Quote from rufus_4000:
Why am I replying I have no idea. I have spent 6 years in management consulting in a top firm (BCG).
While the average quality of people I worked with in consulting tend to be higher than almost all the other place I have been (wall street, trading, hedge funds, etc). The problem isn't that they are not smart, the consultants are very smart, and very articulate as well.
Problem is that most top management have no idea how to use consultants. Consultants are notorious for putting a smart kid ("smarties") into the fire very quickly, I was just 3 months out of grad school and I was sitting in front of CIO for a wall street firm, advising him on e-commerce strategy (this is circa '96-97). Yes, I graduated top of my class, and I published a lot, but really I have no idea what I am doing, I was literally gleaming the information as I go along (it is easy when there are all the information available to me). And from my career path in consulting (fast promotions), I did extremely well.
Consultants are very good in bring in a good process and objectives, good background study and a well articulated situation analysis. But the actual implementation of the problem resolution still rests with the client, that's the inherent weakness with consultants.
Did I take advantage of the consulting situation? Of course! I learned to talk my way into practically anything, but I don't have the 5-10 years of industry experience or depth to back it up. Yes I can walk into a situation (engagement), analyze the problem and the players quickly, and come up with some intelligent to say. But am I really contributing to solving the problem? I am not so sure, since I won't be the person (nor the firm) to implement the solution anyways, that's not my problem.
Rufus
thanks Rufus, that was an honest post, and I will say that I appreciated it....
I too found that most consultancy firms of the higher caliber had talent in depths not found outside of the wading pools of similar firms. I missed that aspect after I stepped off their track too.
What you were describing as a career void was what was quantified at Coopers, in their analysis of why consistently these consulting firms can "quantify" through the latest B-School analysis methods, but were horrid in applying or making substantive changes in their clients' processes or environments.
It all came down to "people-i-za-tion skills " that are not taught at these consulting firms and subsequently don't make it into their analysis or recommendations and these same skills are nurtured at these ordinary companies, however, when they are "analysized" they are found to be waisting resources (time, money, processes, skills, etc.).
Simply put (using the example of Diversity) hiring based on social contributions to the community never produces the most efficient, most productive or most rational results in contrast to hiring the (supposedly) "most qualified" person (presuming that said person would want to work at that company or job or city). However, hiring based on secondary goals, such as hiring handicap(s) or hiring high-shcool educated parents instead of college grads has more of an affect upon the corporate culture and combined work product than on the highest (measurable) efficiency process. This process brings more to the table than just raw talent and skills to simply accomplish (almost robotically) the job at hand. These
intangibles almost always escapes measurement by the recognized B-School analysis techniques and leads these consultants to the false conclusions that what work product being produced by Company B could be done more efficiently and at less cost, hence they need improvement.
(wow, if you could read through that gook, I have to give you credit)
hope that point helps transition from the Consultant's model of cold analysis to the corporate realities of why one company differs from another and why two companies brewing coffee could have such vastly different customer loyalties to their products....
Care for a Starbucks?
