Key 7 of 9 in the Loading Growth Wheel
Growing A Team
Recruiting, retaining and developing A grade consultants.
What this Key unlocks
Demand for IT talent is at an all time high and the firms that keep the best people are the ones that recognise and reward them. This Key covers attracting, securing and retaining consulting talent, offshore and onshore resourcing, and the culture that holds it together.
Inside Everest, this Key is worked in 90 Day Sprints: one or two levers per sprint, measured, reviewed with peers and locked in before the next cycle. The Growing A Team result page shows the three levers most firms need to pull first.
Guides on Growing A Team
-
Growing A Team
Why AI Makes Your Best Consultants Irreplaceable (Not Replaceable)AI widens the gap between average and excellent consultants. Here's how to position your senior team to become irreplaceable to your best clients.
-
Growing A Team
How a Skills Matrix Can Transform Your IT Services TeamMap team strengths with a skills matrix to fill gaps, assign smarter, upskill, and scale IT delivery.
-
Growing A Team
Boost Your Team Performance: 5 Tips from an IT Services Company CoachBoost IT team performance with 5 proven coaching tips: vision, communication, skills, culture, goals.
-
Growing A Team
Fostering Camaraderie in a Remote Workplace: Tips and StrategiesBuild camaraderie in a remote workplace with simple, practical strategies for connection and balance.
-
Growing A Team
Releasing Equity to Key Staff: A Growth Strategy for IT Professional Services FirmsRetain top IT talent with equity incentives, options, RSUs, ESOPs, phantom stock.
-
Growing A Team
How To Delegate More Effectively in Your IT Services BusinessDelegate smarter with BU ownership to scale your IT services business faster.
-
Growing A Team
Hiring A Team Consultants: The Key to Building a Successful IT Professional Services FirmHire A team consultants to elevate delivery, client results, and growth in IT services.
-
Growing A Team
Unlocking the Secret to Work, Life Balance: Why Consulting Jobs Have High Turnover, and How to Fix ItReduce consulting turnover: design real work, life balance without sacrificing results.
-
Growing A Team
Why Appointing Non Execs Can Fast Track Growth for Your IT Services BusinessNon exec advisors help IT services firms scale faster with sharper strategy and steadier execution.
-
Growing A Team
Why Investing in Employee Development Keeps Your Consulting Firm CompetitiveEmployee development is your consulting firm’s edge. Keep teams current, boost retention and productivity, and win repeat business. Learn a simple, sustainable playbook: find gaps, blend learning, set a cadence, measure impact, and make growth cultural.
Questions founders ask about Growing A Team
- How do we compete with global consultancy salaries?
- You do not match them; you beat them on everything else. A real career path, visibility of the numbers, senior work earlier, a team people are proud to sit in, and reviews that feel fair. None of that costs a global consultancy salary, and all of it is a system a 20 person firm can build in one sprint.
- What is a skills matrix and why does hiring start there?
- Skills across the top, people down the side, proficiency in each cell, plus a row for the next two hires written from the gaps. Hiring to replace whoever just left recreates the firm you had. Hiring to the matrix builds the one you want.
- What should a career framework contain?
- Four or five levels on one page: title, what you are trusted with, what good looks like, the band. Transparent levels let people see their next step without asking for it, and make reviews and salary decisions consistent.
- When should reviews, salaries and the rate card be decided?
- In one company set window, together, aligned to the financial year. When they are decided separately and on demand, margin leaks and resentment builds. Growing A Team and Loading Rates meet here.
- How transparent should we be about the numbers?
- Revenue, margin, utilisation and pipeline, monthly, to everyone. Salaries stay private; the bands do not. People make better decisions when they can see the firm they are working in, and A grade consultants leave firms that keep them in the dark.
- How do offshore staff fit an IT services team?
- Inside a genuine team with a lead, a rhythm and a career path. Offshore staff hired alone and reporting to nobody in particular churn and underperform. Built as a real team, they are some of the best people in the firm. ITVA Talent builds the second kind.
- Would my best consultant be excited by my last three hires?
- That is the hiring bar. If the answer is no, the firm is diluting the thing its best people value most: working next to people as good as they are. Raise the bar before you raise the headcount.
- How do we keep A grade consultants from leaving?
- Give them a path they can see, a say in the numbers, guardrails to make real decisions inside, and a review process that happens when it is supposed to. Most resignations the founder blames on salary are about one of those four.
Is Growing A Team your weakest Key?
Six minutes on the scorecard tells you. Then bring the result to a 45 minute strategy call with Ian.