International Consultants’ Day celebrated in Kingston by Caribbean industry leaders

The Caribbean Institute of Certified Management Consultants in conjunction with the International Council of Management Consulting Institutes celebrated International Consultants’ Day on Thursday the 7th of June. 

Gathered at the Development Bank of Jamaica in Kingston, a diverse array of consultants from multiple areas of expertise, private sector professionals and individuals from the financial sector came together to celebrate International Consultants Day last week. The event drew crowds from all over the Caribbean, the US and Latin America.

Celebrated all around the world, International Consultants Day is a day to uplift the profession whilst both reflecting on past practice and preparing for the future. As an important link between the public and private sectors, consultants globally have a large role in advancing economic prosperity, development and social cohesion. 

The Jamaican event was run under the theme of ‘Management Consultants; Contributing to a better future for all’. Speaking at the event was Wayne Henry, Director General of the Planning Institute of Jamaica, who urged management consultants to always strive for excellence in their professional careers.

“Immediately, as you think of consultancy, you are adding capacity, and sometimes you may be engaged with entities that may have the capacity but don’t have the time. And at the end of the day, you have to add value, so if you engage a client and you are not enhancing the value, you are costing and not adding value,” Henry said. 

The director general also issued two pieces of advice for the management consultants in attendance. Have purpose and maintain integrity. "Don't just do things, and don't just accept jobs. Have a sense of purpose. If we say we are going to engage your services, you have to have a clear sense of what you do," he said.

The day of festivities brought together a number of key industry leaders including Harold Davis, the Deputy CEO of the JBDC, Andrea Livingston-Prince, the Founding VP of the Caribbean Institute of Certified Management Consultants (CICMCJ), Nsombi Jaja, CMC, and Clair Nelson, Jamaica’s inspiring sustainability engineer and social consultant. 

In addition to Kingston, the event was celebrated in Vienna, Austria, and Wellington among other places, connecting consultants globally. Chairman of the International Council of Management Consulting Institutes, Sorin Caian, commented separately on how important it was for consultants worldwide to stick together.

“It is very clear that we have to make the best that we can do in order to keep our vision alive and to be the drivers of economic and social success. We can do this in a world where the political situation is very unstable and to do this, we have to keep our profession connected,” he said.

Caian continued; “Innovation is a must but its not something new for us because we are the profession that must reinvent ourselves more than any other profession. We have to take care of the technological improvements, all the advances and all the changes in the world as it is today, because its the most rapid changes that we’ve ever had the chance to meet and most probably its going to be one of the most rapid changes in history.”

“We are celebrating not only our profession and ourselves but all the other stakeholders related to our profession, the clients and the other bodies which are interconnected. We are celebrating our day in an environment which is full of challenges, but we are fully equipped and fully prepared to face all of these challenges.We have to keep our profession strong and we have to keep our people, part of that.”