New ventures, new beginnings

With this issue we warmly welcome a new guest (though hardly a stranger) to the pages of Management Consultancy: the Institute of Management Consultants.

In the past, the IMC has communicated with its members directly via newsletters and magazines, while also trying to promulgate its message to the wider audience of clients and non-member consultants.

Meanwhile, MC magazine has been trying to provide news, opinions and information to the consultancy profession as an independent publishing venture. Inevitably, this has led to a certain amount of duplication.

So, we have joined forces to bring our respective messages to a wider audience.

This does not mean that MC is now the mouthpiece of the IMC, or that the IMC will now be subject to the commercial pressures of the publishing world. On the contrary, both will maintain their independence and their integrity: the opinions expressed in the IMC’s pages are theirs and theirs alone: our other pages express our editorial line and our contributors’ views.

But the IMC and this magazine do share common ground. We both believe that consultancy is a positive force in the UK; we both support the highest possible standards in consultancy; we both encourage networking and communication; and we both believe firmly in win-win situations. This is an exciting new chapter for us, which we hope will establish us more firmly at the heart of the consultancy profession.

In pursuit of this goal, we also have two new ventures to announce.

The Management Consultancy website (http:vnu.com.ukbfmc) takes us into the world of new media, and a new publication, Future Markets for Consultancy 1997 (see news page 5) builds on our survey data to provide a detailed view of the development of consultancy in this country. We hope to unveil further initiatives in the future, but in the meantime, why not prevent us second-guessing our market? We welcome feedback, both good and bad (especially bad: we can’t afford to be complacent).