“Consultants distract, demoralize, and otherwise slow down your best people.”
Of course we do! We’re there to light a fire under people’s asses, to re-shape your company to be better than it was before, which was failing. Besides, if your best people were really the best, then you wouldn’t need us in the first place, now would you? We know everything about you, your business, your competitors, and your industry. We can do anything imaginable.
Seriously, though, demoralize? Inconceivable; this is more than likely an unintended and completely rare side-effect. Armed with our Big 10 and Ivy League degrees, it is plausible your so-called “best” people might be put to shame at least from an education standpoint. Sure, we bring in mutts-off-the-street undergraduates and bill you $245/hr for them. But demoralize? No way, just because your employees’ annual bonus budget is now making a big sucking sound towards our $10,000 bar tabs and frequent visitations to the titty bar doesn’t mean your people should feel demoralized. I’d rather think of it more like subsidizing their future, not demoralizing them. We’ll compromise; we’ll invite your employees (as Optional, not Required, in Outlook) to the bar with us.
We definitely do not slow your people down. For most of them, it might be the first time in their lives that they have had to stay past 5:01 PM at the office. That is surely a shocking moment for some, indeed. Slowing them down is so far in the opposite direction of what we’re really doing for them and for their own good. Driving up the company’s stock price a quarter of a point for every 100 slides in a deck is simply not slowing your people down. We’re showing them the next industrial revolution, all the hidden gems of management expertise that they have been without for so long. Besides, once they have all that management expertise (which we intend to knowledge transfer as soon as possible), the people we ‘let go’ will be well-prepared in the marketplace to find new jobs somewhere else.
“Companies with a high ratio of consultants to employees are companies that do not perform well.”
This is entirely common-sense. We’re not trying to foster investor confidence the moment we land troops on the ground after they scale the rope from the Blackhawk helicopter (aka Boeing 757 jetway). We’re trying to build that investor confidence over time by helping the company achieve increasing profitability and efficiency. We don’t expect the company’s stock value to necessarily rise while we’re working with you to transfigure your company into the most amazing business machine ever known to man. The people who spout this idea have no idea what they’re talking about and are not considering the long-term horizons of the companies that make strategic use of management consultants and all their right-sizing half-baked goodness.
Sure, there was Enron, but we all know that was entirely due to Andersen’s mischievous accounting practices and an unscrupulous executive team, not McKinsey. Or what about Victoria’s Secret? I know they have some consultants on the ground now but just because their stock is tanking doesn’t mean the fees aren’t worth it. And what can be said of Capital One?
“Consultants steal your watch and then tell you the time.”
Oh, it’s silly, symbolic remarks like this that get our goat. What exactly does it mean anyways? We’re petty watch thieves? Maybe we tell people what they already know, perhaps? How so? And by who’s account, exactly? Back to my claim above, we help companies succeed in the long-term. We are not in the business of mere short-term investor gains and temporary popularity.
We are business professionals, damn it!
We… are… management… consultants.
gray ghost Says:
August 24th, 2007 at 1:41 amVisit gray ghost
So I have to say that your article is quite well written for a TD, though I’m not quite sure if you were really able to capture all the details, fleshing out the particulars and so forth, you may consider tightening up your language just in case one of your customers or clients happens upon GDiFC and wonders exactly what it is that you’re inferring about them.
I must admit that for half the customers that I’ve worked with that you’re right on target - we’re just telling them what they already know. It’s like they’re seeking out good (and expensive which of course means its good right?) counsel, looking to validate their ideas. When they hear the consultant listen to them and then reiterate the ideas that are best practices that they are already following, they feel warm and comfortable, and hey they can tell their boss that the consultants recommended the same path that they did.
Furthermore, what’s ridiculous is that for the most part, I would bet that they have the same resources that you’ve got and just have failed to open them up and read them… maybe they read the back cover to the book and know enough buzzwords from the water cooler.
ACN Says:
August 24th, 2007 at 12:24 pmVisit ACN
Whenever someone makes a comment about consultants using the client’s watch to tell them the time, I always wonder how bright the client must be if they never learned how to tell the time themselves, or how hard-working they are if they can’t be bothered to look at their own wrist.
Donald G. O’Varnie Says:
August 29th, 2007 at 5:38 amVisit Donald G. O’Varnie
Having spent over a decade delivering consultancy engagements, there have been many occasions when borrowing watches has generated benefit for the client and justifiable fees for my firm. Perhaps we need to break down the watch issue to enable clients to realise that this paradigm permeates all good strands of the “consulting mix”?
IT Advisory: The client has an analogue watch and thinks that they need a digital chronograph. The As Is analysis shows that the client has been wearing their watch upside down from the outset, and the consistency that they’ve been bragging about to the board is due to the fact that they’ve never wound it. Results in material performance improvement and a string of hate mail from digital watch vendors.
Change Management: The client has grown and found that the KPI and MI system that worked so well when it had 2 employees, does not seem to work so well now that there are 3 employees. Shareholders also tend not to trust metrics that involve Mickey’s big and little hands. Working with the client over a period of months, gradually remove the gloves and mouse from the time-piece, to illustrate that, although “a valid symbol of the legacy corporate culture”, the mouse added nothing to effectiveness and efficiency. Introducing the concept of am and pm may need a “Blue Sky” workshop for this type of client. Best not to try this with any Disney subsid.
Performance Benchmarking: Client A has a Rolex, its local competition have Cartier, but the off-shore startups are all using O.Meegas (typically purchased from Kowloon Market). The trick is to illustrate that 1)there will be no leading indicators of imminent cockroach death in the O.Mega and quality will win in the long run 2) Any metrics that the board get to see will be produced by over priced, heavily marketed and tacky systems, when a $2 digital would suffice.
Performance Optimisation: The client has a watch. According to lean principals they have stripped out the day/date mechanism, the strap, the logo, and the hour and minute hand. The second hand alone tracks their performance. Ask the CEO whether he’s early or late and watch them fire subordinates rather than answer the question.
Sarb-Ox. The client has a number of watches, which, at one time were all set to EST. Due to globalisation each watch has traveled its own path and has been re-set to local time. Try to persuade the client that you should not spend too much time trying to reconcile the audit trail of each time piece back to the original, but instead they should take their auditor out to a strip bar and get incriminating pictures of the lead partner, which will enable the auditors to sign the firm off as Sarb-Ox compliant rather swiftly.
6-Sigma. The client’s watch is accurate, but not 6-Sigma accurate. Spend 6 months achieving this and then inform the client that whilst his watch was being “Optimised” he has missed his board meetings and is no longer chairman, but char-woman. Serves him right.
Need we go on?
totaldickhead Says:
August 29th, 2007 at 11:31 amVisit totaldickhead
God damn, that’s awesome. Why didn’t you submit this as a post for christ’s sakes?
Personal favorite was the sar-box only because of the strip bar.
ACN Says:
August 29th, 2007 at 4:57 pmVisit ACN
TD - can you copy Donald’s comment up to the home page in a post, kind of like you did with “Consultant Rite of Passage”? This post definitely deserves more “airtime”.
totaldickhead Says:
September 3rd, 2007 at 12:46 pmVisit totaldickhead
Yep, it’s in the queue…
Laura Says:
September 27th, 2007 at 1:41 pmVisit Laura
Why is there such a “queue” when the posts are updated so infrequently? Post more often - I need something to do in between messing around Excel and Powerpoint.
Cslt4life Says:
September 27th, 2007 at 8:46 pmVisit Cslt4life
As sad as this post may sound to others not in consulting, it is so true. Most of the people that see us and run the other way are what i call “corporate cockroaches” -they were putting in 16.78 hours worth of real work a week and spent their remaining time trying to suck up to leaders without value, so when the lights come on, these cockroaches are the ones scrambling for cover because they do not know how to defend their uselessness to the company that they are working for. Corporate cockroaches spend more time with their fellow cockroaches by the watercooler complaining about the work a consultant implements is deemed crap and they will have to come and clean it up. But usually they forget that consultants carry bug spray with them which usually means they will not know what hit them until it is too late for their sorry existence. cockroaches out there, consulting is here to stay, but you always have other choices- mickey d’s is always hiring….
Brandon Says:
October 10th, 2007 at 9:04 pmVisit Brandon
Since when is Big-10 on par with Ivy?