Dwelling-grown administration consultancy Nous Group is celebrating its twenty fifth yr in enterprise, rising to a headcount of greater than 750 folks throughout 5 international locations since its 1999 inception.
Established by former McKinsey guide Tim Orton, Nous Group started life final century as a two-person operation figuring out of a front room in regional Victoria. The administration consulting agency now spans three continents.
Within the years since its formation, Nous Group has labored on greater than 10,000 tasks from its places of work in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Eire and Canada, together with for over 1,000 authorities departments and non-profit organisations.
“Coming into new markets, extending our capabilities and rising our group has been a thrill, however constructive affect has all the time been the driving power behind Nous Group,” Orton mentioned of the agency’s achievement. “It has guided our technique since day one. What constitutes constructive affect is all the time up for wholesome and strong debate, however reaching as a lot good as we will shouldn’t be.”
Constructive affect
Regardless of its lengthy historical past, Nous continues to probe the query of what ‘constructive affect’ appears like in the present day, taking the chance of its milestone to delve into its previous and discover how the agency can proceed to make an affect into the longer term. This contains an ongoing interrogation of what sectors and the kinds of work it ought to have interaction with, in addition to the way it can assist shoppers obtain extra sustainable success.
As Nous Group notes, the query isn’t a easy one, particularly in an more and more advanced world. Nonetheless, in making an attempt to find out what constitutes constructive affect, the agency adopts a pluralist place and holds some values to be true; success for Nous Group is finally measured by the extent that its enter results in constructive outcomes and improves folks’s lives in keeping with their very own phrases.
Tim Orton is Managing Principal and CEO of Nous Group
In translation, this method may imply engaged on tasks to help entry to long-term housing for these experiencing homelessness, bettering regulation to make it simpler for small-business entrepreneurs to get arrange, and even serving to banks to embed a buyer mindset. “Significant, well-intentioned work that winds up gathering mud in a submitting cupboard hardly ever, if ever, has a constructive affect,” the agency contends.
Classes alongside the best way
Beginning out with the aspiration of constructing a administration consulting agency which makes a considerable, constructive contribution is one factor, however realising that ambition in follow whereas conserving a enterprise afloat for 1 / 4 of a century is one other. Naturally, Nous Group has discovered plenty of classes alongside the best way, which Orton has shared in a sequence of reflections to mark the agency’s anniversary.
Some of the priceless issues discovered over the journey, Orton says, is the enduring significance of ethics and sustaining a excessive commonplace throughout the consulting trade, a difficulty which has come into sharper focus domestically over the previous eighteen months maybe greater than ever earlier than; “With out excessive skilled requirements, the consulting mannequin rightly melts beneath the tough warmth of exterior scrutiny.”
Orton continues; “Professionals requirements have all the time been central to consulting, they’re the inspiration by which shoppers can place their belief in consultants. However maybe (some) have forgotten or by no means understood that they’re in a career, not a enterprise, or have confused the excellence. They’ve positioned their very own success above that of shoppers, however too hardly ever are these shortcomings uncovered.”
Ongoing progress
Regardless of the philosophical foundation, the method appears to be working, judging alone by the agency’s top-level consulting rankings, notable office rankings, swag of trade design awards, and virtually 100 mid-year worldwide promotions, to not point out the agency’s ongoing progress by way of acquisitions, together with current pick-ups Well being Coverage Evaluation and schooling platform Ziplet, the latter added to its NousCubane sub-brand.
As one other measure of the agency’s success, Nous’ 25-year celebrations coincide with consultancy’s five-year entry anniversary into the Northern Territory by way of a everlasting Darwin workplace, having since grown the native group sixfold to 18 professionals whereas engaged on key authorities and non-profit tasks within the healthcare, justice, human companies, schooling and infrastructure sectors amongst others.
