Setting Your Intentions: Levata Human Performance™ on How It Grew Beyond the Pandemic Through People-First Consultancy

With more than one million management consultancy businesses currently active in the USA, more than three million consultants, and an industry size of $392 billion, the statistics agree that the industry is alive and well. The field’s unstoppable growth, together with the approaching finale of the COVID-19 pandemic’s consulting boom, marks the horizon of a new era of consultancy. 

Although revenue streams show low volatility within the industry, consultants worldwide report high workloads and shrinking budgets. Clearly, the business is facing some level of precarity on a systemic level. In this new landscape where large firms may face mass layoffs and simultaneous sustained growth, an opportunity emerges to rethink the way consultancy firms operate. 

The lack of client-facing and internal transparency, generating client relationships through strictly transactional relationships, an insular skill economy of over-specialized consultants and high turnover rates, and hyper-competitive work environments where protecting one’s own turf and profit margins come before developing teams and client responsibility are some of the main issues facing management consultancy today. 

Levata Human Performance™, a management consultancy firm that opened its doors on January 1^st, 2020, thrived in the first year of the pandemic while other startups struggled. Amy Douglas, co-founder of the firm, cites their comprehensive ethos of purpose, vision, mission, and values through which they are consciously creating a culture that builds trust and promotes creativity – through radical transparency, conscious connection, paying it forward, fostering belonging, and people-first organization – as their winning bet. 

“The classic consulting firm is a seller-doer pyramid. It’s a carnivorous food chain where the further up you go, the more you sell. This pyramid is built wholly out of leverage, management, and control,” explains Kurt Wolf, co-founder of Levata. He proposes that the majority of hardships that firms might currently be facing come as a direct result of the many vertical layers of management and supervision that front-end consultants must wade through to do their work.  

With 70% of organizational change programs failing to meet their objectives, the idea is that corporations of all sizes need management experts more than ever, and where better to find them than a management consultancy business?  

On the other hand, there is little published data out there on the added success of organizational change programs devised by consultants. As the market for consultancy continues to expand, a question grows in the minds of analysts and clients alike: Has the current model of management consultancy grown too big for its britches? 

Levata’s rapid success provides some innovative pointers on how consultancy can up its game. Especially for smaller firms and startups, getting past the two-year hump – when 20% of new businesses fail and even fewer do more than break even – staying profitable requires attention and intention on both growing client and employee relationships. That’s what Levata did when it was founded on New Year's Day, 2020, four months before the world would shut down from a global pandemic.  

The risk of institutionalizing equity and accountability is more than apparent, but Levata’s bet on its long-term health has prevailed. When Sheila Alishouse, Amy Douglas, and Kurt Wolf founded Levata, they envisioned a place that didn’t just posture that people were the center of everything, but meant it in every way, at every point of the structure.  

When the pandemic began in March 2020, Levata lost all its clients and revenue. At that point, a decision had to be made: for Levata to stay authentic to its founding values or to yield to short-term benefits. “We decided we were going to take care of our people and continue the payroll,” Sheila recalls. 

“It took courage and tenacity, but we chose to pivot to providing free executive coaching to first responders and educators,” Amy explains. Levata continued to develop itself as a fully virtual company, becoming an early expert in the new landscape of the pandemic, and their clients eventually came roaring back. They made $0 between March and June of 2020. By December, they had made their first million. 

Levata flipped the old model on its head. Instead of barriers to movement like hierarchical chains of command and keeping specialists from exploring other niches, the firm organizes itself into autonomous, self-directed ‘pods.’ Pods for different services decide their own internal structures, guidelines, and feedback processes. This level of flexibility and a horizontal system of accountability empowers true connection and development with pods, even through the virtual distance between them. 

Its leadership’s main responsibility is to provide support when required, rather than acting as a mandatory roadblock. “We are a very flat organization,” Sheila explains, “Empowering our teams with the right data so they can make the best decisions for their clients and for their pods.” Levata’s values of radical transparency and conscious connection foster the value that clients truly deserve and pay for.  

Another advantage of a human-centric structure is retaining talent. Fostering belonging through flexibility, autonomy, and skill-development programs like their copilot model keeps attrition to a minimum. “People will show up when they’re respected. People will take care of others when they feel taken care of. A rising tide lifts all boats,” says Taylor Wall, a service leader at Levata. “Our success comes at the hand of our brilliant team. When you elevate people with freedom and accountability, their creativity can do amazing things,” Kurt adds. Their copilot model forms career lattices that expand both the professional depth and breadth and get multiple brains on client projects for lower rates. 

Carrie Ahmad, a Levata service leader, remembers how their values play out in real-time. When potential clients approach them, Levata seriously considers the extent to which their services can align with client goals and, as a result, often steps back from taking projects on. “Our system of transparency means that even though we aren’t always the right fit for a client, they are always grateful for our honesty and recommendations. At the end of the day, consultancy is about doing what’s best for them, not what’s best for us. That’s how we grow long-term relationships,” she explains. 

Similarly, when a client needs change management for reorganization, Levata will continue to apply a people-first lens and advise on how to honor their staff during that transition, both those who are leaving and those who are staying. “It’s always a joy to watch my clients respond to that. You have to make difficult decisions sometimes, but if you stick by your people, it will always pay dividends,” shares Carrie. 

 Levata’s unconventional financial model is infinitely scalable, boasting an annual growth rate of 20%. This is because a ‘flat’ model enables a feedback structure that can make the necessary changes efficiently and ensure optimal leverage. Simultaneously, their value-based mission – to activate human performance by applying the greatest leverage for the greatest good – distributes that ‘good’ across the board. Levata’s staunch authenticity to their value to pay it forward produced the free Work-Life Integration Self-Guided Course, helping clients adapt to new ways of working in the post-pandemic era. 

The combination of their unique business model and ethos ensures Levata’s sustained success. “As long as we stick to our values and remain clear on our purpose, I look forward to watching this organization turn into the wonderful legacy it will become,” says Kurt. 

Accelerating profitability by meeting clients exactly where they are, seeing the holistic potential of every project, and maintaining their humanity is certainly unexpected, but perhaps it shouldn’t be. As Sheila notes, “We looked at the future. Now the future is here, and it’s us.”