transform how these organizations collaborated, with six months until go-live.
I've seen organizations waste millions on top talent, only to watch that investment disappear because they couldn't get the firms to cooperate. This wasn't about hosting another meeting. It was about creating a moment that would save or sink a transformation.
We needed to solve four important challenges.
- Accelerate Collaboration. Dismantling decades of rivalry meant getting senior partners from competing firms to share their challenges.
- Mitigate Hidden Risks. The biggest risks in transformation programs aren't in status reports but in hidden issues between partners. We created a space for these to be addressed.
- Forge Alignment. Everyone had their own version of "the plan." I needed to get nine reality distortion fields to converge into one truth, which is challenging with each firm's reputation and revenue on the line.
- Establish Clear Roles. Imagine nine world-class chefs in one kitchen, each with their own recipe for success. Someone needed to define who was making what and get everyone to follow the menu.
Beyond PowerPoint, A Different Approach
I've sat through enough mind-numbing status meetings to know PowerPoint doesn't solve people problems. With nine powerful firms and six months until go-live, you need something different that forces leaders to confront reality, commit to solutions, and take responsibility for their part in the mess.
We followed five essential steps in our approach.
1. Assess Before Prescribing
Have you noticed how doctors don't write prescriptions before examining the patient? Yet in business, we go directly to solutions.
I needed the unvarnished truth. Through confidential interviews, I discovered what partners wouldn't say in status meetings: the actual fears, barriers, and conflicts. These were the basis for everything that followed.
2. Design the Conversation
Most facilitators get it wrong; they design workshops, but I design conversations.
Think about your best conversations. They flow naturally, build momentum, and lead to unexpected insights. That's what I needed to create. But with nine competing firms and millions on the line.
Every moment mattered. We engineered significant ones, from the CFO's opening (carefully crafted to shake partners out of their comfort zones) to the final commitments (designed to make backing out difficult).
3. Facilitate Action, Not Only Discussion
Most offsites are expensive meetings. Three key elements bring significant change.
- Structured techniques for clear communication
- Methods that drive decisions, not mere discussion
- Tools that transform conversation into commitment
The real work starts when senior partners can no longer rely on corporate speak.
4. Solidify and Synthesize
Most facilitators write reports. I create action blueprints.
I deliver action guides to connect high-level vision and ground-level execution. I convert every sketch, breakthrough moment, and commitment into something practical.
I always ask, "Can someone outside the room understand what to do next?"
5. Measure and Reinforce
Here's an uncomfortable truth about transformation: what gets measured changes.
I've seen too many initiatives chase satisfaction scores while missing real change. That's why I focus on behavioral metrics.
- Are partners meeting without the client as a mediator?
- Are decisions being made more quickly?
- Are risks identified earlier?
These are the key measures.
Consulting gladiators turned into dance partners
The Transformation Takes Hold
How do you spot real transformation? Watch what happens after everyone leaves.
We saw immediate changes. Partners who had avoided each other for months began scheduling working sessions. The transformation altered how they worked, communicated, and solved problems together.
Three elements combined to create enduring change.
1. Role Clarity & Aligned Expectations
Rules don't change behavior. Public commitments do. We established clear expectations (no interpretation), public commitments (hard to back out with eight firms observing), and peer accountability (stronger than client pressure).
2. Timeline Accountability
Have you noticed how deadlines feel optional until they're your own? When nine elite firms commit to shared milestones, "we'll try our best" becomes "we'll make it work." Peer pressure can accomplish what project plans cannot.
3. Strategic Risk Mitigation
What terrifies me about transformation programs is not the visible risks but the unexamined assumptions. The biggest hide in the spaces between firms, those handoff points where everyone thinks someone else has it managed.
We made it safe and rewarding to expose assumptions, question the unquestionable, and raise your hand to say, "I don't think this will work."
The Real Measure of Success
Two weeks after our offsite, a major technical issue threatened the timeline. In the past, this would have triggered a blame game. Instead, I watched partners pool resources, share accountability, and solve the problem together.
That's when I knew we'd succeeded. I knew we'd succeeded not because everything was perfect, but because these former competitors were now acting as one team.
In my experience, transformation is never just about technology or process. It's about brilliant, complex, sometimes difficult people working together toward a common goal. When that happens, even the most challenging programs can succeed.
