The Consultant from hell
The story so far …
Poor Corporate Slaves (PCS), while slaving away at their usual 300 things at a time, come up with interesting findings and possible new opportunities. Findings are considered to be interesting enough and opportunities are considered to be possible enough by Not-so-poor Corporate Slaves to want to invest more resources into them. Since PCS cannot be diverted from the other 299 things they are working on, and since it is considered especially cruel to make each PCS do the job of more than 2.4 regular human beings, Over-Paid Consultants (aka you squeeze our wallet, we’ll squeeze your balls) are brought in to add value through their broad industry experience accompanied by sharp functional expertise (or at least that’s what the pitch said). Meanwhile, the PCS use their powers of logic and creativity, backed by, well, knowing what the hell they’re talking about, to come up with some more detail around the interesting findings and new opportunities.
Forward to 10 weeks later.
It is two weeks before the OPCs’ presentation to Not-so-Poor Corporate Slaves. OPCs set up flurry of meetings with PCSs. PCSs have discussions that sound suspiciously similar to discussions had 10 weeks earlier. Then OPC pulls up slide outlining initial interesting findings and says: You know, this is a really Interesting Finding. I think you should pursue this Possible New Opportunity. The other stuff? Yeah, it doesn’t look possible to find that information. I wonder why noone’s looked at it yet.
Somehow, I don’t think it was too rude to point out that’s what they were being paid for. Strangling them … am thinking a jury might just have been lenient …
Links:
Poor? You need to be a grad student to know what *poor* feels like
Comment by He who shall not be flamed — August 12, 2005 @ 4:18 am
Wait! You hired consultants and expected them to do actual analysis / work? You’re COMPLAINING because they’re using your findings? I suppose next you’ll be griping about how Santa Claus didn’t deliver your Christmas presents on time. There’s a consulting term for people like you - it’s suckers (err…I mean clients)
It’s your own fault you know - if you’d just packaged your findings better and taken a little extra pain with them you could have been getting all the credit for this and a nice hefty bonus in the bargain. Instead you let the consultants in. You practically deserve to suffer.
:-).
Bottomline: Either the guy takes your flimsy findings and manages to provide direction to the organisation, in which case he deserves what he’s being paid for having the communication skills, the courage and the sheer opportunism to do it. Or he get thrown out on his ass for coming back with something totally crappy - in which case you get your revenge. So there is Justice, there is a God. It just feels like there isn’t sometimes because the man’s working of a plan put together by The Firm.
Comment by Gargravarr — August 12, 2005 @ 1:05 pm
Hello … what do you take me for?? Of course, the latter is going to happen. Should have mentioned that Not-so-PCS(s) had already seen PCS’ work and decided to pursue thing, but were looking for more details that OPCs were being paid for. Also, don’t think OPCs necessarily have better communication skills and courage needed to pull this off …
And here I was, thinking that you actually needed to do what you got paid for. Maybe I should get into M&A…
Comment by Administrator — August 12, 2005 @ 3:20 pm