What a pity !

Recently, I noticed an interesting pattern of "individuals" coming to me directly (or indirectly) to help them out of some embarrassing (even job threatening) situations.

The bottom-line of these situations is that these individuals get assigned to some positions/tasks that they are not qualified to deal with.

Instead of admitting this, they try to get professional help from someone like me (of course under the table or in the back-end without anyone taking notice of that).

Being a management consultant and advisor on business and technology issues, I do not mind doing this except for a little problem out there.

These individuals cannot take such topic officially within their organizations to budget for the cost and pay accordingly. Instead, they tend to pay from their personal money (pockets) and hence cannot pay the real market value for such management consultancy/advisory services. This leads to a situation where I am asked (directly or indirectly) to lower my fees for such services.

What a pity ! I usually do not sell my premium services for peanuts. Hence, I take the issue to the other extreme. If I am convinced to offer my services to such individuals for whatever reason, I prefer to give them entirely free rather than accept peanuts ..

We are not in the monkey business and we do not accept bananas and peanuts