A recent item about Management Consultants made the Badger chuckle. It’s worth a quick read to see if anything resonates and makes you chuckle too. The Badger giggled because the narrative struck a chord and made him remember one particular encounter with a ‘management consultant’ while he was leading the delivery of a very large, fixed-price, IT systems and service development contract for his company. This delivery was a key part of an overall public sector programme transforming the workings of an entire industry. Inevitably, this overall programme was mired in politics, resistance from some quarters of the industry, and commercial gamesmanship by some of the parties involved to ensure they avoided blame for any difficulties the overall programme might encounter.
In private, every party believed the overall programme would be delayed. Their public stance, however, was different because the commercial ramifications of being blamed for delay were punitive. Most expected the key, critical path, IT delivery from the Badger’s team to be late. His magnificent team, however, delivered a system of quality on time, and in doing so exposed unreadiness and delay in other key parts of the overall programme. The overall programme’s stakeholders appointed management consultants from a well-known company to review and advise on the situation, and the Badger, in due course, spent an afternoon being interviewed by one of them. He didn’t come away from the session with much respect for management consultants.
As soon as initial pleasantries were complete, the Badger wondered how the expensive, brash, sharply suited, intelligent but over-confident, youngster in front of him could be a ‘management consultant’ when they were just a few years out of university and simply executing a process with a long list of associated questions. They had no real business, project, programme, or leadership experience, but they had clearly read many books, and drafted many reports and PowerPoint presentations. There was no discussion, just questions with the Badger supplying increasingly curt answers. The interviewer’s brash confidence and superficial real experience was irritating, and their credibility as a consultant providing value dissipated with every question. Two weeks later, the programme’s stakeholders received the management consultants’ overall report and supporting presentation. Both were stylish and well-written, but contained little that stakeholders didn’t already know. It didn’t seem like value for money!
You might think from this that the Badger has a low opinion of management consultants? In fact, he has engaged with many over the years and developed great respect for those who have become management consultants after years of important roles in business, industry, or project delivery. They are useful and provide significant value. Those, however, who call themselves management consultants, have expensive fee rates, but do not have such underlying experience are not great value for money. You may, of course, feel differently…especially if you are a management consultant.
