They say you are never more than six feet from a rat. Similarly, it often seems as though every other executive is a management consultant, an ex-consultant, or a consultancy client.
The ubiquity of rattus norvegicus is almost certainly overstated. So with consultants: how familiar you are with the breed and its habits depends where you are standing.
Consulting is remarkably concentrated. North America alone accounts for more than half of the $180bn of annual consulting revenue as measured by Source Global Research. A “consulting G7” of the US, UK, Germany, France, Australia, China and Canada, in that order, represents 75 per cent of the market.