MANAGEMENT
Consultants are those fortunate individuals or firms, who get paid by the hirer, to tell him them, all that they already know.
There are numerous reasons why consultants are brought on board in institutions. These can range from those appointed at the behest of the Board of Directors, who may feel that the Ceo and his management needs external input, to steer the corporate vessel; or it could be for reasons to give affirmation and authenticity to a new thought, program, product or service, or it could be for making ‘the unsaleable’ to ‘saleable’. An external certification and an initiative gives the effort respectability in the eyes of those who are to approve the initiative.
A good consultant would necessarily have a great gift of gab and a tremendous poweress of writing skills. He needs these two qualities, to ensure they say the same thing as the management would know, but in different words and reduce in writing the work spoken to them by one and sundry of the organization.
If the appointment of the consultant is driven by the BOD, then they arrive into the institution with broadened and puffed up chests and to create and instill fear; such would claim that any sign of inertia in implementing their strategies would invite the wrath of the Board. And most times they get away with this attitude.
There are also situations where a Ceo may hire a consultant, paid to act as sounding board. Here the role of the consultant is not to provide specific solution to a specific problem but to help Ceo and senior management towards a straight forward thought process. Consultants, by and large do not know details or have in-depth knowledge of their clients or their businesses. The only job they think they are to preform is to make sure that there are no critical missing links in the analysis of problems a company may face.
Consultants are also hired for specific tasks/action and for a definitive time programme to achieve a specific goal. I have witnessed in my career consultants come into institution for identified task, but fail to determine the length of time, required to complete task. They can’t determine how long their stay with the institution is desirable. Some unfortunately refuse to leave and become part of permanent assets of the organization!
Further, when they examine an organization chart, they would determine what’s wrong with the institution; Is it decline in profit; are the processes too, complex or is it because of a management that rules by fear. If they find any institution; that is ‘Centralized’; be ready to accept from the consultant their recommendation for a ‘de-centralized’ environment and if they find it ‘Centralized’ they would recommend, decentralization.
I have actually experienced this aspect. In an organization that I worked for, consultants were hired from overseas, to bring order in the corporate hierarchy and business initiatives. First such initiative was to see, if it made sense to have a loose organization chart that would allow for different business lines to crawl over one another. This led to debating if the de-centralized management structure was effective in such scenario. The fact that the institution was de-centralized very effectively and efficiently pushed the consultants to recommend that the organization had to move towards a centralized environment. This proposition by the consultants made them to look good in the eyes of their hirer.
Consequently, they truncated the institution into various business lines and unified its command. The results were disastrous because the accounting module in the organization IT architecture was built on the premise of a decentralized working environment. Undoing the consultants damage, was a nightmare!
Most reports of consultants are a perfect exercise in cut and paste. Thanks to technology. The perils of relying on such reports, is that it may contain outdated matter or regulations not relating to your market. I once discovered in a locally syndicated loan document, oft repeated references to a Saudi Arabian Financial Institution, which had no stake, role or even the remotest connection to the loan. An obvious case of cut and paste strategy.
‘All consultants are likely to shout, be careful not to fall here. It’s dangerous. But if you do fall, remember to look to the left. You get a wonderful view on that side.’ A young musical student sought Mozart’s consultancy (advice) and said to him, “I want to write a concerto.
Will you tell me how to go about it?”. Mozart counselled with remark, “Wait until you are a few years older”. “But” objected the young man, “you compose when you were seven or eight”. “Yes” agreed Mozart, “but I didn’t have to ask anyone how to do it”.
Likewise in business, if an organization does not know its basics, it ought to learn itself by experience – outside help with only be as good as internal understanding of the business.
Since a consultant tells you, what you already know, their reports are written in the most complex style, as regards usage of words – they kill you as a reader with jargons, acronyms and a wholesome load of crap….’ we recommend systemized reciprocal mobility” ( Simply means orderly response of divisions or departments towards one and another! ) or even better the report could state, “There is need for responsive transitional capability…” what!?. Consultants reply on and use excessively evasive circumlocution, transparent euphemisms and a mine of self-created lexicon of jargons and terminologies. “Bombing is given a very respectable term, “air cover”! It is still Bombing!
Consultants quiz, interview, observe and then set about to collate all that an organization does – they reduce it majestically in flamboyant language and present it to the organization, within bounds of glossy covers - and like dumb fools the organizations receive their “Input” as “Good counsel and advise” of the consultants.
The Managing Director of a consulting firm from the Middle East gave me his business card. I was impressed to see that he had offices spread between Shanghai and Sao Paulo. Much later I discovered he had some friends, some acquaintances who at all these locations were waiting for him to ask them to do “some project” on his behalf! So much for international consultancy.
To be a successful consultant, you need merely a handful of friends, well positioned and at the right places – and Lo! You have a job at hand.
Aptly, I had long time back read somewhere, “Only when a man is safely ensconced under six feet of earth with several tons of enlauding granite upon his chest, is he in a position to give advice (read consultancy) with any certainty, and then he is silent”.
The writer is a freelance columnist
