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Failing to brief consultants properly can sometimes produce results
that are grossly uncomfortable and occasionally fatal. In a wise and witty
booklet published by Deloitte Consulting and available free from their
website www.dc.com they describe what it is like to let consultants loose
in your business and hope for the best. In essence they suggest (with a few
additions of my own) that:

n You no longer understand your company’s culture because
consultants have changed it to the extent that it bears little if any
resemblance to “the way we do things around here”.

n You are so confused by the rate of apparently unguided change
that you sometimes doubt your ability to even remember how you
used to do things.

n Your key people don’t have time to work any more. They are too
busy attending meetings with consultants.

n At most of the meetings the consultants show fancy graphics that
no-one understands and that no-one cares to challenge just in case
they make sense.

n The rest of the meeting is taken up by the consultants either
asking you or telling you what should be done next.

n No-one that you meet in canteen or corridor seems to be older than
23 and they all seem to think that they know more about your
business than you do.

n You can’t find a space in your once roomy car park because it is
now filled with cars that you and your colleagues would love to be
able to afford to drive.

n All of your most reliable staff seem to have been laid off to be
replaced by consultants.

n Staff cuts and other economies would be saving millions were it
not for the fact that the total saving is less than the consultant’s
monthly bill.

n There is a very real sense of fear that to challenge a cocky 23-year-
old about anything would be a dangerous enterprise.

n Someone in the top team is riding shotgun on the consultant
bandwagon and is making macho threats to anyone who challenges
the usefulness of what is being done.

n The few employees that you have left are wondering why they earn
less in a month than the consultant’s bill for a day.

n You wonder whether you are too old to become a consultant.

Just in case you think that I and the people at Deloitte are exaggerat-
ing, as of course we are – just a little, try reading Dangerous Company by
O’Shea and Madigan, or my own High Value Consulting for some real life
cases of consulting turning once prosperous organizations belly-up.

216 Key management questions