No enemy is worse than bad advice.

"'[F]ew people, whether in their roles as employees or as citizens, will have avoided the effects of some kind of consultancy-led initiative' such that management consultancy has 'had an impact on the developing character of modern organisations and … contributed to millions of people having to adjust to new ways of working' and, it might be added, of thinking". (Andrew Sturdy, Sept 2011)

After decades of new fads, open offices, organisational transformation, botched audits, mergers, lean cost-saving, six sigma starving, and cutting limbs, consulting and corporate helplessness is a fact.

"Management consultants are generally hired for the wrong reasons."?[2]

Here is a quick rundown of symptoms before we dive into the root causes:

• The corporate quick-fix is in: PR newsworthy initiatives and branding impulses take the space from gruelling cross-company teamwork, business model change and systemic realignment. We notice the panic and the pre-emptive communication steps before a blowback or a likely scandal surfaces. Companies recruit hardy public affairs managers rather than sustainability/circularity experts and keep measuring success by the extent of external messaging.
• Few disclosures with an impactful transition plan: CDP?analysis of 18606 companies finds that just 0.4% (81) have a credible, publicly disclosed climate transition plan with deliverables based on 21 detailed indicators. In addition, 22% have some plans that didn’t meet the muster. This is only about climate; no social aspects of a climate-supporting economy were reviewed. [3]
• C-suite’s massive gap between commitment and action: C-suite surveys tell a complete story. Even if they consult with experts on the need to do something, they aren’t doing much. There is no one-fits-all solution; each company must work out how external advice and examples fit their industry and company path and set their?transition journey. [4]
• Corporate hindrance of sustainable transition (environment, economic, social): Paid not to understand the problem — corporations are unwilling to take some hard truth in order to deliver consistent and transparent outcomes. Thus the miss to motion the necessary integral change in the entire organisation. [5]
• Consulting helplessness: Need better consulting offers and non-traditional talent pools with more business and public acumen and profound domain expertise. The traditional business model has no place for non-traditional talents with business or public experience. The primary selection criterion is former consulting background, “the ability to sell”. Selling something, but not sure what yet.
• Competence washing: Top management consulting firms are desperate for sustainability expertise, either buying or speed-training a cohort. [6, 7]

This is where we are now. But where do we go from here?

The current state of mainstream management consulting is untenable.?

Although attractive for filling resumes and executive agendas, their unsustainable service offers and hubris towards ethics entail an overhaul.

To achieve ethical governance, ecosystem and social cohesion, it is in our mutual best interest that mainstream consultancy's value-proposition, operating principles, and inner workings must change.

Consulting careers have become historically attractive for those well-positioned through top-tier education, professional endurance or their own remarkable business idea. Many see it as a means to value generation, a golden ticket to the C-suite, the pinnacle of problem-solving, or a turbocharger for capital efficiency.?

The recent plunge into sustainability turned it into a foreseeable oxymoron.?

Their menu of typical services ignores and frequently undermines sustainability principles. As a result, individual consulting practices compete for sales revenue, effectively disconnecting the multidisciplinary teams that a more holistic approach would require. The entire consultancy offering needs to be revised, imagining a better economy with stakeholder (meaning people and planet) value and impact anchored in context.

Decisions with unintended consequences

For decades, we have created and ignored significant stress points in the interconnected planetary ecosystem, society, and economy. We have also developed a business culture that systematically undervalues experience and expertise. Tenure has become a liability rather than a virtue or an asset. Having limited operational background is seen somehow as beneficial.?

One must recognise the irony that a segment of professional services sells the premise of competence and answers for problems that they barely understand and have rarely experienced themselves. Moreover, there is an assumption that implementation equals success rather than outcomes.

Strategic frameworks - the bludgeon in the consultant's toolbox - fail to gather insights from years of outcomes. At the same time, they are quickly duplicated across multiple clients. Strategy untethered from tactical and operational feasibility is just wishful thinking — off-the-rack solutions which may be the right size but not the right fit. Standard data packages and out-of-context KPI analysis don't explain the drivers of variations for success or preventable surprises. Pleasing the HiPPO (as is the?Highest?Paid Person's?Opinion) in the room may solve the consultant's income problem.

Still, it may not solve the problem for which they are consulted.

In any case, knowledge of established governance combined with wisdom from hands-on familiarity is what matters in a big complicated world. Speaking truth to power and unbiased advisory originate from solid experience and hardy domain insights. Especially when advising an insecure or less seasoned executive on the other side. Coaching a C-suite to confidently self-fulfilling their tasks and decisions should be paramount to drafting the second contract whilst still negotiating the first.

Problems won't be solved with the same mindset that created them. Or with organised hypocrisy.

We disrupted our planet and society because of short-term financial incentives and skewed priorities. We won't be able to achieve the transition to more sustainable solutions, solve the climate crisis and ensure socioeconomic progress with the current market economic hammer.

The exact product sold by the former 'Big 8' and by their strategy/CPA/finance hires deployed as "ESG experts".?

And before the charge of an anti-consulting narrative arrives, let me clarify this. There are no bystanders to unsound decisions. Presenting scenarios and trade-offs is the consultant's role, with a duty to offer honest insights about all possible outcomes and their unintended consequences. Even though the final say is in the hands of the client, it does not absolve the consultant of all responsibility when their own willful ignorance or lack of due diligence results in havoc.

Insecure people are made, not born.?

Problem forming is the single most underrated skill in management practice. Imagine hiring an external service to advise on a matter that hasn't been adequately formulated. Executive whispering for simplified measures of success, especially of complex realities, thrives on their inept decision-making.

The lost art of problem framing is real.

Your decisions do the talking for your thinking. What problem do you try to solve? What do you know about the situation? Is it a fact or a belief?

Poorly planned companies perform poorly in the long run. Unseen costs of poor planning aren't always that obvious, but we shouldn't take it lightly. Failures can be traced back to the leaders; thus, "fish stinks from the head down". Like a dysfunctional village wrapped in groupthink, favouritism and "we've never seen this before" pearl-glutching. Insecure, inexperienced, yet eager leaders gather in such places. Transgressions, people-pleasing, quick wins, and job-flipping mark their path.?

The need for a leadership development overhaul has never been more acute. Companies should develop and choose their leaders more wisely. Their future depends on the internal management or executive cohort and whom they select to trust as advisors.?

Financial business metrics - animated by external advice - continually undervalue the long-term impact of employment practices. It's staggering to look at layoffs or staffing decisions and find how little the actual functions are understood. And that means that none of the unintended consequences is even imagined.

Human interactions drive company/organisational performance, customer experience, productivity, decisions, business integrity, and culture. Success is never due to the work or contribution of a single individual. As Albert-László Barabási puts it,??"?????????????????????? ???????????? ??????????????, ?????? ???????? ?????????????????????? ??????’?? ???? ????????????????, ???????????????? ?????????? ??????????????. ????’?? ???????? ???? ?????? ?????? ?????????????? ?????????????????? ???????????????? ???????? ?????????? ?????? ??????????????."?[8]

Management consultancy has a direct effect on operational and organisational success. How companies define success determines corporate outcomes and the health of their leadership pipeline. Leaders are expected to translate external knowledge and advice into internally relevant insights, "entertaining a thought without accepting it". [9]

Consultants' recommendation to simplify a complex reality and its network of individuals and tasks into silos might ease the leadership burden but underestimates the pathways leading to long-term success.?

The overreliance on external expertise is a critical component in the demise of business management.

It's a negative spiral by a disruptor that worsens over time. In this case, the disruptors have merged the market and flooded the corporate consciousness with new shiny things to do that allegedly will solve their problems. A former consultant unintentionally made this point, confirming the dependency: "Bottom line: Governments and other clients?benefit a lot from Consulting firms and will not be able to dismiss consultants any time soon."

Academic and audit inquiries prove that "excessive use of consulting services is associated with demand inflation and negatively impacts client organisational efficiency. These findings reveal a strong management consultancy effect, emphasising the risks associated with demand inflation, with implications for both theory and policy." [10] The very reason why organisations don't learn and remain infantilised by the insecure crowd. As we used to say, resigning our effort to highlight situational and executive blindness: "Those who care don’t know, and those who know don’t care.”

"Management consultants are generally hired for the wrong reasons."

But please don't take my word for it. Instead, read Jean Pierre Frankenhuis' piece, "How To Get A Good Consultant", in Harvard Business Review (1977) [2].? This short piece is a true gem.

"Consulting firms seldom, if ever, describe the practical results of their involvement." [2]

"When to hire, It is wise to treat your problem as a difficult sickness: the symptoms are clearly identifiable, the causes are not, and the standard remedies do not work. In short, you should hire a consultant when your organization finds itself beyond the stage of two aspirins and rest for a headache that refuses to go away. The consultant's usefulness is determined by the results of implementing his recommendations, not by the recommendations themselves." [2]

Consider it a discussion starter about today's business management and professional advisory practice. There is nothing new under the sun, and we shall learn the many lessons that recent corporate and consulting scandals reminded us of.

Footnotes:

1. Andrew Sturdy. Consultancy's Consequences? A Critical Assessment of Management Consultancy's Impact on Management. Volume22,?Issue3. Special Issue: British Academy of Management's 25th Celebration Special Issue: Guest Editors: Peter McKiernan and David Wilson. September 2011 Pages?517-530., Accessed on Feb 28, 2023, via?https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00750.x
2. How To Get A Good Consultant. Jean Pierre Frankenhuis. Harvard Business Review, 1977, nr. 6, page 133. Reprint accessed via https://www.jstor.,org/stable/26807690
3. Are companies developing credible climate transition plans??Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). Feb 2023. Accessed on Feb 28, 2023, via https://www.cdp.net/en/articles/climate/developing-a-transition-plan-how-our-accredited-solutions-providers-can-support
4. Deloitte 2023 CxO Sustainability Report. Accessed on Jan 20, 202,3 via https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/about/press-room/new-deloitte-research-on-sustainability-investments.html
5. Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2023. New Climate Institute. Feb 13, 2023. Accessed on Feb 13, 202,3 via https://newclimate.org/resources/publications/corporate-climate-responsibility-monitor-2023
6. Big Four accounting firms rush to join the ESG bandwagon. Financial Times. Accessed on Dec 2022, via https://www.ft.com/content/4a47fb4a-4a10-4c05-8c5d-02d83052bee7
7. The inside war for ESG talent. Greenbiz. Jul 2021. Accessed on Dec 20, 2022, via https://www.greenbiz.com/article/inside-war-esg-talent
8. The first law of success, in Albert-László Barabási. 'The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success'. 2018.
9. Full quote: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”?― Aristotle, Metaphysics
10. Andrew J. Sturdy et al. The management consultancy effect: Demand inflation and its consequences in the sourcing of external knowledge. Volume100, Issue3. Special Issue: Symposia: Consultancies in Public Administration; Ideas and Crisis Response. September 2022.Pages 488-506. Accessed on Jan 2023 via https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12712