How Complacency is Created in Consulting Firms

by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur

1. Organisational goals are set far too low, thus they are easy to achieve. There is low self-esteem or even some personality disorders among managers, and they think they are doing their best. Hint: As the saying goes, mediocre people think they always at their best.

2. Management tends to kill everyone who rocks the boat. Management perceives the situation to be good enough for them, but does not really care about improving it for the people. “Hey, we enjoy our lunches and memo-pushing activities, and we can always threaten our people to make more sales.”

3. There are no perceived danger signals. There is no money lost – at least not through the books. Loss of opportunity money does not show in the books. The economy is ticking by just fine. There is no bankruptcy lurking in the air, so why bother to change at all. Life could not be better.

4. Management is just too happy where the firm is right now and there is no ambition for improvement. “Plastic surgeon, throw away the scalpel. No improvement is possible. We are already the best.” On the surface the firm exudes success. The parking lot is full of BMWs, Mercedes or Audi’s, and partners are happily congratulating each other on their hefty bonuses.

5. Management regards people as controllable expenses. They believe that by pushing people harder the firm can make the sales quota, so there is nothing to improve.

6. Management is bathing in the glory of the past. “Never mind improvement, look at our history. We are not worse than the rest, anyway, so leave us alone with your improvement rubbish.” Well, look at the history of dinosaurs!

7. The firm lives in isolation. There is no feedback from the outside world, so management believes everything is fine, because nobody complains. Realistically, clients get pissed off with their professionals well, well, well before they kick up a fuss. By the time they raise the issue, they are already gone, but only came back to hit you on the forehead with a 2 by 4 to make you realise the mess you have made of your client service.

8. Internal performance indexes are screwed up. The firm focuses on measuring financial performance and ignores emotional indexes, like overall morale, enthusiasm and people’s ambition.

9. People are already busy and stressed out doing high-volume, low-margin work, and they believe that is the normal situation, thus they do not seek improvement.

Management complacency and the lack of appetite for improvement have killed so many service firms. And the sad fact is when due to a sick culture, clients go next door for the same service, more often than not management blames frontline people for diminishing results. I suppose there is a reason why consulting is usually perceived as a pompous and arrogant profession, practised by some chronically sick egomaniacs lacking people skills.

Then several frontline people will be laid off, and to utilise their salary packages, senior partners reward themselves with pay increases and some new company cars. After all, they deserve it. Yeah, right.

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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