SO WHY DO USE CONSULTANCY?
What sort of organizations buy consultancy? Is buying consultancy an indication of good management or perhaps an symbol of inadequacy and failure? Is not it management's job to handle? Is not that what they are compensated for? If that's the case, why would you use management consultants? And why a multitude of clients apparently so prepared to spend millions or perhaps many millions on consultants to assist them to manage their organizations?
Throughout time selling major consultancy projects to just about a hundred, mostly well-known organizations in over 15 countries within the Americas, Asia and Europe, I constantly battled with whether i was really supplying any value to the clients strategic. There have been, obviously, some successes where I had been really proud to become involved. However, most of the organizations which i saw appeared almost hooked on management consultancy. Frequently there'd be several major consultancies employed by them simultaneously and most of them spent millions on consultants every year with what the late Lord Hanson, referred to as "corporate cowardice". A number of these management teams appeared in my experience to become making certain their own individual survival by ongoing to pour money in to the hands of the favorite consultants to complete the job that they are evidently used to do.
When I think back over even more questionable management teams that I've seen, the majority of whom were regular consumers of huge amount of money and pounds and euros of management also it systems talking to, there appear in my experience to become four primary kinds of situation in which the top management as well as their consultants spent huge sums while delivering virtually no value.
Many management teams are callous in managing their costs as well as their expenses with their workers - reducing budgets and firing everyone was frequently painful annual rituals. Yet, with the survival, well-being and luxury of top management as well as their favourite consultants, there seem to be no limits towards the organization’s generosity. A number of our clients put millions in their executives and consultants while firing a large number of their staff.
Another common sign of the management teams, that we labored, was the opportunity to go ahead and take credit and also the huge dollars when business was good, however a inclination to prevent any responsibility when there have been problems. I saw this in lots of clients who have been lambasted within the press for his or her management's avarice, incompetence and avoidance of responsibility when they generously spent cash on consultants and awarded their management massive bonuses.
Another situation which provided huge amounts of work with us and our competitors was whenever a leader or senior management team appeared to become totally hooked on the most recent management fad - Business Process Reengineering (BPR), applying newer and more effective computer, establishing an interior Market, jumping into newer and more effective growth industry, outsourcing, or whatever. In such instances, there is a inclination for senior management to think that just they, not to mention their consultants, were smart enough to 'see the light'- only they'd a obvious picture from the changes their organization required to make. Almost everybody else within their organization was apparently too stupid or too resistant against switch to embrace top management's new vibrant idea.