| | By Mick James
I had resolved to
stop responding to the
nonsense written in the
nationals about
consultants. But a
recent piece by Brian
Appleyard in The Sunday
Times (Blair’s Barmy
Army) is the Hamlet of
the genre, rehashing old
material yet somehow
transcending it. It
seems unlikely that the
press will abandon its
parody paradigm of the
consultant, so I’ve used
Appleyard’s piece as the
template for a
seven-step guide to
slagging off the
industry.
1. Take whatever
David Craig says as
gospel
Craig, a.k.a. Neil
Glass, author of the
tendentious Plundering
the Public Sector has
built a healthy career
on a brief and unhappy
spell in consultancy.
Hailed as a guru by the
press, he makes up for a
lack of hard facts with
a healthy dose of
paranoia, claiming for
instance that mainstream
publishers wouldn’t
publish his book because
they were “afraid of the
power of the
consultants” (odd, since
I’ve often been asked to
write such an exposé
myself by those very
publishers). National
Audit Office reports
can’t be trusted because
an audit manager used to
work for Accenture and
is “one of the gang”.
Bizarrely, he also
complains that this
semi-criminal gang won’t
give him his job back:
“I’m completely
blacklisted,” he moans.
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2. Cast aspersions
on former consultants
now in the public
sector
Ian Watmore (head of
No 10’s Delivery Unit),
health secretary
Patricia Hewitt, NHS IT
programme head Richard
Granger, that NAO audit
manager – they all used
to work for consultancy
firms. Despite moving
off the private sector
payroll into lower paid
and more insecure jobs,
Appleyard is convinced
they are somehow still
creatures of their
former employers.
Later, without irony, he
will claim that
“consultants need
managing...but...there
is almost nobody in
government who knows how
to do this”.
Consultancies who hire
former public servants
and ministers face a
similar double-bind. If
they don’t have them,
they lack expertise, if
they do, they are
corrupt.
3. Get the whole
Arthur Andersen/Andersen
Consulting/Accenture
thing wrapped round your
neck
The papers have done
this for years but
Appleyard has a
Shakespearean genius for
putting a new spin on
tired material.
Apparently, it was the
DeLorean affair that led
to the Arthur
Andersen/Andersen
Consulting split – a
ruse to get round the
banning of auditors
Andersen from government
work – “when Labour came
to power Andersen split
into an accountancy
business and a
management consultancy, | |
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| | known as Accenture.
Aided by the advocacy of
Patricia Hewitt,
Accenture became a big
government supplier.”
Never mind that Labour
came to power eight
years after the split
and that scarcely a year
has gone by that someone
from Accenture doesn’t
write to a national
newspaper pointing out
that Andersen Consulting
was never banned from
government work. That
person clearly has a job
for life.
4. Uncritically
accept the public sector
union agenda
Public sector unions
exist to keep their
members in jobs, and why
not? With job cuts often
overseen by consultants,
it’s easier to direct
the counter-attack at
unpopular professionals
than defend manning
levels. The Public and
Commercial Services
Union has become adept
at apples-to-pears
comparisons between fat
consultancy fees and
their own members’
modest annual salaries
(naturally ignoring
pension costs and
overheads). They even
claim you can’t cut
Civil Service jobs as
recommended by the
Gershon Report because
as soon as a PCS member
on “about £150 a day”
vanishes he is “replaced
within days or weeks by
a consultant paid £750 a
day for the same work”.
I’d love to hear an
actual example of this
but you have to admire
their pluck, and also
that of Dr Paul Miller
of the BMA who complains
that the audit teams
brought in to sort out | |
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| | NHS deficits are “men in
smart suits” who “tell
doctors and managers
what they know already
and charge a fortune”.
Tell them what exactly?
That they can’t be
trusted with public
money?
5. Blame
consultants for
everything and anything
The MoD’s failure to
supply body armour to
troops is apparently
consultants’ fault
because Just-in-Time
stockholding is a
“consultancy theory”.
The NHS’ inability to
control its contract
cleaners (unlike any
hotel or private
hospitals) is down to a
“consultancy culture” of
privatisation. The
government’s
hugely-expensive ID card
initiative is
“consultancy-led”. And
so on.
6. Fail to carry
out the most basic
research
According to
Appleyard, management
consultants, like
accountants and lawyers
have “professional
status” which “protects
them from uncontrolled
competition and shores
up their fees”.
“Business process
re-engineering” is “an
idea that means very
little”, which is
probably true if you’ve
never heard of it and
can’t be bothered to
look it up. Rightshoring
means “moving jobs to
India”.
“Consultants seldom
have any expertise in
running businesses.”
This last one could have | |
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| | been checked with a
quick call to The
Sunday Timesrecruitment
sales department, as
they’ve always done very
well out of consultancy
recruitment. But I doubt
they’re on speaking
terms with Appleyard any
more.
7. Indulge in
uncontrolled flights of
literary fancy
No comment necessary
here, just quotation:
“Consultancy has
become like Marxism in
the Soviet Union –
nobody believes in it,
but everybody must
pretend to.”
“Companies and
economies survive on a
unique combination of
intuition, guesswork and
innovation, never on
theory.”
Consultancy is a
“collective delusion
that there are
quasi-scientific,
objective ways of
managing human affairs
that transcend all
considerations of
culture, ethos and
environment.”
Sheer genius and a
template for every piece
that will ever be
written on consultancy.
But if someone comes up
with a new trope, do let
me know.
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