3 ms·

The magic is in: A) Forming cross company cliques (a lot of C suite is ex consultant and they scratch each others' backs). B) ego stroking and typical sales (

by pydry 3y ago

The magic is in: A) Forming cross company cliques (a lot of C suite is ex consultant and they scratch each others' backs). B) ego stroking and typical sales ("this executive is a visionary who must be furnished with top quality steak and strippers") C) Letting you know on the sly what their other customers are doing that seems to be working. D) Providing industrial grade ass cover for decisions that the C suite want to make but are afraid to make by themselves (like layoffs).

jamiegreen 3y ago
Don’t underestimate the ass covering. I recon 60% of management consulting work is just to ass cover for a director with no conviction
- pydry 3y ago
  Yeah, I think that's the majority of the grunt work done by junior consultants. I don't doubt that if the high level decision agreed upon is "more layoffs because AI" and they were asked for a 60 page report to justify it that ChatGPT would help inordinately in fleshing it out with something that sounds fairly plausible.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    There's a lot of boilerplate that actually takes quite a while to write from scratch. If the people involved have a pretty good idea in their heads of what fundamentals are fairly sensible and which are probably sort of irrelevant or even wrong, something like ChatGPT is actually pretty good at churning out at least a decent pre-draft that can save quite a bit of time. I've used it a fair bit for introductory background that I can certainly clean up faster than I could put together from scratch.
- corysama 3y ago
  The more expensive the cover the better. “I paid a world-class consulting consultant company top dollar to vet this idea and they produced ton of documents about how great it was. And, yet it failed. But, I’m not at fault here. What more would you have had me do?” There was an article on HN years ago about top grade from Harvard-like schools being sucked into consulting companies and discovering their job was to be paid tons of money writing reports that support whatever the exec of the moment wanted to hear.
  - acover 3y ago
    Do you have a link? I can't find it.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    > their job was to be paid tons of money writing reports that support whatever the exec of the moment wanted to hear Sounds like an extremely nice job.
    - p1esk 3y ago
      Not really.
      - matheusmoreira 3y ago
        Well, depends on how much money is "tons of money".
jaybrendansmith 3y ago
So much of it is about information awareness. Like it or not, these consultants and analysts talk to hundreds of C-levels all the time. They become excellent information sources about what is working, what is not working, and about business risks that a particular executive may not be aware of. Yes, there is the potential for group-think, and the bad ones shill for a particular technology or process without any basis in success. But the good ones provide guidance to the executives that might be working in information-free areas, making them aware of concepts, technologies, and processes that either present risks to their businesses or represent good practices they really should adopt. It's easy to be cynical about this, but there are many good business leaders who are not analytical, and are in need of this kind of guidance.
- pydry 3y ago
  >It's easy to be cynical about this It's probably easier to assume that their job is to provide objective expert advice since thats what they say they do. I'm being realistic here, not cynical.
  - aussiegreenie 3y ago
    >It's probably easier to assume that their job is to provide objective expert advice since thats what they say they do. You are mistaken "expertise" with fashion and a good voice.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    the comment might be spot-on for some companies and industry, but really.. not all business culture is the same. By painting "all management" in this light you are showing the same one-dimensional thinking that is being criticized here..
    - pydry 3y ago
      Did you think I was making some comment about the millions of businesses and many governments that don't use the services of these consultants? I can assure you I wasn't.

by pydry 3y ago

jamiegreen 3y ago

Don’t underestimate the ass covering. I recon 60% of management consulting work is just to ass cover for a director with no conviction

pydry 3y ago
Yeah, I think that's the majority of the grunt work done by junior consultants. I don't doubt that if the high level decision agreed upon is "more layoffs because AI" and they were asked for a 60 page report to justify it that ChatGPT would help inordinately in fleshing it out with something that sounds fairly plausible.
- ghaff 3y ago
  There's a lot of boilerplate that actually takes quite a while to write from scratch. If the people involved have a pretty good idea in their heads of what fundamentals are fairly sensible and which are probably sort of irrelevant or even wrong, something like ChatGPT is actually pretty good at churning out at least a decent pre-draft that can save quite a bit of time. I've used it a fair bit for introductory background that I can certainly clean up faster than I could put together from scratch.
corysama 3y ago
The more expensive the cover the better. “I paid a world-class consulting consultant company top dollar to vet this idea and they produced ton of documents about how great it was. And, yet it failed. But, I’m not at fault here. What more would you have had me do?” There was an article on HN years ago about top grade from Harvard-like schools being sucked into consulting companies and discovering their job was to be paid tons of money writing reports that support whatever the exec of the moment wanted to hear.
- acover 3y ago
  Do you have a link? I can't find it.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  > their job was to be paid tons of money writing reports that support whatever the exec of the moment wanted to hear Sounds like an extremely nice job.
  - p1esk 3y ago
    Not really.
    - matheusmoreira 3y ago
      Well, depends on how much money is "tons of money".

jaybrendansmith 3y ago

So much of it is about information awareness. Like it or not, these consultants and analysts talk to hundreds of C-levels all the time. They become excellent information sources about what is working, what is not working, and about business risks that a particular executive may not be aware of. Yes, there is the potential for group-think, and the bad ones shill for a particular technology or process without any basis in success. But the good ones provide guidance to the executives that might be working in information-free areas, making them aware of concepts, technologies, and processes that either present risks to their businesses or represent good practices they really should adopt. It's easy to be cynical about this, but there are many good business leaders who are not analytical, and are in need of this kind of guidance.

pydry 3y ago
>It's easy to be cynical about this It's probably easier to assume that their job is to provide objective expert advice since thats what they say they do. I'm being realistic here, not cynical.
- aussiegreenie 3y ago
  >It's probably easier to assume that their job is to provide objective expert advice since thats what they say they do. You are mistaken "expertise" with fashion and a good voice.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  the comment might be spot-on for some companies and industry, but really.. not all business culture is the same. By painting "all management" in this light you are showing the same one-dimensional thinking that is being criticized here..
  - pydry 3y ago
    Did you think I was making some comment about the millions of businesses and many governments that don't use the services of these consultants? I can assure you I wasn't.