CSC Index is a management consultant, not a publisher. But from its quiet office in Cambridge, Mass., the once obscure firm has become a powerful purveyor of management advice for the masses. No fewer than three current business best sellers stem from CSC’s consultants. And every book sold seems to generate a phone call from a potential client: CSC is the nation’s fastest-growing consulting firm, with revenues of more than $200 million. “Management ideas are laid before us all the time,” says Geoffrey Colvin of Fortune magazine, which recently excerpted “The Discipline of Market Leaders.” “Lately a lot of the strongest have been coming from CSC Index.”
Ask an Index consultant the secret of the firm’s success and you’ll be hit with a blizzard of buzzwords. But beneath the blather about “new paradigms” and “breakthrough results” and the firm’s lofty mission statement (“Driving values, success and prosperity into the world economy”) lies a strong entrepreneurial instinct. Founded in 1969 by four MIT professors, Index was just another Cambridge consulting firm until, in the late 1980s, it picked up the idea that companies should fundamentally rethink their operations instead of making piecemeal improvements. Bigger competitors like Gemini Consulting and Boston Consulting Group preached from the same hymnal, but index named the tune: “reengineering.” “We knew if we really wanted to leverage the idea, we had to find a way to own it,” says Index confounder James Champy. They did, by trademarking the term and then writing a book about it. “Reengineering the Corporation,” authored by Champy and Michael Hammer, an occasional Index consultant, became a runaway best seller in 1993 and is now selling swiftly in paperback.
Publishing isn’t exactly a new idea for management consultants. “In Search of Excellence,” written in 1982 by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, then of McKinsey & Co., remains the all-time business best seller, and the Harvard Business Review over-flows with the latest slogans from consultants around the world. But Index is unique in turning publishing into a profit center, not just a marketing scheme. Many of its stars spend more time trawling for the next book topic than consulting for paying customers. “They’ve changed the rules so that people who turn out a book get as much credit as the people who are billing high hours,” says David Clinkenbeard, a researcher for Consultants News. Well, sort of. While the ideas come from Index, the books are turned out with lots of help from Wordworks, a Cambridge ghostwriting company that also works for management guru Tom Peters.
Rival consultants, not to mention book critics, credit Index more for flare than for substance. “Reengineering Management,” Champy’s current best seller, “could have used a bit of reengineering itself”, Business Week opined. “What they do better than anyone else is gain recognition,” says a rival. David Nadler, president of Delta Consulting and an author himself, says Index’s books encourage “rampant faddism.” But Index’s authors argue that simplicity sells. “[Managers] don’t want futurism,” says “Discipline” author Fred Wiersema. “They want something that can be done tomorrow.” Back in Cambridge, Wiersema’s colleagues are honing some new ones, about how companies can embrace nonstop change. They call that skill “organizational agility.” Look for it at your local bookstore next year.
