More than 50 years after the passing of Andrew Thomas Kearney, founder of the fourth largest privately held management consultancy that bears his name, a 56-year-old Dutchman is striving to keep his legacy alive.
Johan Aurik is AT Kearney's chairman and eighth managing partner, and he is in town for the day to visit the firm's Singapore office, which is also its Asian hub.
By the office entrance sits a basket of small unassuming books, entitled Things We All Ought Always to Remember.
They are copies of a staff memo penned by Mr Kearney in 1961, a year before he died, Mr Aurik tells BT.
It contains core values that the late founder fervently hoped would live on in his firm, even beyond his tenure. Today, Mr Aurik ensures that every new AT Kearney employee gets a copy of it.
While he is determined to keep Mr Kearney's values intact, it wasn't always the case for his predecessors. The memo was forgotten for a long time after Mr Kearney's death, and only rediscovered from the archives in 2006.
"If you read it, the language is old-fashioned but what is in there was really remarkable," Mr Aurik says. "We all agreed that it was still really typical of who we are and how we would like to work with clients."
AT Kearney was fairly tottering when the memo was retrieved. The firm, which at the time was still part of tech giant Electronic Data Systems (EDS), was in decline.
The early 2000s had brought with it the dot-com bust, and a culture clash with EDS had led to the departure of many of its best people. The firm was quickly losing money and was in a wrecked state.
Then in 2005-2006, in what Mr Aurik describes as the proudest moment of his 26-year career, he, along with 174 AT Kearney partners, pooled their money and collectively launched a buyout for the consultancy.
But, buying back a company on the brink of failure also brought many challenges. The timely discovery of Mr Kearney's memo proved instrumental in reviving the firm's culture.
Mr Aurik has never crossed paths with his patriarch, who died nearly three decades before he joined AT Kearney.
But in a recent blog post, he wrote: "When I read (the memo), it resonated instantly: this is the firm that I joined, it's why I stayed, and why I knew we would be great again."
Speaking to BT, he says of the memo: "It's a very important document that helps in strengthening AT Kearney's culture.
"How consulting firms differentiate themselves is from how they work, not what they do. In consulting, culture is more important than strategy."
Essential rightness
"The ongoing success of this firm as always rests squarely on the business of rendering a sound service of advice . . . In short, our success as consultants will depend upon the essential rightness of the advice we give and our capacity for convincing those in authority that it is good."
Of all the maxims left behind by Mr Kearney, Mr Aurik resonates most with his late founder's concept of "essential rightness".
The adage insists that consultants should strive beyond the conventional reports (or Powerpoint slides) and provide real value for their clients.
With Mr Aurik at the helm, AT Kearney has successfully applied this philosophy to several projects, notably "Alle" in Ethiopia.
For several years, the AT Kearney team has been working with the Ethiopian government to build a new national wholesale grocery chain to fight poverty and food price inflation in the country. The result is Alle, which is Ethiopian for "everything is available".
While government-owned, Alle is run like an independent company. The grocery chain today offers over 400 food and non-food products to its customers at significantly reduced prices.
There are now three Alle stores in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, all of which are already turning in a profit. Over the next few years, AT Kearney plans to expand Alle's store network to other Ethiopian cities.
"The consultants that worked on (Alle) loved doing that and were motivated by it," Mr Aurik says.
"So doing well and doing good can sometimes go hand-in-hand. Certainly this is what Tom Kearney meant when he spoke of 'essential rightness'."
Mr Aurik was, of course, no stranger to the AT Kearney culture even before the old staff memo popped up, having joined the firm in 1989, during the industry's "golden years".
He quickly rose up the ranks, making partner in 1997 and taking on his first leadership role by 2000.
In 2007, he headed the firm's operations in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Two years later, his portfolio expanded beyond Europe to the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
But his big break came when he was elected by his partners to lead the firm, beginning in January 2013. He declines to comment if he will be running for a second three-year term.
Today, AT Kearney has about 4,000 employees scattered in 60 offices across the globe. Last year, Mr Aurik spent 35 of the 52 weeks on the road for work.
"When you're in a role like this, you travel the world constantly and have no time," he laments. "People have told me about it, but it's totally different when it happens."
Yet, the globe-trotting corporate leader says that his top personal priority is to "safeguard family time".
He's "happily married with four teenage children" and his family takes precedence above all else because he knows he won't be successful at his job if he's unhappy, he says.
As a history buff - he holds two masters' degrees in history - it's no surprise that Mr Aurik embraces AT Kearney's past.
And on the rare occasions when he affords a break, he chooses to retreat to a quiet corner of his home and pore through thick history books. Some of his favourites include military classics such as Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Von Clausewitz's On War.
Vision 2020
Despite his appreciation for history, Mr Aurik continues to look towards the future.
In his first year as managing partner, he and his team had set out an ambitious growth programme, "Vision 2020", to almost double AT Kearney's revenues by the end of the decade - and it's "well on track", he declares.
Presently, AT Kearney records about US$1.1 billion (S$1.5 billion) in annual turnover, with the EMEA region contributing some 40 per cent, followed by North America and Asia, which account for a little over 30 and 20-25 per cent, respectively, of the total revenues.
Mr Aurik expects this distribution to shift over the next few years. The EMEA region might presently be AT Kearney's largest market, but North America is where the fastest growth is occurring.
The region's consulting industry has become more dynamic, thanks to the shale revolution which has created tumult in the oil sector. Asia, with its rapid economic growth, remains another important focus for the firm.
By 2020, Mr Aurik predicts, the firm's turnover should expand to US$2 billion, with revenues from the EMEA region shrinking to 30 per cent.
Meanwhile, he expects contributions from North America and Asia will rise to 40 per cent and 25-30 per cent respectively.
But even as you look ahead, it's important to recognise where you come from and who you are, Mr Aurik says. His decades of experiences at AT Kearney have afforded him significant insight into the management consulting industry, which he leverages when planning the firm's future trajectory.
Still reeling from the aftermath of the breakup with EDS in 2006, AT Kearney had another go at a merger in 2010, this time with management consultancy Booz & Co, but did not succeed. The failed attempt was led by Mr Aurik's predecessor, Paul Laudicina.
They say those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Both experiences have taught Mr Aurik to acknowledge that large mergers are "unlikely" in his industry.
While AT Kearney has thrived from its strong culture, a strong corporate identity can also be a double-edged sword.
"Consultancies are really about people and about culture. It is almost impossible, I don't know of a big merger which succeeded," he says.
Still, the AT Kearney team must expand to support its growth ambitions. But instead of exploring yet another merger or acquisition, he has changed tack to recruiting individuals, groups or small companies.
This strategy gives AT Kearney the ability to expand without the organisational baggage of a parent or existing company.
One highlight of "Vision 2020", unveiled in 2013, is to rope in 200 new partners from outside by 2017. And each year for the past two years, AT Kearney has elected 45 new partners, with about a third of the pool recruited from its competitors.
Today the firm has 320 partners, double its number in 2006. "We are growing rapidly and the vision is one of the reasons why people join us," Mr Aurik says.
The future of strategy
Besides "Vision 2020", Mr Aurik has adopted several principles in his effort to "future-proof" AT Kearney.
He has published the crux of it in his latest book, The Future of Strategy: A Transformative Approach to Strategy for a World that Won't Stand Still.
He co-authored the book with his colleagues Martin Fabel and Gillis Jonk to help firms reclaim strategy in times of tumultuous business conditions and rapidly changing markets.
"In a nutshell, a lot of companies are dissatisfied and frustrated with strategy," he says. "The world is changing very rapidly and companies are questioning, 'Why do I have to plan three or five years ahead when all is changing anyway?'"
To keep AT Kearney's strategies future-proof, Mr Aurik draws inspiration from trends that could affect the firm seven to eight years down the road, instead of extrapolating from the past and the present, thereby shifting his approach from "current-out" to "future-in".
He has also sought to involve his entire organisation in implementing the strategies, forgoing the traditional top-down approach, thus eliminating the handover hurdle between strategy formulation and its execution that many organisations face, Mr Aurik says.
Finally, instead of placing all bets on a single strategy that is implemented sequentially every three to five years, Mr Aurik adopts several strategies for AT Kearney.
The portfolio is constantly updated throughout the year to keep its relevance, allowing new strategies to replace those which have run their course, he says.
But management consulting is ultimately a "people's business", says Mr Aurik. Which is why he relishes opportunities to meet clients, policymakers, academics and other professionals.
One of his more vivid memories includes meeting the president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last year. Through an interpreter, Mr Rouhani had shared his plans to liberalise Iran.
Of the meeting, Mr Aurik says: "I knew Iran's economic potential from reading, but I never imagined the enormous potential of the country, which has the chance to be one of the top 10 economies of the world. It was quite clear that (Mr Rouhani) was very determined that it will happen."
Iran is a tough country to do business with, especially for a Western-based company such as AT Kearney, Mr Aurik concedes. "But in the long-run, it is quite clear that we will be there too," he says.
The Art of War
Mr Aurik is starting to tire. The interview has gone on for over an hour long - and he did come straight in off a flight from Kuala Lumpur.
But when asked again a question related to history, he perks up. His eyes light up and he straightens his posture.
How is Sun Tzu's The Art of War - the Chinese military classic written over 2,500 years ago, that has inspired leaders from Douglas MacArthur to Mao Zedong - still relevant today?
"Ah ok, that's a fun one," he exclaims. "When people think about military history, they tend to think of a very hierarchical organisation, but military strategy was actually one of the first that learnt the art of delegation.
"If you were a commander of a tank battalion and got sent to war, you often lose contact with the headquarters. You need to have the ability to make your own decisions, thus (you have) delegating in the art of war. They were the first in doing that."
In his view, the age-old practice of delegating is, to a certain extent, becoming increasingly relevant in business all over again.
"You need to leave organisations and individuals a lot of freedom to make their own decisions and not try to do everything top-down," he says.
"It simply doesn't work any more, certainly not in a world that constantly changes."
This article was first published on March 28, 2015.
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