| | By Mick James
Every now and then -
but increasingly less
often these days -
someone suggests I write
a book. These days I
normally just grunt
"Book long, article
short" and scurry back
into the undergrowth to
start working on another
one of these. Years ago
though I used to
entertain these
approaches, particularly
when there was lunch
involved. Unfortunately
the conversation would
always proceed along the
same lines.
"Well, ye-e-e-es,"
the publisher would say,
politely stifling a yawn
as I outlined my ideas.
"But what I would really
like is a book that
really rips the lid off
the consulting industry,
exposes all the scams
consultants use, and
reveals all the
companies they'd
ruined."
"OK. Next time I meet
the head of a major
consultancy firm I'll
ask him about that."
And so I spent the
next 15 years ruing my
meagre skills as an
investigative journalist
and waiting for one of
the people I met to
break down and confess
that it was all a sham,
just so I could help the
TV producers and
publishers waiting for
the "truth" (i.e. what
they had known all
along) to be revealed.
It turns out they
were barking up the
wrong tree. Recently
there's been a
micro-trend in
"confessionals" from
former consultants.
Apparently the
consultancy world is
only too full of
embarrassed and
concerned citizens who
are only waiting for
their opportunity (and
the right-sized
redundancy cheque) to
hurl themselves at the
feet of the nearest
publisher screaming "mea
culpa", at which point a
generous advance will be
paid.
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In the UK we've had
our own David Craig for
some time and now he's
been joined by Matthew
Stewart, author of
Masters of Illusion:
the Great Management
Consultancy Swindle.
I can honestly say
that I had fully
intended to give the
book a fair crack of the
whip, i.e. read it, but
honestly, with a title
like that is there any
point?
The PR around it
gives you the gist.
Stewart, a bright young
lad with a philosophy
PhD from Oxford, falls
into management
consultancy. Baffled by
how easy it is to baffle
people, he hangs around
for a bit until the
scales fall from his
eyes and he returns to
his first love,
philosophy, while
knocking off the odd
book about the futility
of management theory and
the duplicity of
consultants.
Except that's not
quite the story. Stewart
didn't just hang around
for a bit, he practised
consultancy for ten
years, founding Mitchell
Madison before famously
selling it to a dot.com
enterprise.
Then he hung around a
bit longer, until he
could extract enough of
the resulting dosh to
fund his current, rather
agreeable lifestyle. You
can read the same story
in House of Lies: How
Management Consultants
Steal Your Watch and
Then Tell You the Time
(yes, he really said
that) or Consulting
Demons: Inside the
Unscrupulous World of
Global Corporate
Consulting.
There is not much
doubt in the reader's
mind which side of the
fence these guys are
going to come down on.
All of these books claim
to - as the blurb for
House of Lies puts it
- "tear down myths
surrounding the highly
profitable and revered
management consulting | |
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| | industry" but what
reverence? What myths?
Isn't this precisely the
myth itself?
The problem with this
is that if you stand in
front of an audience and
proclaim "I am guilty of
a monstrous act of bad
faith," the audience is
entitled to ask, "When
was that exactly? Back
then, before you saw the
light, or now when you
dismiss your former self
as a charlatan and your
clients as fools? Or
just, all the time?"
I'm not asserting
that everything that is
"revealed" in these
books is necessarily
false or even
exaggerated. Why would
anyone doubt these
anecdotes of shockingly
bad consultancy when
most of them relate to
the authors themselves?
Being atrocious at your
job isn't the sort of
thing people normally
lie about, but then
again it's not the sort
of thing that one
generally either boasts
about or gets praise
for. But that's exactly
what's happening here,
and it's a lesson to all
of us that we should
turn our mediocrity into
outstanding failure so
we can write books about
it.
Maybe as a profession
consultancy has
something to answer for
in letting these wasters
and chancers darken its
doors at all. It's long
been a recognised issue
in the industry that
sometimes the sheer
hunger for talent has
led to a lowering of
standards. But this has
gone beyond a joke, and
is a reminder why we
should never let up on
the pressure to back up
genuine commitment and
expertise with
affiliations and
qualifications. In the
meantime we have to put
up with the odd
situation where the
worse you are at
consultancy, the more
likely you are to become
its public face. | |
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