YouBet said:
bonfarr said:
I have seen similar from Anderson Counsulting, I don't think our company adopted any of the things they recommended other than utilizing the labor model they crafted.
I've worked with all of the majors either directly or indirectly. Most of the time these guys are brought in to do the following:
- used as an "objective third party" when you have internal politics or conflict keeping you from a decision.
- market research you can't or won't do yourself.
- executive is scared to make a decision or simply doesn't know what to do next and wants cover.
The usual output from this is a deck that summarizes or distills information you already know into a pretty format.
Using these firms is like when my wife comes home excited about some epiphany or learned something amazing and after telling me about it my response is, "Yep, been telling you that exact thing for months."
Sometimes they just need to hear that same thing from someone else's mouth to accept it.
You are very correct. Back in the days after I completed my MBA, I wanted to get into management consulting. I had some good experience in my field but I was under no illusion that I could give advice to a Jobs or a Gates, both of who didn't even have degrees. I also wondered why a CEO with experience would bring in an external companies to help him run the business.
CEO already has a plan of action and has to convince the board, so it is much easier to hire McK and tell them to arrange arguments to align with his plan so he can say "hey even McK likes my plan". Much easier to push through.
Boring grunt work companies don't want to do.
Maybe access to some external data.
Basically the same as what you say above.
