Sit-aside: a solution for our times

The UK normally produces more management consultancy than is needed by domestic clients at any one time. Since it is difficult to store management consultancy for consumption at a later date, and demand in export markets is subdued, there is a need to provide incentives to reduce over-production.

A proposal very worthy of consideration is now being mooted: Sit-aside.

Under this scheme, management consultants will be able to claim support payments so long as they remain unutilised on client work, and instead devote their spare time to cultivating useful crops such as linseeds, oilseeds and protein crops such as peas, beans and lupins.

Management consultancies will be allowed a choice as to which teams of individuals will sit-aside each year; or alternatively the same team could be sat-aside for a number of years. This will give management consultancies more flexibility as they plan future staff utilisation, either on billable work for clients, or as claimed sit-aside credits.

Management consultancies would be obliged, however, to manage their sat-aside team so that it could be brought back into production if necessary.

It might be argued that price cuts would be a better method of reducing over-production; but this would overlook the fact that Sit-aside will act directly and quickly to reduce production and provides significant environmental benefits.

Sitting in their offices, the damage to the economy caused by these management consultants in the normal course of affairs will be significantly reduced. The sat-aside consultancy resources will provide important ancillary benefits, such as acting as buffer zones for preventing buzzword drift, providing habitat for the incubation of new management fads, becoming idea-banks where beneficial ideas can live and breed, and creating wildlife corridors around offices where animals and birds can find cover.

They will provide stewardship on behalf of the nation for key legacy management consultancy assets including PowerPoint formats, process mapping methodologies and work breakdown structures. And a pound spent supporting a management consultant will be spent in turn on goods and services created and delivered in the UK, thereby revitalising the economy in deprived areas such as Surrey and Berkshire.

In assessing bids for Sit-aside payments the Government will use the flexibilities available under the “Temporary Community Framework for State Aid Measures to support access to finance in the current financial and economic crisis”. The focus will be on ensuring that the management consultancy industry emerges from the current downturn with the skills and technology base needed to be competitive in the global market.

Enough of the gloom! Let's not look backwards: let's look forwards!

Forward to kick-starting the economy! Time to commit to Sit-aside!