Two questions to help me with a piece of work I'm doing:Other than the obvious ones (utilisation, revenue per head, profit per head etc), what should the KPIs of a consulting firm be? And what ones are actually used?

That rather depends on what your aim is as a consulting firm and thus what you are trying to maximise for.For instance, annual growth could be a KPI if you are public consultancy or if you are looking to become public. If you are a partnership, high growth may in fact be a negative as it can destroy the culture and you have to add new partners and thus don't particularly increase the profit per partner (I know that Mck for instance is trying to limit its growth so as not to over-extend).If you care more about the health of the consulting firm rather than its direct performance (which I think is what many consulting firms should do) then you should look to indicators like staff attrition, staff satisfaction, %age of work that is coming from repeat work.

Thanks that's useful.Of the KPIs both you and I have suggested Anon, all are lagging. Any experience or view of what predictive / forward-looking KPIs are appropriate? i.e. I don't know want to know what ute or profit per head is (necessarily) as these are results declared after the final whistle. I want KPIs that can help before the game starts, or at least to intervene at half-time, or at very least early in the second half. Sorry for the football metaphor.