Running a business is, boiled down to the essentials, the art of making decisions. You need to clearly identify the challenges and opportunities in front of you, the resources you have on hand, and then decide how to use your resources to face your challenges and exploit those opportunities.

When you’re making those decisions, the more knowledge and expertise you have the better. Knowing more doesn’t just mean making better, more efficient and successful choices about how to overcome challenges, it means being able to identify more challenges and perceive more opportunities. One of the biggest threats to businesses big or small are Black Swan Events, or out of context problems – issues you can’t predict or plan for because they’re outside your understanding of the industry, like new pieces suddenly appearing half way through a chess game against a grandmaster.

If you can expand the skills, experience and expertise available to your business, you expand your ability to make good decisions, to identify rich opportunities sooner and protect yourself against risks before they can damage you. Larger companies can make full time hires to expand their base of expertise, but that’s not always the best option for them, and it’s rarely a good idea for smaller companies. What businesses of all sizes can benefit from is an injection of expertise and intelligence from consultants, who exist  specifically to fill in those knowledge gaps, and get better results for businesses without the commitment to a full time, long term hire.

Let’s take a look at an example: growing your business. It’s a rare business that’s not regularly thinking about growth and it needs to be planned carefully. That planning uses a lot of different disciplines not often useful to other aspects of the business, and if you employ people specifically for these skills they’d either be underworked between growth planning phases or overworked and ineffective during them as they juggle these skilled responsibilities with everyday work.

Bringing in business growth consultants gives you an injection of that expertise when you need it. That allows you to identify more opportunities for growth as well as put together a plan that identifies and avoids the major risks of growing your business, from financial overstretch to brand dilution and damage. Most importantly, it allows you to do all those things without bloating your payroll with high value employees you underuse the majority of the time. Unless you’re operating at the national or international level, expert consultants are a more efficient choice the majority of the time. They’re a resource you should be using, and if you search London strategy consulting firms proliferate, meaning you can find an option that fits your niche and resources.