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Consultants do seem kind of useless. But then why are CEOs constantly hiring them? There must be some political/internal dynamic reason for this if you can't

Consultants do seem kind of useless. But then why are CEOs constantly hiring them? There must be some political/internal dynamic reason for this if you can't find an external/efficiency reason. I'd be interested in seeing a list of consultants' greatest wins. I mean the projects proposed by consultants that enhanced company values by the most. There's plenty of stories of consultant-driven disasters ... but I wonder how many of those are just the rank and file grousing about over-paid outsiders. But if there's anything worse than consultancies, its bureaucracies. I have a lot of experience dealing with bureaucracies in health care and aviation. And my god, bureaucrats can be some of the worst of human capital. Nowhere else can you get such a marriage of apathy, laziness, and unchecked power as you see in bureaucracies. At least in the private sector one has to be an avaricious asshole and possess a type of animal cunning at the very least to climb to the very top of the power hierarchy. In bureaucracies you might find a guy with absolute power over regulatory decisions and he has the motivation and intellectual capacity of a well-fed water buffalo. How did he get there? He just stuck around longer than everyone else.

Freedom2 4y ago
In my experience, consultants are a good, easy CYA policy, as well as being able to look good for promotions and whatnot if you get the big names.
looping__lui 4y ago
Maybe if company politics outweigh objective facts!? Or you need someone to give you an independent perspective? For companies it can be like a bit of therapy…
sharemywin 4y ago
That's how you sell the Board on a project. You know Jon from IT thinks this will save us a bunch of money. versus We engaged Deloitte and if we allocate $XXM on this project to using XYZ solution which is part of the "gartner magic quadrant" we can see a ROI of XX. the point of a consultant is to get you money from who ever holds the purse stirngs.
- pablobaz 4y ago
  It's often more to provide backup and justification for a decision. Even if it then goes wrong you can say "Deloitte told me to do it". While this may be true, it still doesn't take away two strengths consultants can bring: - never underestimate the value an independent view can bring, especially to a big company suffering from group think - secondly, a common consulting practice is to re-sell successful projects to other clients. Obviously not the exact IP, but the experience and general approach. This can be invaluable.
  - bob1029 4y ago
    > secondly, a common consulting practice is to re-sell successful projects to other clients. Obviously not the exact IP, but the experience and general approach. This can be invaluable. This is basically our business model, combined with a B2B product that supports it. We have developed a very good recipe for a few clients and are now applying it everywhere. Today, about 80% of our business is a consulting package. The 20% technology setup piece comes after we figure out how to conform the customer to our capabilities.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      Yep, do a successful project, write a case study, and resell it to everyone. "We here at [consulting inc] have previously implemented [solution] for [fortune 500] in [the same industry] and they experienced [big number]% increase in [metric] as a result."
  - juve1996 4y ago
    I don't buy this argument at all. At the end of the day, consultant backed or not, you're responsible for the implementation. If it fails it's not on the consultants. They're long gone. And someone needs to carry the blame.
- hd95489 4y ago
  John from it has a job doing critical stuff. He’s not going to work 60 hrs a week polishing a PowerPoint presentation on why we need to do x to save 10million dollars. Even if you save that 10mil John probably doesn’t really care that much, it’s not his money.
mach1ne 4y ago
Some companies (mainly those which actually produce physical stuff) may lack the knowledge for fairly elementary process optimization. That's the stuff they teach the upcoming consultants at school. And that's the stuff that actually saves everybody's money.
- eecc 4y ago
  If that's all, we can simply add a couple Operations Research classes to ant engineering curriculum and we'd be done.
  - mach1ne 4y ago
    That’s not all, and that might be true, but that’s an example of how consultants in some cases do earn their pay. That being said, they generally don’t seem to.
penguinvondoom 4y ago
To be fair, CEOs are also kinda useless... on a more serious notes, these consultants are more like priests of capital, there to prosletize whatever new cargo-cult framework is popular (without actually making any real change mind you). I kind of like some old consulting literature from the 70s and 80s,especially the cybernetics stuff, as it seems like it's genuinely scientific and trying to improve things. Just the quality of writing in i.e. "Brain of the Firm", is so much more complex and erudite than what you see coming out in the field now.

Freedom2 4y ago

In my experience, consultants are a good, easy CYA policy, as well as being able to look good for promotions and whatnot if you get the big names.

looping__lui 4y ago

Maybe if company politics outweigh objective facts!? Or you need someone to give you an independent perspective? For companies it can be like a bit of therapy…

sharemywin 4y ago

That's how you sell the Board on a project. You know Jon from IT thinks this will save us a bunch of money. versus We engaged Deloitte and if we allocate $XXM on this project to using XYZ solution which is part of the "gartner magic quadrant" we can see a ROI of XX. the point of a consultant is to get you money from who ever holds the purse stirngs.

pablobaz 4y ago
It's often more to provide backup and justification for a decision. Even if it then goes wrong you can say "Deloitte told me to do it". While this may be true, it still doesn't take away two strengths consultants can bring: - never underestimate the value an independent view can bring, especially to a big company suffering from group think - secondly, a common consulting practice is to re-sell successful projects to other clients. Obviously not the exact IP, but the experience and general approach. This can be invaluable.
- bob1029 4y ago
  > secondly, a common consulting practice is to re-sell successful projects to other clients. Obviously not the exact IP, but the experience and general approach. This can be invaluable. This is basically our business model, combined with a B2B product that supports it. We have developed a very good recipe for a few clients and are now applying it everywhere. Today, about 80% of our business is a consulting package. The 20% technology setup piece comes after we figure out how to conform the customer to our capabilities.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Yep, do a successful project, write a case study, and resell it to everyone. "We here at [consulting inc] have previously implemented [solution] for [fortune 500] in [the same industry] and they experienced [big number]% increase in [metric] as a result."
- juve1996 4y ago
  I don't buy this argument at all. At the end of the day, consultant backed or not, you're responsible for the implementation. If it fails it's not on the consultants. They're long gone. And someone needs to carry the blame.
hd95489 4y ago
John from it has a job doing critical stuff. He’s not going to work 60 hrs a week polishing a PowerPoint presentation on why we need to do x to save 10million dollars. Even if you save that 10mil John probably doesn’t really care that much, it’s not his money.

mach1ne 4y ago

Some companies (mainly those which actually produce physical stuff) may lack the knowledge for fairly elementary process optimization. That's the stuff they teach the upcoming consultants at school. And that's the stuff that actually saves everybody's money.

eecc 4y ago
If that's all, we can simply add a couple Operations Research classes to ant engineering curriculum and we'd be done.
- mach1ne 4y ago
  That’s not all, and that might be true, but that’s an example of how consultants in some cases do earn their pay. That being said, they generally don’t seem to.

penguinvondoom 4y ago

To be fair, CEOs are also kinda useless... on a more serious notes, these consultants are more like priests of capital, there to prosletize whatever new cargo-cult framework is popular (without actually making any real change mind you). I kind of like some old consulting literature from the 70s and 80s,especially the cybernetics stuff, as it seems like it's genuinely scientific and trying to improve things. Just the quality of writing in i.e. "Brain of the Firm", is so much more complex and erudite than what you see coming out in the field now.