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>Also, this lets the CEO appear unbiased to all the people who "lost". So they can get on board with the new policy but not feel like the CEO shot them down per

• underdown 7y ago
  Wouldn't one enjoy some benefits from being proven right?
  • alistairSH 7y ago
    Right up until you realize the 23 year old snot who made the recommendation billed ~$3 million against your ~$100k salary.
    • LameRubberDucky 7y ago
      The person billed that for the consulting company, but I doubt they got that much. Consulting companies burn both ends.
    • crazygringo 7y ago
      If you look at entry-level consultant salaries at McKinsey and then divide by the fact that they're often working 7-day, 100-hour workweeks... you'll quickly discover that your "23 year old snot" is actually making around minimum wage on an hourly basis. They could be flipping burgers instead with a lot less stress. The consultants aren't the ones taking the money home, the firm is. So don't blame the 23 year old. He or she is honestly just doing their insane best to pay off their huge student loans.
      • opencl 7y ago
        100 hours a week at federal minimum wage is less than $38k. These people are not making anything remotely close to minimum wage.
        • solveit 7y ago
          But federal minimum wage ($7.25) is a lot smaller than, say, the NYC minimum wage ($15), which is more relevant. At the NYC minimum wage, 100-hour work weeks get you about 80k a year, which is about the base pay for an undergraduate new hire at McKinsey.
      • dctoedt 7y ago
        The 23 year old is hoping to become a partner someday and then really rake in the bucks by leveraging successive new crops of 23 year olds.
    • agiamas 7y ago
      McK will bill $3 million, the 23 year old may get at best same as your $100k salary. Which makes everyone feel sour, esp the youngster for getting 3% of what their boss charged the client...!
      • Aeolun 7y ago
        I think the snot is pretty happy with his ‘all expenses paid’ little vacation.
  • geodel 7y ago
    I haven't seen enlightened management who appreciate people who are proven right. It is mostly interested in people proven wrong face consequences. Those who got it right are just doing their day job.
  • spamizbad 7y ago
    I've been in this position. The feeling of satisfaction wears off in a few minutes. My resume was updated later that week and I was on to the next adventure within two months. And this was with a DR who stuck up for me and mentioned to the CEO directly that we paid a consultancy big bucks to tell us something a chorus of engineering team members have been saying for years.
    • underdown 7y ago
      Sorry to hear that. Hope things worked out.
      • spamizbad 7y ago
        It did! I wasn’t even super pissed about it, was just the straw that broke the camels back
    • ScalaFan 7y ago
      Their loss. Your new employer's gain.
  • bonestamp2 7y ago
    Ideally, but unless that person was well known for their opinion then the consultants usually get all the credit.
• munchbunny 7y ago
  Wasn't sure if this was an autocorrect problem, but if it wasn't, by "exasperated" did you mean "exacerbated"?
  • slg 7y ago
    Yep, although I can't blame autocorrect. I simply spelled it wrong and lazily chose the first suggestion from the browser's spell checker without giving it much thought. Thanks for the heads up. Ironically the situation is exacerbated leaving the person exasperated.
    • braythwayt 7y ago
      Also /s/moral/morale, although they can be closely related: People imposing immoral policies definitely create bad morale!
      • slg 7y ago
        Thanks. At this point I should probably go ahead and hire an editor to review my comments before publishing.
        • antjanus 7y ago
          if you don't want to feel like you're pandering to HN comments, you can probably hire a consultant to do the proof reading for you! =D
          • ineedasername 7y ago
            I cut out the middleman and just pay people to comment for me entirely. This one cost me $34, one dollar per word. But punctuation is free so it is not a bad deal.
        • braythwayt 7y ago
          Speaking as a frequent commenter and author, I suggest this is teh system working as intended. There are not letters to the editor you put in in envelope and mail away. When HN "published" your letter to the editor, it's not printed on atoms and distributed all over town, or mailed out to subscribers. You can post a comment, edit it, and maybe even fix something based on feedback. I suggest that without being completely slipshod, it's better to go ahead and make a comment when you have a coherent thought. The community will help you sort out any spelling, grammar, or attribution hiccups. I think this is a good thing for everyone, reducing friction and eliminating even self-gate-keeping. Mixing up two homophones is not a tragedy. Someone not contributing because they fear that they'll be snubbed for getting a word wron? That's a tragedy. JM2C, &c.
• MiracleUser 7y ago
  I completely agree with this sentiment, and now I add any and all analyst responsibilities I come across to my desk just so that I can better articulate my recommendations in c-level business language
• luma 7y ago
  As a consultant I like to flip this situation around, and let the internal staff who are already advocating for the direction I feel is best to be my biggest cheerleaders. Engage them early, let them know you're there to help them personally, and they'll help you do a better job when presenting your shared ideas to the brass.
  • heartbreak 7y ago
    Meta, but this comment reads exactly like it was written by a consultant.
    • zacharycohn 7y ago
      They literally wrote "As a consultant..."
      • thaumasiotes 7y ago
        That's one of the biggest red flags that something may have been written by a consultant. ;D
  • sailfast 7y ago
    But... it’s not your shared idea. It’s their idea, and the company didn’t have a process in place to let them present it except through your consulting engagement. Sure, if it’s a good outcome for the employee to work with you to get things implemented fine, but it still stings a bit that someone from the outside was trusted more than an invested employee before any traction occurred. See also: “let’s hire a consulting firm to recommend an operating model to us.” (Often before we’ve asked our own employees)
    • mjparrott 7y ago
      Large firms do have the ability to offer ideas from a different perspective. Their value isn’t 0 for ability to give new ideas.
    • luma 7y ago
• naravara 7y ago
  >The flip side is that it is also bad for morale for someone to be recommending a solution for some time, the recommendation is ignored, a consultant is hired, the consultant recommends the same solution, and then the recommendation is implemented. Speaking as a consultant, my experience has been the opposite. I have walked into many organizations, said <obviously good thing>, and been hailed as a hero by the handful of folks who had been saying <obviously good thing> all along because FINALLY someone gets it! These are people who have been killing themselves in the trenches fighting this fight forever. When you finally show up and resolve it it's like the Army of the Dead in Return of the King. Fight's over, you can go bask in your "told you so" afterglow now. It also turns out that most of the time, those people may have been smart enough to get <obviously good thing>, but were pretty bad at communicating the value of <obviously good thing> to anyone who mattered or at making a plan for how to get from <bad thing> to <obviously good thing>. All of this is not to credit McKinsey or any of big consulting. They mostly provide a "signature method" to launder your your obvious observations into a glitzy powerpoint presentation to make it look like you applied rigorous testing and experience to what was really a cursory observation your entry level analyst made. All the people with actual experience are too busy killing themselves at business development and facilitating this "observation laundering" process to apply their brain power to developing actual insights.
  • pseudalopex 7y ago
    The "told you so" afterglow wears off when the people they told take credit, get bonuses, and still don't listen.
• cgio 7y ago
  Consultants fill positions with responsibilities that are short term. You have to ask yourself whether you are in a position that bears saying in what will happen from your long term viewpoint. If not then lobby the consultant to make it so e.g. by changes in operating model, creation of a Centre of Excellence etc. If there is a failure in hearing people ideas the presence of a consultant is as much a symptom as it is an opportunity.
• thkim 7y ago
  When you are a junior staff you don't understand why decisions are made rather inefficiently. You only come to understand as you move up the ladder in the organization. There is nothing stupid or evil about how "organization" behaves. It's exactly same as the society we all live in, just at a smaller scale. When you are in the position to make the call, you see that someone's idea may be as good as someone else's idea. How do you decide which idea is right? Do you choose one and fire the other with another idea? What happens when a wrong decision is made? This is the exactly reason why CEO or executives make compromises. They have responsibility to make sure that the organization survives no matter which scenario pans out. Junior staff often don't understand this because they can always move onto another opportunity when things collapse. As their career progresses, they also come to understand that you can't torch the field just because you don't like the crop growing there - it's much harder to find fertile land to begin with.
  • bkor 7y ago
    > Junior staff often don't understand this As people move up they either still know the business or they don't. Not trusting the people whom are running the actual business is IMO terrible. The COO at the company I work for (recently left) could describe the daily work in detail. He could have conversations with any recently hired staff, various level of management, but also with the board, investors and customers. Lastly, he (amazingly) knew all the people he worked with before. No matter if that person 10+ years later is still in the same position (or not). IMO having a good network, being able to communicate with various levels is highly beneficial. Your post seems to suggest some staff should not be taken seriously. That's utterly weird to me. > How do you decide which idea is right? From your post it seems one of the options is not to listen to staff. Further, junior staff won't gain experience if you do not let them develop. > They have responsibility to make sure that the organization survives no matter which scenario pans out. For one, why isn't this explained? Secondly, some decisions are bad without actually going into it any further. Then multiple years are wasted while everyone involved knew this from the start; they were just not listened to. IMO regarding "scenario pans out": for some cases it's entirely true. But also sometimes it's not the case at all... just nobody listened to the people running the business and too much disconnect.