Right-Brained Skills Help Consulting Firms Thrive in the New Outsourced World

San Francisco, CA – August 2, 2005 – Consulting is no longer primarily a left-brained business. Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind believes that the era of left-brain dominance, which gave rise to the Information Age, is losing ground to a new, Conceptual Age. And right-brain skills like inventiveness, empathy, and design will help consultants thrive in this flattened, digitized, and outsourced world.

In an exclusive interview in Management Consulting News, Pink says “the scales are tipping away from what it used to take for people to get ahead—logical, linear, left-brain, and spreadsheet-type abilities—in favor of abilities like artistry, empathy, and big-picture thinking, which are becoming more valuable. Left-brain skills are still absolutely necessary in our complex world. They’re just not sufficient anymore.”

Pink goes on to say that consultants need to think about whether they are doing the kind of work that can be offshored or automated. “Accountants, for example, may become this generation’s blue-collar workers. They are imperiled by cheaper workers overseas, and by the ability to put many accounting measures into a system of rules in a piece of software,” he says.

Also in the August issue of Management Consulting News: consulting firms in the news, a summary of IDC’s global consulting survey, upcoming events for management consultants, and more.

The August 2005 issue of Management Consulting News with these articles and the Daniel Pink interview may be read online at http://www.managementconsultingnews.com/2005/newsletter_aug_05.htm. Subscriptions are complimentary.

About Management Consulting News – published since 2002, Management Consulting News is a monthly online newsletter with interviews, articles, and news for consultants worldwide. The editor of Management Consulting News, Michael W. McLaughlin, is a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP and co-author of the book Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants (Wiley, 2005). For more information see http://www.managementconsultingnews.com.