The full page advert in the Guardian was headed The end of consultancy.” When business gets stuck it calls for help. It comes in the shape of fat reports that end up mostly unread, largely unimplemented and often in the bin.“ This by management consultants who claim not to be management consultants. Unlike other management consultants they don’t have all the answers but they know some people who do-your staff. "Why not allow your employees to become their own consultants? If you give them the freedom to question the way they workand the permission to share their thinking, you liberate their creativity." In other words they ask your staff for ideas, suggestions and innovations and then they tell you the Senior Management Team/Board, presumably in the form of a short report or better still a presentation that does away with the need for reading. Oh and then they charge you a lot of money.
Hey but isn’t this what management consultants have always done? Yes but this lot are claiming it not as a con but a virtue. And with that sort of honesty you have to believe them.
Blair McPherson author of UnLearning Management published by Russell House www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
