The Business Consulting and Support Standards Mapping Project

1
The Business Consulting and Support Standards
Mapping Project

• Dr Kion Ahadi
• Head of MSC

2
Introducing the MSC

• Government recognised standards setting body for
  Management and Leadership.
• Guardians and promoters of the management and
  leadership National Occupational Standards.
• Manage and certificate the Management
  Apprenticeship programmes.
• Provide secretariat to the Management and
  Leadership Qualifications Forum.
• To publicise and promote the Management and
  Leadership Qualifications and Learning Strategy.

3
About IBC

• The Professional Body for Business Consultants
  (management consultants business advisers).
• An organisation within the Chartered Management
  Institute.
• A member of the International Council of
  Management Consultancy Institutes (ICMCI).
• About 7000 individual members and 160 corporate
  (practice) members.

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Consultant or Advisor

• Some degree of overlap.
• IBA advisers tended to focus on start up and
  small companies.
• Consultants more likely to be involved with
  larger organisations.
• Distinctions less clear over time.
• Advisers tend not to implement solutions.
• Consultants may both diagnose and implement
  solutions.

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Project Stages

• Phase 1 Map the 8 SFEDI Business Support
  standards against
• - The Management Leadership NOS
• - The Institute of Business Consulting
  Management
• - Consultancy Competency Framework
• - Investors in People Competency definitions.
• Phase 2 Consult on the gaps that emerged from
  the mapping.
• Phase 3 Incorporate the consultation responses
  into a final set of recommendations, which define
  the next phase of work.

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The Key Objectives

• Short term To identify the linkages and confirm
  the gaps between the present set of standards.
• Mid Term Development of new standards for use by
  consultants and advisors.
• Long Term New standards published that will
  enable consultants and business advisors to meet
  the needs of business, increasing UK economic
  productivity.

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Methodology

• Step 1. Use SFEDI as the control and map by
  affiliating the titles within each Framework.
• Step 2. Look for affiliations between the core
  standard title, the description underpinning each
  standard and the descriptions which underpinned
  each title in each of the other frameworks.
• Step 3. Accept/Reject data for mapping and
  identify gaps in the standards.
• Accept/ Reject. Tempered decision using judgment,
  interpretation and experience. Our decisions were
  based on the words written into each standard no
  attempt was made to make assumptions about any
  information that was not stated in each
  framework.

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Constraints of Mapping

• The standards or frameworks omit any consensus
  over what they should contain.
• The fundamental strengths, compatibility and
  practical usefulness of the standards were
  obscured by variations on common themes.
• Some of the standards are competency frameworks,
  whilst others are competences that build on
  skills and knowledge.
• Assigning reliable measures to the competency
  frameworks to show the differences between high
  and average performance is difficult.
• The standards obscure their true benefit for
  business.

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Interim Recommendations

• The development of a single framework of
  standards for the future that is common to all
  business consulting and advisor specialisations.
• They should be easily transferable between and
  within different sectors.
• These future standards should build on the gaps
  identified from this mapping once refined after
  consultation.

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Further Information
MSC www.management-standards.org IBC
www.ibconsulting.org.uk MAON www.maon.co.uk
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Next Steps

• Consultation phase ongoing till the end of
  February 2008.
• Collation and incorporation of feedback by the
  end of March 2008.
• Production of a final report and dissemination of
  findings by the end of April 2008.
• Start next phase in May 2008.