What Is Unconsulting?

Unconsulting is a way of giving organizations guidance and expertise that leads them out of dependency instead of deeper into it. It deals openly with conflicts of interest, tries to help as many organizations as possible instead of extracting as much revenue as possible from individual ones, focuses on working together rather than on the final presentation, and connects organizations so they learn from each other directly.

The term comes from The Unconsultancy Manifesto, written in 2024 by Dror-John Roecher and David Fuhr, the founders of the Berlin cybersecurity firm int[cube]. Its form follows the Agile Manifesto; its critique of consulting draws, among others, on The Big Con by Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington.

Why not just consulting?

The need for advice is legitimate, and it is immense. Organizations lack specialists, and an outside view helps to understand a situation, learn a new subject and make good decisions. The problem is how much of the consulting business works:

• Success means revenue for the consultancy, not results for the client.
• Recommendations often lead to more consultants or to outsourcing, so knowledge leaves the organization and dependency grows.
• Large firms advise many clients in many areas at once, which makes conflicts of interest hard to avoid.
• "Best practices" are often anonymized secrets carried from one client to the next.

Unconsulting keeps the goal of good advice and changes how it is delivered. The longer argument is in the launch post Consulting Is Done - Long Live Consulting!

The five values

Like the Agile Manifesto, the manifesto values the items on the left more, without saying the items on the right have no value.

Impact over ritualized theater

What changes for the client counts, not rituals performed for their own sake, such as the polished final presentation.

Interactions over one-way communication

Clients work with the experts and with each other instead of receiving a report.

Scalability and repeatability over unnecessary individualization

Many organizations face similar problems. A proven approach that many can use beats a custom one for each.

Cooperation and community building over protecting client relations

Clients meet and help each other, even though a classic consultancy would keep them apart.

Transparency over obscure and/or unfair practices

Methods, incentives and conflicts of interest are made visible instead of hidden.

The eight principles

1. Positive impact: empower clients to make good decisions and to implement them.
2. Scale: build approaches, services and products that create positive impact for hundreds or thousands of organizations.
3. Impact at scale: maximize positive impact per effort invested.
4. Adaptability: the best way is rarely a straight line, so embrace change when it comes.
5. Transparency: make conflicts of interest and side effects visible wherever they appear.
6. Fairness: client work happens at a factual, a personal and a political level; take all three into account.
7. Organicity: self-organized, networked teams produce better results faster than pyramids and let everyone grow.
8. Self-awareness: "Don't be evil" isn't good enough; know the harms consulting can do and counter them.

The full wording is in the manifesto.

What it looks like in practice

One form of Unconsulting is the cohort. int[cube] runs Unconsulting in Cohorts: several organizations implement the same security topic at the same time, each on its own systems, over 6 to 12 weeks, with experts and peers who face the same questions. The knowledge stays in the organizations, the same approach serves many of them, and they learn from each other. In one cohort, 19 portfolio companies of Bregal Unternehmerkapital reduced their external attack surface by 68% in eight weeks.

Who can practice Unconsulting?

Anyone who gives advice: consultancies, freelancers, internal experts, associations. There is no membership, no legal entity and no certification. The manifesto describes a movement, and feedback and ideas are welcome.