As the worldwide consulting market struggles to generate billable hours for at least the third year in a row, the bright minds at Accenture have an idea to overcome low demand for consultants and the output of consultants: not calling them consultants.
Yes, ladies and gents, Accenture has allegedly slapped a new name on its 800,000 employees and it’s as dumb as you’d expect it to be. “Reinventors.”
The consultancy’s chief executive, Julie Sweet, has already started referring to staff by the new label and the business is now pushing for the term to be used more widely.
The “reinventor” label came from a reorganisation across Accenture in June, which merged its strategy, consulting, creative, technology and operations divisions into a single unit called “Reinvention Services”.
Everyone but Accenture could have foreseen the reaction this would get, which is maybe why companies aren’t as eager to line their pockets in exchange for business advice these days. “The term itself seems like the lovechild of a thesaurus and a motivational poster in a WeWork lobby,” reads one LinkedIn post.
“What this company has been reinventing all along last decade is reinvent its workforce from high cost regions to low cost regions. Nothing more nothing less,” said this Reddit comment.
Do we think this will stick? Will Big 4 follow suit and give their PPT-wielding changemakers slick (stupid) names? Is there anyone out there who takes this seriously?
As I recall, Accenture was originally the spun off consulting arm of Arthur Andersen. They began their separate life as “Andersen Consulting” but were then sued by Arthur Andersen, lost and had to change their name. Within a year of the change to Accenture, Enron imploded and the Andersen name which they had fought to retain, was mud.