| | By Mick James
I’ve recently been
immersing myself in the
literature of human
irrationality, exploring
with writers like Gary
Marcus (Kluge: The
Haphazard Construction
of the Human Mind) and
Dan Ariely (Predictably
Irrational) the way our
semi-evolved monkey
brains lead us to make
decisions that are
completely at odds with
rationality and our own
best interests.
Not only is this
highly entertaining but
it opens up all sorts of
interesting ways of
manipulating people.
Asked to come up with a
choice of restaurants,
but secretly wanting to
go to your favourite
Italian place? Simply
make sure that the
restaurants you proffer
are for the most part as
different as possible
but include one dodgy
Italian and your
favourite. People will
struggle to make a
reasonable comparison
between most of the
options, but will
clearly see that your
secret favourite is the
better deal. If you want
people to join a pension
plan or an organ donor
scheme then automatic
enrolment with an
opt-out option will
pretty much double
take-up over an opt-in
scheme. Negative and
positive elections are
theoretically exact
equivalents but somehow
our brains just don’t
see them like that.
Nowhere is this
asymmetry more evident
than in our dealings
with money, one of our
more brilliant
inventions and in many
ways far too
sophisticated a concept
for our hunter-gatherer
brains to deal with. I
still feel a frisson of
decadent extravagance
and am in fact slightly
embarrassed when I
reveal that I employ a
cleaner and have all my
groceries delivered.
Rationally, as a
self-employed writer,
there’s no way I can’t
make more money in the
time I would spend
vacuuming or trudging
around Tesco. But not
only does it feel wrong,
I still can’t help
totting up all the money
I spend on these
“luxuries” during the
year and feeling it as a | |
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| | loss.
Consultants, of
course, are currently
struggling with this
logic in vicious form
when dealing with
clients who are
conserving cash rather
than undertaking
projects which could
benefit or preserve the
business. I’d feel more
sympathy, however, if
consultants weren’t the
worst culprits when it
comes to following the
simple logic of
outsourcing.
Anyone who sells
anything to consultants
has my deepest sympathy.
So, I was intrigued to
meet Dee Hope, who is
trying to sell
consultants what should
theoretically be a
highly valuable
commodity – their own
lives.
Hope set up Diggory
Lifestyle Management to,
as she puts it, “take
the busy out of business
and put the person back
in personal life”. It’s
a service that,
theoretically, anyone
could use but she has
chosen to target
specifically management
consultants after
working as an executive
assistant to partners in
a large firm.
“I really got to see
how stressful it is,”
she says. “How demanding
it was and the
sacrifices people made
in home and family life
versus work and
clients.”
She also noted that a
lot of consultants,
while being brilliant at
what they do, tended to
fall into the “mad
professor” stereotype
when it came to
arranging the details of
their daily lives.
In the past, more
male-oriented society
these needs were taken
care of by a cohort of
loyal wives and
secretaries, and you’d
be amazed at how many
people I know who try to
maintain the
highflier/homemaker
lifestyle. You might be
less surprised by how
many are currently
getting divorced.
“Wives do feel
husbands have the jet
set lifestyle while they
are at home dealing with | |
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| | the humdrum,” says Hope.
She has come up with
a variety of packages
tailored to different
needs, such as the
“Redeye” for the
hardened road warrior.
Others deal with, for
example, consultants who
are relocating from
abroad, or people in
start-up mode who want
to replicate the level
of support they used to
have in corporate life.
At the moment she is
mainly offering her
service on an individual
basis, as the corporates
are not proving
receptive: “One lady
said she would love to
have the ‘Redeye’, but
her company won’t even
upgrade her laptop.”
I think that’s a
shame. The consultancy
industry talks a good
talk about “work/life”
balance and many firms
offer some of this sort
of support to their
consultants, but it all
tends to fall by the
wayside when times get
tough. It’s an
incredibly short-sighted
approach – what happens
then is that you get
consultants burning out
and leaving the
profession altogether,
when they could have
remained productive. I
can imagine that many
smaller firms, who would
struggle to set up
something like this on
their own, could offer
it as an employee
benefit.
But would people take
such a benefit over a
few hundred quid more in
the pay packet? We’re
back to the old
perversities of human
life. Most people on
their deathbeds would
pay any amount of money
for just one hour more
playing with their kids
but how many bedtimes
and sports days get
missed so that extra
hour can be spent on
“urgent” client work?
Is this an area,
perhaps, where
consultancies should
start getting a bit more
paternalistic and force
their employees to look
after themselves a bit
better? Perhaps now is
the wrong moment in the
cycle to start such a
debate but this is an
issue which is not going
away. | |
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