Ajay's Consulting Firm Management Caselet

Read the following case-let and choose the best alternative for the questions that follow.

Ajay was thinking deeply about a problem that his organization, a business consulting company, faced. Globalization had affected his company like many other companies. Despite the downturn, the current revenues remained healthy. However, Ajay knew it was inevitable that the company could not do business the same way. The complexity of managing the business had increased with time. Consultants were under pressure to deliver good and innovative solutions. The organization had consultants from different age groups having a good mix of domain and industry expertise. It was a flat organization with three levels. The biggest challenge for Ajay was to have consultants with latest knowledge who would also earn revenues. Getting additional business was a challenge as all the consultants were busy and it was very difficult to hire new consultants.

Some of the consultants were adept at applying old solutions to new problems. Ajay was not very sure if this would work for long. Some of the clients had complained about the performance of old and reputed consultants. Ajay was mulling over the following five solutions to tackle this problem.

1. Decrease time spent on client interaction and increase time spent for generating solutions.
2. Increase support staff to help consultants to remain updated.
3. Decrease the number of simultaneous projects handled by consultants.
4. Make it compulsory for consultants to work on inter-industry and inter-domain problems.
5. Recruit more consultants.

Which of the following would be the best sequence of decisions taken by Ajay (starting from immediate to distant)?

After Ajay implemented some of the steps mentioned above, consultants wanted to renegotiate their contract with the organization. It seems that the organization had never mentioned that consultants have to work across industries and domains. Some of the old consultants were reluctant to change their ways, while many of the younger consultants were willing to follow Ajay's advice. Which of the following decision can be taken by Ajay to handle this situation?

Ajay was to retire in five years and he wanted to leave behind a legacy. Order the following activities, from the most important to the least important, that Ajay should undertake in next five year:

1. Do nothing.
2. Set a future direction for the organization in these challenging times.
3. Benchmark performance with respect to the best consulting company in industry.
4. Empower senior consultants and at the same time seek opinion of all others for handling future challenges.
5. Infuse fresh thinking by hiring outsiders.

Choose the best option from the following sequences