“Our work is too customized to systematize” may be one of the most expensive assumptions in consulting.
Clients absolutely need solutions tailored to their circumstances. Their strategies, capabilities, constraints, markets, people, and objectives are different. Good consulting must account for those differences. But customized advice does not require consultants to create a new process for every engagement.
When every consultant approaches similar problems differently, the firm pays a price. Work is unnecessarily recreated, quality becomes more difficult to control, errors become more likely, and valuable knowledge remains concentrated in the firm's most experienced people. As the firm grows, those senior professionals often become the bottleneck because too much of the delivery model still depends on what they personally know and do.
Standardize the Process, Not the Advice
The mistake is confusing standardizing the process with standardizing the advice.
A well-designed consulting system can standardize how information is gathered, how problems are diagnosed, which questions are considered, how alternatives are evaluated, and how recommendations are developed. None of this requires the final advice to be generic.
In fact, the opposite should happen. By creating a disciplined and repeatable process for understanding the client, the consultant has a stronger foundation for applying professional judgment to the circumstances that make that client unique.
The principle is straightforward: standardize the process and customize the intelligence.
Better Systems Make Better Consultants
A strong standardized process can improve consistency while reducing the amount of work that must be recreated for every engagement. It can also make the firm's collective experience more accessible to less-experienced professionals, reducing unnecessary dependence on partners and senior consultants.
This has important economic consequences. When consultants spend less time reinventing processes, senior professionals spend less time correcting inconsistencies, and the entire team has access to a stronger methodology, the firm can increase professional capacity without compromising the quality of its advice.
Standardization, properly designed, does not commoditize expertise. It creates greater leverage around it.
How STAR Approaches the Problem
STAR was built around this distinction. It provides a robust standardized system for guiding the consulting process while eliciting the client context necessary to produce a customized result.
The system provides the structure, but it does not replace the consultant. Professional judgment remains essential in interpreting the client's circumstances, evaluating alternatives, challenging assumptions, and determining the appropriate course of action.
This combination allows the firm to capture the advantages of standardization without sacrificing what clients value most about good consulting: advice that reflects the realities of their business.
The choice, therefore, is not between standardized consulting and customized consulting. The better business model combines both.
Standardize what should be repeatable. Customize what should be unique. And preserve professional judgment where it creates the greatest value.