Now more than ever, diversity matters. The world has changed and clients expect, and indeed often demand, consulting firms look like they do. today’s business challenges require a diverse approach—a healthy mix of backgrounds, knowledge, races, experiences, cultures, genders and sexual orientations—to truly deliver complete solutions. in that spirit, we honor five firms for their outstanding commitment to diversity. These firms—A.T. kearney, Deloitte Consulting, KPMG, Sapient and The Mpower Group—understand diversity is key not only to their own business, but is critical to the success of the profession.

Diversity of thought at The Mpower Group


The Mpower Group is proud of its diversity of culture. However, CEO and President Dalip Raheja says he is even prouder of its diversity of ideas.

“The more diversity we have, the more diverse our thinking is,” says Raheja of the 25-person strategic sourcing and supply chain solutions company headquartered in Oak Brook, Ill. “What we offer to our clients, our raw material, is our thinking power. So we tell our clients from day one that when we send people in, they’re not going to represent a single, monolithic thinking process [and] in fact, in a number of situations, our people will be arguing with each other.”

This lack of a united front, as it were, ultimately benefits clients, Raheja says. “We want the client to have the benefit of getting all different types of thinking applied to their problem.” Mpower’s clients, Raheja says, are predominately large global organizations that typically fall into the Fortune 250-300 category.

The Mpower Group, founded in 2000, certainly has an eclectic group addressing client challenges, and while Raheja didn’t set out to launch a diverse firm, that’s exactly what he has now. “We tend to approach this whole area of diversity, at least I think, from a slightly different angle, which is what’s the business benefit and that’s the reason we should do it, and I think that’s a more powerful reason in my humble opinion,” Raheja says, adding that he is Asian, the firm’s other partner is female, and more than half of the firm could be classified as a member of a minority.

While having a diverse staff can be an asset when working with a client who may also have a diverse workforce, there is in fact an additional benefit, Raheja says: Preparing all clients for a future where all work is done globally. “We actually teach cultural diversity to a number of our clients to be able to handle that type of issue. Especially because a number of our clients are negotiating very large deals with suppliers, and applying traditional negotiating tactics actually leads to catastrophic failure in these negotiations a lot of times.”

Raheja also has all of his new hires go through that same training. “Because we are international in scope and because the clients we service are international in scope, the same cultural diversity training that we offer to our clients, we have our people go through those so that they have a good understanding of how to have their antenna up all the time, so they can take advantage of diversity as opposed to letting it become a detraction.”

And while the firm has been recognized by the state of Illinois as a minority firm, Raheja says the fact that a firm gets recognized for diversity is a sign that there is still more work to be done. “The fact that we are still giving out awards for diversity should tell us that it is still an issue. The fact that we are still recognizing people for doing the right thing tells me that it’s still not the right thing for everybody.”

Going forward, Raheja says, the firm will try to keep its diverse culture intact, but perhaps not in the traditional sense, especially as the firm looks to expand its global presence. Right now Mpower has partners in India and China and is looking to open a partner office in Europe.

“I think the fact that everything is going global, the area of cultural diversity will now start gaining a little bit more prominence in these conversations. You know, it’s not just race and gender anymore.  And the question of how do other cultures respond to diversity [is] something that we all have to be very, very sensitive to and aware of.”

Read the Full Article