Breakfast of Champions

Mrs. Ninja's caloric intake from 6:00am to 3:00pm:

diet pepsi
rest of candy apple
chips
sponge cake

The merits of OurBeeswax.com

Within the walls of modern corporations, asking hard questions, providing negative feedback upwards, and questioning the statements of leaders is extremely dangerous. Those types of statements can lead to an idea being discarded; people attach themselves to their ideas; people with ideas under attack will regard it as a personal attack; and they will lash out at the source of the attack - the messenger.

This isn't news - anyone in a corporate environment knows this. It's also not news to say that this happens in a consultancy; after all, a consulting firm is just as, if not more so, driven by the ability of leaders to convince people (clients and underlings) that their ideas are truly unique and original.

The result is that few messengers are shot, because everyone knows the rules and holds their tongue. As a result, stupid ideas (that everyone in the organization knows are stupid) aren't killed before they do real damage. I'd cite an example, but everyone can think of a time when this happened in their organization.

What is new and interesting is how technology allows those hard questions to be asked within the walls of an organization, while protecting the messenger, and the carefully constructed corporate image.

Do you use Ourbeeswax.com? What's your take on it?

The Etymology of Consulting

Source: Dilbert Search Engine

A Veritable Gold Mine... Gold I tell you!

I've had an explosion of creative energy lately. Is this what happens when your utilization flatlines at 0%? Good thing I have an outlet.

It started at dinner near a shipyard...

My first project was at a shipyard. Over dinner, my seasoned colleagues inquired about the "Consulting 101" course I had just completed before joining the project. We began discussing the term "Client Service," which was used extensively during training, but never truly defined.

I asked my team, "what does 'client service' mean to you?"

Three years later now, I can't remember their answers, but I remember mine.

"I think 'client service' means that you care - personally, and emotionally, about the well-being of your client. It means that you care about the outcome, and want your answer to their problem to be the answer you would get if you WERE them."

Today, the trouble is, I no longer care.

I've seen projects that I've been proud of. But I've also seen projects where I just don't believe in the answer. The clients have been happy, but I don't believe in my heart that it will change the client, or lead to incremental EBIT, or make their employees feel more confident about their company.

I've certainly made my firm money, and our client points of contact are happy. But I don't think the client's shareholders, and the larger client organization particularly benefited.

It's not that we destroyed value; it's just that we made a stack of slides that made everyone look good, but didn't lead to any change. You could say the final briefout deck is like the Emporer's New Clothes. Nobody understands it, but everybody pretends to be impressed by how it looks.

Since I don't care anymore, I don't have any choice.

So I'm quitting.

When the going gets tough, the pretty quit

"I WILL support others who seek to serve, in or out of office, for the RIGHT reasons, and I don't care what party they're in or no party at all. Inside Alaska - or Outside Alaska. But I won't do it from the Governor's desk."

....

My decision was also fortified during this most recent trip to Kosovo and Landstuhl, to visit our wounded soldiers overseas, those who sacrifice themselves in war for OUR freedom and security... we can ALL learn from our selfless Troops... they're bold, they don't give up, they take a stand and know that LIFE is short so they choose to NOT waste time. - Sarah Palin Resignation Speech, July 3 2009

Isn't it interesting that to support her resignation, she used an example of people doing the exact opposite of what she was doing?

People who support Sarah Palin aren't listening to her words (because they are contradictory and non-sensical). They're feeling her conviction, her passion, her certainty and saying to themselves "if she's so sure about it, and it aligns with my worldview, then she's gotta be right."

Sarah Palin would make a great strategy consultant.

New Vault.com FAIL

"But the economic downturn hasn’t shelved expansion plans for career Web site Vault.com, which on Tuesday, June 23, unveiled a multimillion-dollar revamp." - Workforce Mangement.com

Vault.com Traffic Popularity, from Alexa.com. Note the log scale.

"The new Vault represents the first major redesign of the site since 2001. Late in 2007, private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) purchased a majority stake in the successful career information company. At the same time, Mr. Sorenson, a media industry veteran of NBC, CBS and Fox, took the Vault helm. Mr. Sorenson is charged with unlocking the considerable potential of the brand and business – and taking it to the next level of growth.

VSS, a New York-based media-focused investment firm, has further capitalized the company since the purchase to underwrite the additional investment in technology.
" - Business Wire

They got their spike in demand, only it went in the wrong direction. The PE guys are going to be pissed that they got suckered into re-upping; I wish I could see the business case justification on this one.

I suspect the poor design, slow performance, and frequent shutdowns can be traced to nobody working the linkages between the executives who were strategically visioning and the programmers who had to execute on it. The sad part is, the programmers will probably get the blame when it's really the executives' fault. Guess who made sure the links are cornflower blue?

If Naomi Newman is reading this, give us the inside scoop. Who fucked up?

Consulting Dinner at the Courtyard Marriott

Sometimes, you just gotta go ghetto.

Consultants = Big Strategy, Little Execution. Client Needs = Little Strategy, Big Execution

"There's a lot of money in prolonging a problem, telling the client what they already know, not taking the steps to solve it, and just sprinkling in some buzzwords." - NumbaJockey

NumbaJockey nailed it. Consultants get paid to ponder, strategize, optimize, align, accelerate, etc. But rarely at a strategy consulting firm do we help the client to execute.

I once worked with a guy who had done several projects at a large auto manufacturer. He described, with some condescension, how our firm had given our clients all these brilliant strategies, but the client had never implemented them, and therefore it was their fault. My response was that if the strategies aren't implemented, it's a worthless strategy, and that's our fault.

For the consultants out there, how often does your "strategy" recommendations, ACTUALLY get implemented? Clients always say great things about the work at the final brief out, but what percentage actually result in changes at the client?

What am I doing? Well, nothing.

I fear I'm losing the ability to actually get things done. After years of making slides and doing analysis, I am starting to wonder if I could actually get something done. Like grow a plant from a seed to harvest.

At one point I was an entrepreneur, and every day I got stuff done. Actual products, actual service, actual value to clients.

A friend of mine is opening up a store in Manhattan - over the weekend we talked about his business plan over beers. I looked through the financials, the marketing plan, the exit strategy, and saw it was pretty light. This stuff isn't this guy's strong suit, he admits. But he wasn't worried, because he just knew, with total confidence, how to bring customers in and make them happy. And I believe he will succeed, because of his confidence and competence.

I walked away from the bar thinking that if a consultant were in his shoes, they would craft a beautiful business plan... but they wouldn't know how to actually get customers in and how to make them happy.

Another One Bites the Dust

"...I decided to end it all. The prospect of wasting my youth (and the rest of my life) doing something utterly meaningless that makes no positive tangible difference to anyone’s life was certainly not appealing." - The Analyst

Consulting chews people up. The travel, the uncertainty about work, the lack of control over your career, the sacrifice of your personal life, the eating out 4 days a week on an expense account, the distance from actually seeing something done, the relentless pressure to get promoted or be fired... all of it just wrecks people's lives. It's no surprise that the industry has a 20% annual churn rate; the half life of a consulting career is just 3 years.

I've chosen to share this blog with some friends and co-workers over the past year. I've come to regret that decision somewhat, because I feel the need now to be more circumspect in comments about my work. I've had to filter what I've wanted to write, with what I could write. My frustrations with my firm, with the projects that I feel are a waste of my client's money, with the exertions of effort for dead-end marketing or intellectual capital initiatives - I've had to store them up inside me, where they've burned me up and increased my bitterness.

But this week something has changed; I realized that I am not alone. I am not the one eyed man in the valley of the blind. Others see the faults that I do, have the same frustrations and sense of injustices. I am not crazy. I am not a wimp. I am not a whiner. I am just one of many hardworking people, seeking a rewarding career, and finding that the current experience falls short of that goal.

Somehow, that realization that other see the same reality that I do fills me a brighter measure of satisfaction. For that, my colleagues, I thank you.

Filed under the tag Consulting, not Bitterness.

McKinsey: Obfuscation through Excessive Analysis

One common characterization of McKinsey work is that they will do all sorts of ridiculous levels of analysis, even if the outcome isn't cogent to the actual case. A harsher view would say that McKinsey hangs audacious ideas onto that analysis to push the client into pursuing their recommendations, even if they won't work in reality (i.e. "Ted Airlines").

Consider the article that fell into my reader today:

Consultant Ninja Analyis: Power curves have interesting properties that I remember from undergraduate circuits class. McKinsey's going to use an interesting mathematical formula to tie economics and nature together. Great, let's see what they do!

Consultant Ninja Raction: All this lady has done is sort a few statistics according to size. Once you sort a population by size, it almost inevitably follows a pareto distribution. And a pareto distribution can almost always be fitted by a power curve function.

If this consultant wrote "bank crises by size show us that you should focus on 'Build flexible business models'" she would be challenged by the client. If she instead writes "a power curve analysis with an R-squard of 0.96 shows us that bank crises are dynamically unstable. Therefore you should "Make the system the unit of analysis'", the client, who can't possibly understand her 2 weeks of work in a 60-minute meeting, would blandly nod his head.

Bottom Line: A common (and fair) criticism of consultants it that we whip up terrificly complex analysis for the purposes of intellectually bullying clients into just blindly going along with the larger message we construct. McKinsey is guilty of it here.

PS. What the hell is the Y-axis on the banking chart, anyways?

The Secrecy of Management Consulting

The profession of management consulting is supremely intellectual, involved with the application of frameworks, hypotheses and logic to messy and abstract realities, furthering the search for truth (and incremental EBIT).

Many professions share this search for truth, in their respective domain. What makes management consulting stand apart is the absence of collaboration and sharing of knowledge, so present and integral to other professions.

Consider the following:

Doctors

• Open teaching hospitals, books, published papers, conferences

Lawyers

• All briefs and arguments filed with the court are open to the public
• Legal arguments and analysis are shared with opposing counsel in any negotiations.

Scientists/Professors/Engineers

• Research is shared publicly, published papers, conferences, teaching universities

Military Officers

• Army War College, joint training exercises, officer exchange programs, published books

Auditors/Accountants

• FAS rulings, journals, filings with the SEC.

Management Consultants

• Conclusions are never shared outside the client
• Books & articles are filled with bland platitudes
• Clients rarely share decks from prior work from previous consultancies
• Internal Knowledge management systems are universally pathetic

In short, the management consulting industry has no means of independently evaluating and rigorously defending logic & analysis.

"Without light, truth cannot be found."

Dilbert Slays, one day at a time

Mealy-mouthed consultant speak

Sent in by a reader...

"My visit started with meeting the President of XXX. We had a fascinating dialogue about XXX's strategies for global expansion - in both the YYY and ZZZ sectors - and the balance between current imperatives and longer term globalisation trends. We honed in on the importance of being "authentically local" as a critical success factor, which has played out in a win in India and the challenges they have in deciding where to place their geographic bets. They have a similar need to reinforce long term relationship development versus campaigns or transactions, which is analogous to our own drive toward client centricity. We also discussed the importance of the expansion of their services business as a counter to lower sales as well as the very active management of their pipeline given the volatility of their customer base. XXX is an account where we have taken a steady approach over the past couple of years to develop C-suite relationships and it is clear we have an interesting platform for the future." - Internal Communique of a major consultancy

What the hell does all this mean?

Calling amateur mathematicians

Given a set of x-y values like the above, where X=0%, Y=0%*, and at X=100%, Y=infinity.

How do I create a function in Excel to fit a trendline for this data?  The answer will power a cool analysis that I've been putting together.

Would it be better if I turned it into a Lorenz Curve by indexing the Y-values?

* Yes, I know (0,0) is not plottable on a log chart.  It's not about plotting it on a chart, it's about establishing a function to fit this curve.

Mealie mouthed consulting speak comes from...

Source: ThisIsIndexed, via ChangeThis.

If I hear the word "thought leader" one more time...

"global scale," "leverage key capabilities," "uniquely positioned." Sigh. My brain rots at the overuse of abstract terms without really the speaking truly understanding what they mean. It's really just poor intellectual & verbal discipline.

US Industries in a World of Shit

I was thinking about broken US industries this evening. For some reason, saying an industry is "broken" just doesn't do it justice. Suddenly my mind made a low-associative barrier link to Private Pyle, and for some crazy reason, it made sense.

Industries in a World of Shit:
1) Investment Banking
2) Health Care
3) Auto Manufacturing
4) Defense Procurement
5) Management Consulting
6) Real Estate

What other industries would make this list?

PS I wish this was an April Fool's Joke, but sadly it's not.

Friedman Billings Ramsey and Tom Peters

Friedman Billings Ramsey was hot back in 2005 - boutique investment bank, middle market, a cool FBR acronym. I guess all glory is fleeting these days. Now they're called Arlington Asset Investment, I guess to hide the fact that FBR lost a lot people a lot of money.

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There is a larger lesson here. Let me explain.

One week before seeing FBR's stock price, I ran across a long story from Tom Peters of In Search of Excellence fame. If you haven't heard of Tom Peters: He was a partner at McKinsey who wrote the most influential business book of the 1980s. It wasn't until 2001 that he admitted that he made up most of the data in the book.

"Fortune called Tom Peters the "Ur-guru" of management, and compares him to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and H.L. Mencken."

Anyways, back in 2005, Tom Peters loved FBR.

I guess they weren't so different after all.

The longer I am in business, the more allergic I am becoming to business gurus and journals (Tom Peters, Gary Hamel, HBR, McK Quarterly, etc). My reasoning is quite simple; if this stuff that everybody reads actually works, then we'd be a world full of awesome organizations. Instead nearly everyone I know (my company included) says that their firms are seriously dysfunctional in some way.

Source: The "PSF" is Everything!, TomPeters.co.uk