Anatomy of Traditional Task-Based Consulting

by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur

Let's just sum up what is happening in traditional consulting until someone actually takes some kind of action to improve the situation.

1. For a start, the consultants do a truckload of research analyses, diagnoses, and all sorts of grunt work because they want to look thorough and detail-oriented. In the meantime clients are waiting for months without action, but paying for all this “research”. Guess what. Most of this stuff is available from the client, but doing their own first-hand research consultants can conjure up lots of billable hours right away.

2. The consultants absorb and digest all this research information, develop 100s of pages of reports, presentation materials and anything that can be put on paper and Powerpoint slides. More months and billable hours are going by without action.

3. Then the consultants guide clients through this maze of research data, and try to make clients to digest all that stuff. The consultants are developing the right vision and the grandiose Master Plan for the upcoming project. Still, there is no action, only talking about action. In the meantime, you keep writing more cheques.

4. After getting the Master Planpresented to and accepted by senior management, it must be revisited for another detailed analysis to make sure that every T is crossed and every I is dotted. Now management can create the Grand Master Plan. Still, there is no action for improvement, but you are now seriously out of budget.

5. At last, after several months or even one year, the behemoth Grand Master Plan starts sluggishly turn into tiny pieces of action and you have just noticed that the last few consecutive cheques in your cheque book have been paid to the same consulting firm.

6. Then the assumption is that after a turbulent period of time everything will be just fine.

This is supposed to be the quantum leap type transformation. The problem is that by this time your are out of budget, having wasted it all on fancy reports and presentations, and at this point most consulting firms - especially the gigantic behemoths - prefer to pull out and run with the money.

Why?

One reason is because this is the time to hit the ground running and get dirt under the fingernails in action, but most consultants - dressed in Italian shirts with golden cuff links, silk ties and custom-made English suits - are not cut out for action. Hey, they may get dirty and lose their business-like appearance.

So they pontificate about what you should do to get your shit together, give you some fancy reports and Powerpoint presentations and the rest is up to you.

This is the medical equivalent of giving the patient a report, telling him that he needs triple bypass surgery, and moving on to diagnose the next patient. And then the surgeon explains that he doesn't do operations because he is allergic to blood.

The other reason is that during action things can go wrong, hands can get dirty, fingernails can get broken, eyebrows can get sweaty, and since traditional consultants are pretty risk allergic folks in fancy suits, they make sure they watch you from a safe distance with your project budget peacefully resting in their bank accounts. Otherwise all that sweat and dirt could mess up their Prada suits, Gucci shoes and Dolce & Gabbana ties.

This is traditional consulting. You hire them at your own peril.

Copyright Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan. All rights reserved. You are free to use this article in whole or in part. One favour though: Can I ask you to you include complete attribution, including a live website link. Also, can you please let me know where you plan to publish the article.

The attribution: This article was written by Organisational Provocateur, Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan of Dynamic Innovations Squad, a firm specialising in helping consulting firms to sell their expertise at the highest margins. Get Tom's free Practice Management Black Paper when you sign up for his monthly newsletter, Commando Consulting: Lessons And Practices From The Ultimate Professional Service Firm, The Military. Visit Tom's website at http://www.di-squad.com.

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