Getting Drunk in First Class

I, for one, enjoy blue sky thinking sessions. My clients are frequently mystified by the activity.

Creating a flashy deck is not all that blue sky thinking is about, of course. With my 3 months, 4 days, 5 hours, and 22 minutes of expertise in the women’s hosiery industry, I most certainly make diligent use of my Googling skills. After all, that’s why they call me a management consultant. For $850 an hour, I’ll learn whatever language you want me to learn. Give me a couple of hours and I’ll ‘figure it out’ while at the same time excluding you from my club filled with consultant lingo that sounds so sexy.

Let’s take an example of a blue sky thinking session with one of my recent clients:

Imagine several cigar-chomping executives from my hosiery client in a mahogany-laden conference room dropping bombs and slapping asses like old fraternity brothers. Practicing their putting game on astroturf, they are awaiting their highly paid, angelic consultant to walk in and tell them what they need to do, like maybe targeting buyers in the 7-Eleven burglar stockings market. When the angel finally arrives, there I am strolling in after 2 hours of sleep fresh off a red eye. While the executives sit in their high-back leather chairs thinking about my Stanford MBA creds and all the businesses that I’ve destroyed turned around in the past, they’re thinking they’ve ingeniously saved their asses.

I begin the session by drawing a big circle on the white board using a brand-spanking-new blue dry erase marker. The fresh, virgin scent permeates my nostrils and gives me a slight boner; I hide this fact by facing my powerful audience slightly off-center until my mild hard-on subsides.

“The circle,” I explain to my executive audience, “represents the company’s strategic pillars, its main imperatives, its core abilities, its best talent.”

They nod their heads in consent, naturally. I can’t believe it! This is going to be easier than snagging half-drunk analyst ass. After all, it’s a beautiful circle. Already they are starting to sense that my ‘market research’ trips to Dubai are paying early dividends. Why else would they have agreed to a 16% expenses as a percentage of fees arrangement (when in reality, I staffed 90% of the project with local people, as I really did need those $17,500 first class seats. Did you know that United’s “Global Services” status is really just 1K but you overspend so much that the airline had to think of something new?)

Moving forward, I prompt my audience (hey, why not indirectly ask the client to solve their own problems?) to begin brainstorming related business ideas and models. After all, they know this business and I’ve only managed to trick them into thinking I do too. A river of bullshit bland and apparently viable ideas are spewing from the executives’ mouths, into my ears, through my hands, and finally into beautifully crafted fluffy green clouds intersecting the circle. My masterpiece highlights where the market segments intersect demand.

At this point, the executives are smiling. They think they’ve just unlocked several untapped secrets to grow their business when what they really untapped were three bottles of 30 year single-malt scotch and a humidor of Cubans back at my two-story hotel suite.

In order to beef up their company’s portfolio, they can start investing in these lateral markets to plant the seeds for long-term growth (not unlike the newspaper companies investing more heavily in online and digital advertising. Yep, that was my recommendation! Pretty fucking genius for a $750,000 two-hour and fifteen minute analyst Googling session, eh?).

After a few more minutes of deliberation, everyone is smiling, a few even clapping and making caveman-like grunting noises. At this point, I say thank you and excuse myself for the little boys’ room so I can piss out all the bottles of Voss I’ve been drinking (and a little dry heave from last night’s binge drinking session).

Finally, before leaving the executive suite floor, one of the executives shakes my hand and tells me he is so excited to have me helping the company return to profitability. I tell him, “Why-Thank-You-So-Much,” and hand him the invoice. His smile turns to a mild horizontal line. I can tell the $$$-signs have registered in his head and I’ve blown his giddy feelings for the day despite his new-found sense of self-preservation and job security. He’ll soon forget about this, and maybe even his wife, after I drop a couple bones on some well-deserved lap dances for him.

I felt proud walking out of the client site (Time: 1:45 PM on Wednesday) and heading off to my business class seat in the upper deck of a 747-400. I wanted to make it home in time to prep for my night out at the clubs to pick up a fresh piece of ass to play with for the weekend. I figure if I’m not in Thailand or Fiji this weekend, I might as well make the most of my penthouse apartment. I just hope the client pays the firm’s bill on-time; otherwise, I’ll have some explaining to do to the managing partner about some cash flow issues.