The management consultancy scam

by Ed Bowsher on 20 August 2010  |  0 comments
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Do management consultants offer a useful service?

Johann Hari has written a great column in The Independent today. It's about management consultants and questions whether they offer a useful service.

Here's the money quote:

"David Craig gives a typical explanation of what the consultants Actually Do. After getting a degree specialising in romantic poetry, he was astonished to be hired by a prestigious management consultancy, given three weeks training, and then dropped into major corporations to tell them how to run their oil rigs, menswear stores, and factories, for tens of thousands of pounds a pop. In his brave memoir Rip Off! he explains: 'We were proud of the way we used to make things up as we went along....It's like robbing a bank but legal. We could take somebody straight off the street, teach them a few simple tricks in a couple of hours and easily charge them out to our clients for more than £7000 per week."

Some of my friends went into consultancy after university and they never convinced me that they did anything useful. How could they? They were kids.

What's more, when I look back at the places where I've worked over the years, the most successful business of the bunch didn't employ any consultants while I was there. The business had a good managers at the top who had innovative ideas that would enable the business to create a profitable new niche in the financial media world. I very much doubt that management consultants would ever have spotted that business opportunity.