4 ms·

haha, so much experience where i see these consultants summarising the same suggestions i made but with a fancier language, accent and level of confidence and m

haha, so much experience where i see these consultants summarising the same suggestions i made but with a fancier language, accent and level of confidence and managing to sell it to leadership

FlorianRappl 6y ago
Quite often its not even "fancier language, accent and level of confidence", but just that management - for whatever reason - trusts these "outsiders" more than their own employees. We live in a weird world. When I (used to) sit next to McKinsey consultants on a plane I always asked "what's your current outsourcing project?".
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Having worked as employee and manager in places doing transformation, it’s hard to trust employees because of internal political strife, etc. McKinsey (or whomever) is only motivated by money and are loyal to whomever they understand the principal to be. Given an idea or concept, you’ll have reasonably competent people running it down, backed by people who grind out tight PowerPoint stuff overnight.
  - crocal 6y ago
    In other word, use mercenaries to do the dirty work in your own organisation. Ever read about the fall of the Roman Empire?
- tonyarkles 6y ago
  I got to experience this first hand. A consulting client was starting a big project right around the same time I was trying to buy a house. The bank was uncomfortable giving us a mortgage when our primary income was from self-employed consulting. The client hired me as an FTE, and almost immediately started completely ignoring my advice and putting me on projects that I a) thought were pretty misguided and b) were definitely not a good use of my skills. This, after 5 years of on-and-off engagement to do really great work on projects I have specific skills to address. It basically boiled down to “now that I’m a member of the engineering team, I’m expected to participate with the processes that are in place”. When I was a consultant, I was generally brought in to solve problems caused by those processes breaking down. Not sure why they couldn’t square that circle, but I went back to consulting 6 months later and retained them as a client, wherein they started taking my advice again and not throwing misguided projects at me.
AmericanChopper 6y ago
If you wanted to learn a lesson from that, it’s that your stakeholder management probably isn’t very good. If your ideas are being adopted when suggested by somebody else, then you know you have ideas that the business likes. Your potential impact however is going to be limited by your ability to convince other people that they’re good. I see this a lot with engineers who often resent having to participate in office politics. The result is that they come across as dogmatic, and unable to appreciate the concerns of other stakeholders, so people can be unwilling to trust their advice.

haha, so much experience where i see these consultants summarising the same suggestions i made but with a fancier language, accent and level of confidence and managing to sell it to leadership

FlorianRappl 6y ago

Quite often its not even "fancier language, accent and level of confidence", but just that management - for whatever reason - trusts these "outsiders" more than their own employees. We live in a weird world. When I (used to) sit next to McKinsey consultants on a plane I always asked "what's your current outsourcing project?".

Spooky23 6y ago
Having worked as employee and manager in places doing transformation, it’s hard to trust employees because of internal political strife, etc. McKinsey (or whomever) is only motivated by money and are loyal to whomever they understand the principal to be. Given an idea or concept, you’ll have reasonably competent people running it down, backed by people who grind out tight PowerPoint stuff overnight.
- crocal 6y ago
  In other word, use mercenaries to do the dirty work in your own organisation. Ever read about the fall of the Roman Empire?
tonyarkles 6y ago
I got to experience this first hand. A consulting client was starting a big project right around the same time I was trying to buy a house. The bank was uncomfortable giving us a mortgage when our primary income was from self-employed consulting. The client hired me as an FTE, and almost immediately started completely ignoring my advice and putting me on projects that I a) thought were pretty misguided and b) were definitely not a good use of my skills. This, after 5 years of on-and-off engagement to do really great work on projects I have specific skills to address. It basically boiled down to “now that I’m a member of the engineering team, I’m expected to participate with the processes that are in place”. When I was a consultant, I was generally brought in to solve problems caused by those processes breaking down. Not sure why they couldn’t square that circle, but I went back to consulting 6 months later and retained them as a client, wherein they started taking my advice again and not throwing misguided projects at me.

AmericanChopper 6y ago

If you wanted to learn a lesson from that, it’s that your stakeholder management probably isn’t very good. If your ideas are being adopted when suggested by somebody else, then you know you have ideas that the business likes. Your potential impact however is going to be limited by your ability to convince other people that they’re good. I see this a lot with engineers who often resent having to participate in office politics. The result is that they come across as dogmatic, and unable to appreciate the concerns of other stakeholders, so people can be unwilling to trust their advice.