The Unconsultancy Manifesto

The Unconsultancy Manifesto

We are uncovering more sustainable and reproducible ways of satisfying customers’ needs for guidance and expertise.

Through this work we have come to value:

• Impact over ritualized theater
• Interactions over one-way communication
• Scalability and repeatability over unnecessary individualization
• Cooperation and community building over protecting client relations
• Transparency over obscure and/or unfair practices

We follow these principles:

1. Our highest priority is to empower our customers to make good decisions and to enable them to implement these. This we call positive impact.
2. We strive to develop approaches and build services and products that create positive impact for hundreds or thousands of organizations. This we call scale.
3. We try to maximize positive impact per effort invested. This we call impact at scale.
4. We believe that the optimal way to get there isn’t always a straight line and embrace change whenever it comes. This we call adaptability.
5. We acknowledge that conflict of interests and side effects exist and try to make them visible whenever and wherever we identify them. This we call transparency.
6. Politics-free projects do not exist. Most client interactions happen at a factual, personal, and political level. Incorporating into our day-to-day work how they relate to each other and influence each other will benefit us and the client. This we call fairness.
7. Self-organized, networked organizations and engagements produce better results faster than pyramidal hierarchies. They also allow everyone involved to grow. This we call organicity.
8. “Don’t be evil” isn’t good enough. We are aware of potential harms of Consulting and try to counter them. This we call self-awareness.