Consultants: Gravy Train to Bread Line

Fired or refused to hire any consultants lately?

According to all accounts, it's tough out there in consultantland.

Most consultants, in their quiet, honest moments, say things like these words from a tired, defeatist organizational consultant in the southwestern U.S., "It's painfully slow right now. And worse, the business has changed fundamentally and it's never going to be what it was."

For a change, everyone can probably agree with that consultant's assessment.

In placing blame, the sputtering economy is an easy fall guy. But that really doesn't explain the lackluster demand (which many say has fallen precipitously) for corporate shamans. In fact, fingering the economy seems counterintuitive: If things are tough for businesses, shouldn't executives be running toward The Consultants' Corral with at least one hand grabbing at even the last of available cash (or plunging into their lines of credit) to buy some life-saving magic elixir?

Well, with delicious irony, that's precisely the problem. Consultants, by and large, are out of magic. For decades now, they've been dangling promises of near-miraculous cures and sprinkling little dollops of fairy dust while spewing buzzwords galore in boardrooms and shop floors with abandon.

To what end?

Smart business people --- many of whom have the same or better credentials than their would-be advisors --- have reached a few not-so-startling conclusions about the value of consultants. To wit:

>> There is no secret cache of corporate solutions ready for revelation to the fortunate few able and willing to pay the consultant's unconscionable price. In fact, the opposite is true.

For twenty years now (since Peters and Waterman burst onto the best-seller list with their In Search of Excellence in 1982) consultants have prolifically peppered the publishing pipeline with endless tomes extolling their methods and secrets.  Now, not only are the book stores jammed with countless works promising Secrets, Methods & Tips for but a few bucks, the internet is replete with literally millions of such words, instantly accessible and all for free.

Bottom line: Most business people know (or are convinced they know) what the consultants do. Why pay someone who demands your expensive watch to tell you what time it is.

>> Adopting buzzwords into your lexicon doesn't improve your business. Fads and fashions fade for a reason: They grow tiresome. Worse, organizational fads fatigue the people they are supposed to influence. Incessant new buzzwords, and the Programs of the Month they spawn, antagonize employees. Jade them. Demotivate them. And contribute to a general environment of cynicism that gives rise to attitudinal malaise that negatively impacts productivity and...contributes to a slowing economy. Whoops.

>> Even with truly inspired consulting, most organizations don't change much or at all despite all the investment, endless meetings, and high expectations that accompany major consulting projects.

It's not that the consultants didn't know what they were doing, or that they didn't pull every methodological rabbit out of their collective hats. It's just that consultants can't really change organizations. That would be antithetical to consulting.

Even the best consulting "intervention" cannot affect the daily actions of the hundreds or thousands of individual managers who must consistently act differently for the organization to actually change. Spending millions of dollars on consulting fees at Headquarters in New York or Los Angeles or London this month can't possibly affect the day-to-day decisions and actions of a plant manager in East Outerslobovia next month.

And therein lies the consultants' dilemma, and the futility of their future prospects: They cost way too much and don't really matter anyway.

Furthermore, there are way too many would-be corporate magicians. All that downsizing in recent years, all those high-tech flops, and all those academics being displaced by universities' recent penchant for favoring adjuncts over the tenure-track, have flooded the consultants' ranks with excess capacity at the very time there is shrinking demand.

Consultants have a problem. And no exhortations or wise guy implementations of Physician heal thyself will help. Consulting's Achilles heel has been revealed. And it is this:

Massive organizational change in an ever more complex, globally interdependent world is predicated on personal change at the singularly individual level. And such critical evolution simply does not result from even the most persuasive presentation or the most brilliant analytic report of Findings & Recommendations delivered to the top echelon far removed from where things really happen.

Lead Well® helps organizations to improve measurable results by developing their current and future leaders. For more information, please contact us. By phone, toll-free in the USA: 1-888-LeadWell (532-3935), or 1-609-716-9490. By email, Info@LeadWell.com.

REPUBLICATION: Permission is granted for publishing this article in periodicals provided that you:

1) Notify us (Info@LeadWell.com) and

2) Include the following attribution statement:

Don Blohowiak, a management consultant and popular conference speaker, is the author of several business books. The executive director of the Lead Well® Institute in Princeton, NJ, he may be reached at http://www.LeadWell.com/.

SELLING this material requires our written permission.

TRADEMARKS: "Lead Well" and "Natural Selection" are registered trademarks, and "Lead by Design" is a trademark, owned by Don Blohowiak, Lead Well Institute.

Copyright © 2005, Don Blohowiak, Lead Well Institute

~ All Rights Reserved ~