Practice consultancy is buying an experienced outside view of how your practice runs and what to change. It works well when the real blocker is not knowing — a decision you cannot make from inside, a benchmark you do not have, a structural question you are too close to. It fails predictably when the blocker is capacity, because the recommendations then have to be implemented by the same people who were already too busy, which is why the report was commissioned in the first place.
What a practice consultant does
Typically: reviews how the practice operates, compares it to what they have seen elsewhere, identifies what is costing money or capacity, and recommends a course of action. Delivered as a diagnostic, a written report, a workshop with the partners, or a programme of sessions over some months.
The good ones are genuinely valuable, and the value is compression. Someone who has seen fifty practices can tell you in a fortnight what would take you two years to work out alone — including the things you cannot see because you have been looking at them daily for a decade.
When it genuinely works
When the question is a decision, not a task. Whether to merge. Whether the second office is worth keeping. Whether to move upmarket or hold the compliance base. Whether that partner should be a partner. Those are answerable by an experienced outsider and very hard to answer honestly from inside.
When you need a benchmark. Recovery rates, staff ratios, fee per head, what a well-run practice of your size actually looks like. You cannot get this from your own data because your own data has only ever described you.
When the problem is political. Partner disagreements sometimes need an outsider to say the unsayable and absorb the resulting friction. Occasionally that alone is worth the fee.
When you are about to spend a lot of money. A second opinion before a merger, a systems migration or a major hire is cheap insurance relative to the decision.
The failure mode
Here is the pattern, and it is remarkably consistent.
A practice is stretched. The owner knows things could run better but has no time to work out how. They engage a consultant. The consultant does a thorough job and produces twenty well-reasoned recommendations, most of which are correct.
The report is discussed at a partners' meeting. Everyone agrees. Two or three of the easy items get done in the following fortnight. Then January arrives, or a key person resigns, or a big client needs something, and the report goes in a drawer.
Eighteen months later the same practice has the same problems and an owner who is now cynical about the whole category.
Nothing went wrong with the advice. What went wrong is that implementation was handed to people who were already at capacity — which was the original problem. Advice adds to the to-do list of the person who already cannot get through their to-do list, and a recommendation is not a resource.
The question to ask before you engage anyone
One question, asked honestly: if somebody handed me the right answer tomorrow, would it get done?
If yes — there is slack, there is a capable person with time, the partners will act — then consultancy is efficient and you should buy it.
If no, then you do not have a knowledge problem. You have an execution problem, and buying knowledge will not touch it. What you need is somebody who does the work rather than recommends it, which is a different purchase with a different shape: ongoing rather than a project, accountable for change happening rather than for the quality of the recommendation. That distinction is the whole of fractional COO versus management consultant.
What it costs, and how to buy it well
Fees vary widely and depend on scope, seniority and duration, so treat any number you are quoted as a starting point and ask what drives it. More useful than the price is the shape of what you are buying — and three things make consultancy pay back much more reliably.
- Narrow the brief. “Review our operations” produces twenty recommendations and no change. “Tell us whether our pricing structure is costing us money and what to do about it” produces something actionable. Small finished pieces compound; large unfinished ones are why owners go cold on this.
- Name the owner and the date before the work starts. For each recommendation, who does it and by when — agreed in the room, not added afterwards. A report without owners is a document.
- Buy the follow-up. If the consultant offers a review session ninety days later, take it. The prospect of having to report progress to somebody is a surprisingly effective mechanism, and it is far cheaper than the report being wasted.
How to tell a good one
Ask what they have run, not what they have advised. Somebody who has carried responsibility for an operation understands why the obvious thing did not happen; somebody who has only ever recommended tends to be puzzled by it.
Ask for an example of a recommendation that was not implemented and what they think went wrong. A consultant with no such examples has either not done much of it or is not being straight with you. The good answer involves their own diagnosis of the practice's capacity to absorb change — which is the thing that actually determines whether their work is worth anything.
Ask whether they will tell you if the answer is that you do not need them. The honest ones are quite comfortable with that question.
Where this sits among the alternatives
Consultancy is one of about five things sold as practice support, and they solve different problems — outsourced production for volume, software for visibility, consultancy for a decision, a fractional operator for execution, brokerage for an exit. Buying the wrong category is the expensive error, and it is covered properly in the honest comparison of practice support options.
The short version: if you know what is wrong and cannot get it done, do not buy a report. If you do not know what is wrong, do not buy a retainer. And if you are not sure which of those two describes you, that itself is worth three minutes with the operating scorecard before you spend anything.
Common questions
What is the difference between a practice consultant and a fractional COO?
Accountability. A consultant is accountable for the quality of the recommendation; a fractional operator is accountable for the change happening. One is a project with a deliverable, the other is an ongoing role with a retainer. If you already know roughly what is wrong and cannot get it done, a report will not help. If you genuinely do not know what is wrong, a retainer is premature.
How much does practice consultancy cost?
It varies too widely by scope, seniority and duration for a headline figure to mean anything, and anyone quoting one without asking about your practice is guessing. What is worth establishing before you sign is what happens after the report — whether follow-up is included, who owns implementation, and what the consultant's own view is of whether you have the capacity to act on it.
How do we stop the report sitting in a drawer?
Decide before the work starts. Every recommendation gets a named owner and a date, agreed in the room. Book a ninety-day review at the same time as the engagement, so somebody has to report progress. And be realistic about how many changes a stretched practice can absorb at once — three done properly beats twenty listed.
Should we use a consultant who specialises in accountancy?
Generally yes. Sector knowledge means less of your fee spent explaining how a practice works, and the benchmarks are relevant rather than adapted from another industry. The exception is a genuinely generic problem — a systems build, an HR question — where specialist depth in that discipline matters more than familiarity with practices.
Is a one-off diagnostic worth it?
Often, as a starting point, provided you treat it as a starting point. A good diagnostic tells you where you stand and what the priorities are. What it cannot do is make the priorities happen. Buy it when you want a map; do not buy it expecting a journey.
What if the partners disagree with the recommendations?
That is information rather than failure, and it is worth taking seriously. Sometimes the consultant has missed something only insiders know. More often the disagreement is about who loses something — autonomy, a client relationship, a way of working they like — and no external report resolves that. Partner disagreement about the direction of the firm is a governance question and it will not be solved by commissioning a second opinion.
Where does your firm actually stand?
Score it across the ten things a COO would look at first. Three minutes, an honest read on where you’re strong and where you’re exposed, and a 90-day plan for the areas holding you back.
Or book a confidential call if you’d rather just talk it through.