In our BookCircle, we aim to challenge our own thinking. We want to understand which ideas help us rethink work, leadership, and life — and which ones don’t. This time, we read The Corporation in the Twenty-First Century by John Kay. A book that thoroughly dismantles old management beliefs and poses a simple but uncomfortable question:
Why do companies exist, and how do we measure success?
We found this especially intriguing because Kay himself was once a strong advocate of the shareholder-value approach. He knows the system from the inside. And that’s precisely what enables him to question it so intelligently. But we didn’t want a theoretical seminar. We wanted to know what his ideas mean for us today — in consulting, in projects, and in our own professional identity.
So we asked ourselves five questions. First individually, then collectively:
The discussion felt very 55BirchStreet-like: lots of stimulating thoughts, different perspectives, and not always a consensus.
Three thoughts that stuck:
In consulting, it’s easy to get the impression that everything is fine as long as it’s billable — and that a long project must automatically be more impactful than a short one. We all know that’s not true, but the system still rewards “being busy” more than “creating change.”
That’s exactly why this idea stayed with us. It’s uncomfortable because it forces us to redefine success:
not by the number of hours we invest, but by the impact we create.
And yes — whether something truly got better is harder to measure, and harder to reconcile with corporate procurement. Impact cannot be logged as neatly into a spreadsheet as utilization. And sometimes, impact means not doing things that would generate revenue but achieve nothing meaningful.
Still, we can’t shake the question:
What if consulting were paid less for how long we stay and more for what actually changes for clients?
Projects rarely work in isolation. One topic pulls the next one with it. Departments duplicate work, processes don’t connect, and consulting often gets stuck at the edges. Nearly every project reminds us that issues are almost never rooted in just one place. Move something here, and three other things shift with it. Topics run through the whole organization, teams work in parallel, interfaces don’t connect cleanly. Consulting often lands precisely in the slice that was officially commissioned, even though the real leverage sits a few levels away.
People, processes, and technology can never be changed independently from one another. Everyone involved needs to understand this so they can allow this systemic intervention in their organization.
A company purpose is easy to write down. But does it still hold when it costs something? Kay shares examples of companies that call themselves “customer-centric” yet make decisions that contradict this claim. The gap between slogans and actions runs through many industries. Purpose feels good as long as it demands nothing. It becomes real only when it changes decisions — or leads us to turn down a project that might be economically attractive but doesn’t align with what we stand for.
“A company’s purpose is only as strong as the last project it refused.”
Kay’s ideas weren’t entirely new, but some of them will stay with us for a while. They shake up the traditional consulting model — one we’ve often questioned ourselves and one we consciously want to live differently at 55BirchStreet. Maybe the honest question after any project should be: Did something truly get better — or did we just explain very neatly why things will stay the way they are?
Never forget: Let’s rethink how we lead, work, and live!
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