Worshipful Company of Management Consultants celebrates silver anniversary

The Worshipful Company of Management Consultants has helped to shape the consulting culture of the City of London for the past 25 years. Now, as it prepares to support the industry through a period of uncertainty and disruption, the group has hosted a dinner to bring together the City’s industry heads in order to share best practices, and support valuable charity work.

There are presently 110 livery companies in the City of London. Representing London's ancient and modern trade associations and guilds, almost all of which are styled the "Worshipful Company of...", these livery companies play a significant part in City life, and provide charitable-giving and networking opportunities. Initially formed in 1992 as a Guild, the Worshipful Company of Management Consultants is a modern livery company which aims to connect the consulting industry with the tradition of the City livery.

The group is a pro-bono consultancy and mentoring organisation, offering support from members to Britain’s ‘Third Sector’, or the voluntary/charity sector. The advice it provides has been estimated to be worth the equivalent of £1 million a year.  Members also contribute to the Charitable Fund which makes grant funding available to worthy causes, and in 2004, the company joined Cass Business School in the founding of the Centre for Charity Effectiveness, an institution which offers post-graduate diploma and MSc programmes in voluntary sector management, as well as a consulting practice and other research and education programmes.

Now, as the Worshipful Company celebrates its 25th anniversary, the collective of management consultants has announced that it is determined to see City values prevail in an age of disruption. The Company’s Master David Johnson said, “We are seeing a vast amount of disruption in the world and this is being reflected our industry… Consultants have been strongly challenged by digital marketing agencies and have responded by creating “cagencies” which bring the disciplines of consulting to bear on digital transformation. This moment of change offers great opportunities but also potential pitfalls for the profession.”

Management consultants will need to reshape their businesses to ensure they remain the disruptors and not the disrupted, Johnson added, but stressed that they must not lose sight of the ethical foundations which he believes underpin the profession. To that end, the Company has already played a key role in helping the City respond to recent challenges. In 2011 this saw the Company work to create the City Values Forum, a working group which supports the Lord Mayor in ensuring that the City of London remains the most trusted global centre for banking and financial services. More recently,  the management consulting group established a new independent Centre for Management Consulting Excellence. The institution is aimed at supplying an authoritative source to identify the most important new ideas for management consultants in the City, and to provide an arena for best practices and new ideas to be swapped by practitioners and academics.

On top of this, to both celebrate its quarter-century in business and help connect management consulting figures with one another further and support charity, the Worshipful Company of Management Consultants has hosted a special anniversary dinner at the start of July. The event, which took place at the Honourable Artillery Company in London, was addressed by Matt Candy, European leader of global digital agency IBM iX, who addressed challenges to the industry and how they may shape the future consultancy profession, while Immediate Past Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Dr Sir Andrew Parmley, reflected on the contribution made by the Worshipful Company to the Civic City in light of his 35 years’ involvement in the City.

The evening also saw entertainment provided by the Corps of Drums of the South West London Army Cadet Force and the Light Cavalry Guard, before an evening of mass fundraising “sabrage” – of many bottles of champagne, opened with swords – in the name of the Masters' Charity in support of Multiple Sclerosis research.