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POV Articles
- Are your Partners order takers rather than effective business development professionals?
- The Last Analyst Class… So What?
- The Last Analyst Class
- Beating burnout: why professional services firms should look inwards to build resilience
- The future of skills-based progression
- The toughest level in consulting: senior managers
- 1980s Hip Hop, AI and the future of consulting
- Why law firms should look inwards to build resilience
- Neuroplasticity: A superpower we can actively train
- The Hidden Power of Knowledge Transfer in Consulting.
- 5 Ways to collaborate amongst different generations -infographic
- Nostalgia in the workplace
- Turning from tokenism: it’s time for this generation of women to consider our legacy.
- Intuition vs AI?
- Am I Enduring a Presentation or a Data Dump?
- More remote, less remote: how online communities can facilitate natural connections for the networking-averse.
- What are the consequences of too busy to learn in the medium and long term.
- Positively negative: The Smile Strain.
- What Gen Z’s approach to communication can bring to professional services firms.
- Learning and Development Statistics.
- Why increased diagnoses of neurodivergence are a good thing for professional services firms
- Why are we so bad at relating to others when we have been practising our whole lives?
- Why communication is key within the workplace.
- Mind the gap: Why a gap year doesn’t equate to a skills gap
- The Urgency Trap
- Don’t Let Tradition Hold You Back. Why Culture Needs to Change, and How You Can Be the Catalyst.
- Caffeine is no substitute for a lack of sleep (and here’s why …)
- Is every day the longest day of the year?
- Why telling a story can make you successful.
- Is Cricket a Consultant’s Game?
- Workplace Learning Statistics
- Imagine a world where curiosity never sleeps.
- Do you regularly work more than 55 hours a week?
- Are you addicted to being busy?
- Work Pressure Vs Work Stress
- Gender Confidence Gap
- What is a head girl?
- Working mothers and their guilt trip trap
- A Squash and a Squeeze: Unexpected Business Lessons
- A Career in Consulting
- Management Consultants and Advisors
- Why Every Day Should Be Random Acts of Kindness Day.
- From Screens to Scenes The Return of In-person Training.
- Groundhog Day: The “cubicle cycle” conundrum
- The Joy of Missing Out: Why Embracing JOMO Can Lead to Success
- The Pitfalls of Perspective
- Rethinking the ‘Client is King’ Mentality
- How can Christmas number ones offer insights for businesses and their strategies?
- “A Consulting Carol”
- Would you buy from you?
- Professional Services Awards: The Winners’ Formula
- Four questions to ask training providers
- To Develop Leaders, Start with Culture and Values
- Women in law and presenting a case
- The Pelorus – July 2023
- Top 10 learning metrics, what’s changed?
- The ‘Enquiry Strategy Remote Control’ for Consultants
- Proposals: How to make them a point of difference, not a point of reference 2023
- The Tyranny of Time – Priorities
- Why are there so few women at the top of Professional Service Firms?
- Should early career lawyers be trained in Business Development?
- Wellness programmes won’t have the desired impact if the real problem is that your headcount is too low
- Are your relationships with previous authority figures in your life, affecting your relationship with your boss?
- Internal advisors: What do your stakeholders expect from you?
- Learning to catch a ball and learning leadership
- Are you struggling to develop relationships and establish credibility with senior stakeholders?
- Internal Consulting – the most challenging job ever?
- To lead well – what should you stop doing?
- Moving from ‘Data-Driven to Data Informed’
- Hybrid and WFH options are bringing more women back into the workforce – then penalising them when they get there
- Internal Advisors in your organisation – double espresso or caffeine-free?
- How do you sell a Consulting Career?
- Switch from Analytical to Anecdotal: Storytelling in Presentations That Communicate Insight
- Managing the paradox of the poisonous performer
- Managers as Changemakers
- Why sales effectiveness training doesn’t always work
- Data as information or interference?
- 8 things to consider with buyers
- Critical thinking: Learning from the old man with a hammer
- 10 Leadership Tips for New Partners
- 10 Practical Tips for a New Partner
- Consulting as a Career, or as a Springboard to a Career?
- Leading Virtually in the Absence of the Artefacts of Authority – Why Authenticity is Key
- The Impact of Emotion on Loyalty and Buying Decisions
- What’s changed about change?
- Blocked in Lockdown – 10 things we have discovered
- The Openside Webinar Modules
- Women in Professional Services – 20 years on
- Internal Consultants – Organisational Adrenaline or Decaffeinated Consultants?
- The Pelorus – November 2019
- What law firms can learn from consulting firms
- The Pelorus – October 2019
- The Pelorus – August/September 2019
- The Pelorus – July 2019
- Why your organisation is not ready to train and develop your salesforce
- The Pelorus – June 2019
- Learning from a terrible DJ about the perils of the predetermined solution
- The Pelorus – May 2019
- What buyers of professional services are really looking for
- The Pelorus – April 2019
- The billable hour kills your firm’s values – what are the alternatives?
- The Pelorus – March 2019
- Tales of the Unexpected: Rethinking Differentiation
- Beyond the Cusp of Disruption in Consulting
- Posters from IBM’s ‘Quest for Quality’ Exhibition, 1985
- Proposals: How to make them a point of difference, not a point of reference
- The Professional Services Procurement Conundrum
- Is it worth it? Is the ‘always-on’ culture in professional services worth the cost?
- Challenging the ‘always-on’ culture – lead from the front
- What can individuals and their firms do to mitigate the ‘always-on’ culture?
- The costs of the ‘always-on’ culture to individuals and firms with important caveats
- Why the ‘always-on’ culture continues to dominate in professional services
- Special Report: Is it worth it? Examining the ‘always-on’ culture in professional services
- Reverence or Regicide?
- The Paradox of the Poisonous Performer
- How organisations can overcome big data’s two biggest obstacles
- What do award-winning consulting firms do better than the rest?
- Time’s up for the billable hour: Focusing on value is now the only option
- How creative agencies can take on consulting firms at their own game – and win
- Our Top 10 Most Read Articles of All Time
- The Partnership Trap
- The ‘Enquiry Strategy Remote Control’ for Consultants
- Why are there so few women at the top of Professional Services Firms?
- Underperformance all round? The Performance Management Conversation in Partner Groups
- Is the definition of Partner “No more development required”?
- Special Report: Mission Impossible? Managing Performance within the Partner Group
- How to Improve the Management of Performance within the Partner Group
- Special Report: Millennials in Professional Services – face the challenges and embrace the opportunities
- The Millennials’ Skills Gap – Why, so what and what to do about it?
- Defining a professional services career skill set for Millennials
- Developing ‘Human Skills’ among the Millennial professional services workforce
- Who are Millennials and why should professional services firms care?
- Special Report: Professional Services Marketing is Dead; Long Live Professional Services Marketing
- Part 1: The challenges facing marketing teams in traditional professional services firms
- Part 2: The current role of marketing in professional services firms
- Part 3: Redefining the role of marketing in a professional services firm
- Part 4: What leaders can do about it? How to apply a Broken Windows Strategy in your firm
- Part 3: The Broken Windows Strategy in New York
- Part 2: The negative perceptions of leaders’ attitudes towards training in firms
- Special Report: Why (most) training is still useless and what leaders can do about it
- Special Report: Emotional Intelligence (EQ) in Professional Services
- Part 5: Professional services marketing is at a crossroads
- Part 4: The ‘Hidden Curriculum’ of professional services marketing
- Define your metrics or they will define you
- Rethinking Value in Consulting: What distinguishes the top performing firms from the rest?
- Answer the question! Why politicians’ prevarication is unequivocally unacceptable in professional services
- Why now is the time for your consulting firm to revisit its professional development strategy
- MCA Member Contact
- MSI Global Alliance Member Follow Up
- Intuition bias: Why practice doesn’t always make perfect
- Challenging your clients: Get “That’s fair enough” not “That’s far enough”
- The Scourge of Procrustean Solutions in Consulting
- The great differentiation paradox for law firms
- Why jumping to conclusions can make things worse
- Overcoming the gender leadership gap and women only development programmes
- Microwave Beds, The Great British Bake Off and Behavioural Change Programmes
- From ‘Agents’ to ‘Advisors’ – Differentiating your property / real estate firm
- 10 unique dynamics of professional services firms that hinder change efforts
- Consulting Excellence: The Implications for Professional Development
- The great professional services differentiation paradox
- Rethinking the parable of the old man, the hammer and the broken engine
- Biased views? Have you considered all the evidence?
- Secrets of Great Salespeople: 50 Ways to Sell Business-To-Business
- Thinking different… Why discomfort and risk are the necessary costs of effective consulting
- Billable hours – why it’s time for firms to slaughter this sacred cow
- Part 2: Behavioural and Cognitive Professional Development Report 2016
- Behavioural and Cognitive Professional Development Report 2016
- Why ‘Earned right’ is very different to ‘Entitlement’
- Why Practising and Failing is Better than Failing in Practice
- Can a ‘traditional’ professional services firm’s culture be compatible with the attitudes of Millennials?
- Internal Consultants – Organisational Adrenaline or Decaffeinated Consultants?
- The Consultant’s Achilles Heel: Saying “I understand” Too Quickly
- Should you use Internal or External Consultants? What you need to consider
- Why the best teams don’t need to cheat
- Benchmark your business development process
- The impact of a cringeworthy LinkedIn profile on you and your firm
- How to differentiate your professional services firm
- Moving from Products to Services – Why? So What? and How?
- White-line Fever: The great affliction of professional services firms?
- Managing difficult negotiations – how to develop a negotiation framework
- Applying the Analytical Thinking Process – a sporting case study
- How to avoid being deselected: Moments of Truth and Chance Encounters
- Why we resist change and the implications on your firm’s behaviour
- General Elections, Gym Memberships and Critical Client Conversations
- Request for Proposal – 10 tips to maximise success when the odds are stacked against you
- Be honest. Would you buy from you?
- The dilemma of being a principal in consulting
- How Manchester City won the Premiership in 2012
- What is leadership?
- Networking and cold calling: touting for business or making a contribution?
Newsroom
- AI Won’t Replace Consultants. It Will Expose the Real Value of Human Skills
- 13 Years of Growth: Supporting the Next Generation of BIP Leaders
- James Rodger
- Coming Soon 2025: eLearning
- Stress, resilience and legacy
- Welcome: Fons Kuijpers
- New Openside Client Portal promotes career path progression.
- ChatGPT
- The future of education and work
- Launch of Vienna, from Openside Group
- The Psychology of Successful Women podcast with Shona Rowan and Openside tutor Harriet Johnson
- London Marathon
- Route to Partner – Recent Key Learnings
- A Sutton Trust Webinar: Consulting as a Career – or a Route to a Career?
- Presentation and Storytelling – Recent Key Learnings
- Times Radio interviews Openside Tutor, Harriet Johnson, to discuss her new book
- Deedbees
- Remote Working Tips
- Chester Business School Presentation
- Performance Leader podcast
- Openside is growing
Reports
- End of Year Report 2025
- Internal Consulting Report Summary Page
- Protected: Full Report – Internal Consulting Report 2025
- End of Year Report 2024
Case Studies
- Building a Global problem-solving capability to drive €2 million in operational savings.
- Embedding lasting Partner behaviour change around culture, purpose and values.
- Helping a leading UK law firm transform hesitant solicitors into confident networkers, not afraid of having business development conversations.
- Supporting top-tier leaders to overcome hurdles when transforming data into insights, enhancing fluency and advisory effectiveness by 28%.
- Elevating Insight: Helping Consumer Marketing Teams Influence Leadership
- Transitioning high-potential talent to strategic leaders, by sharpening their core consulting skills and behaviours to align with the firm’s ambitious vision.
- Shifting from low-margin wins to high-value engagements, resulting in a € 1 million project win from one programme.
- Providing a consistent client experience by training LATAM managers in key management and business development skills to strengthen their network relationships.
- Equipping high-potential senior managers with the leadership and business acumen needed to excel as Partners.
- Achieving an 11x ROI and secured major contracts for our client’s Partner as technical experts become trusted advisors.
- Boosting productivity and performance by 17% through a strategic skills programme designed for immediate impact at a European consulting firm.
- Evolving from data-driven to data-inspired, using storytelling to strengthen relationships and drive influential, results-focused decisions in procurement teams.
- Developing ‘Bilinguals’, by transforming a highly technical team into trusted internal advisors.
- Moving from industry-specific to consulting-specific methodologies to work more efficiently, tracking performance improvement using ‘Vienna’.
- Mastering business development, leadership, and client impact with lasting results – new law firm Partners shift from skilled advocates to confident advisors
People
- Cath Macartan
- Colette Carlile
- Debbie Dudley
- Emily Palmer
- Fons Kuijpers
- Harriet Johnson
- Ian Bradley
- Ian Brookes
- Jacqui Isaacs
- James Rodger
- Kerry Hyndman
- Naomi Fenn-Mansfield
- Simon Christmas
- Tim Devine
- Tom Hughes
- William Johnson
Videos
- What to do with the things you have learned.
- Authenticity
- Leadership Effectiveness
- Communication at work.
- How can Openside assist in making your leaders the best they can be?
- Distraction in the workplace
- How to give POSITIVE feedback
- Rethinking the Value Proposition
- Introducing Programme Leader Emily Palmer
- Introducing Programme Leader Jacqui Issacs
- Introducing Programme Leader Cath Macartan
- Confidence and Belonging: Personal Growth
- Women in Law and Presenting a Case
- Openside Vienna
- What is the next step in your career pathway?
- Introducing Programme Leader Ian Bradley
- Introducing Programme Leader Debbie Dudley
- Introducing Programme Leader Simon Christmas
- Why your organisation is not ready to train and develop your salesforce
- Internal consultants – organisational adrenaline or decaffeinated consultants?
- The billable hour kills your firm’s values – what are the alternatives?
- Storytelling in Business
- The Paradox of the Poisonous Performer
- The three most dangerous letters in professional services
- Emotional Intelligence in the Role of a Partner
- Differentiation in Professional Services