Management Consultants ?

[Safety_Helmut]

Has anyone seen the article on Charles Dunstone in the Telegraph today ? One of his thoughts struck me as quite interesting:
Management Consultants: "We never employ them. Our idea of failure would be McKinsey coming here to tell us what our strategy should be. That's what we do, that's our job, that's what people pay us to do."

Any thoughts ?

Safety_Helmut

[newswatcher]

Depends what you want them for. If you are planning to do something which your competitors have done/are planning to do, and you want to keep "ahead", it may be beneficial/timely to employ a reputable firm that has done this before.

If you are just asking them to come in and tell you what's wrong, then you could be throwing your money away.

[An Teallach]

Thanks SH, seems like my kind of boss. I think I'll write and ask him for a job! :ok:

[egbt]

A good threat from a CEO to a failing management team is “shape up or I’ll have McKinsey in here”.

In my experience 50% of the time that consultants are bought in to review business strategy or other high level stuff it’s to tell the boss what he/she already knows but is afraid to say or act on.

He/She can then "blame" the consultants. Such a waste of time and money. :sad:

[tucumseh]

I seem to recall MoD getting caned by auditors a few years ago for spending approx £60M on consultants. They promptly spent £300M the following year.

The formation of IPTs cost a fortune and their recommendations were mostly mandated policy anyway. ABW is full of them. Risk. Quality. Safety. Integration. Jobs that, in many cases, are core competences of civil servants who aren’t yet senior enough to work in DPA. The problem is that the Gods of DPA don’t actually realise this as they measure competence by style, not substance.

[FrogPrince]

Sorry, I've just had to pick myself up off the floor. Surely, the words 'competent civil servant' are even more of an oxymoron than 'Military Intelligence' ?

Having seen MAFF, DTI, FCO and DWP up close and personal on major IT / Transformation projects I am a firm believer in small / flat government. I reckon 50% of civil servants could be released into the wider jobs market with no appreciable dip in service, especially the 'jaw-jaw' middle management layers.

(Let's face, if you live and work in and around London and you're good enough to work for Deutsche Bank/BP/BA etc. you would do, wouldn't you ?)

Just one example; a 'small' piece of work at the FCO, additional to the main contract. GBP 60 K. Tom commissions the work, a colleague and I perform task, investigate problem, recommend solution, write report. 'Oh', says Tom, 'I'm off - I've been promoted to x.' Dick comes in, discards work, 12 months later commissions his own pet consulants to do same exercise. Taxpayer is GBP 120 K down.

Still, my PPL (A), conversion to PPL (H), IR, ME etc. ratings are all being funded by Gordon Brown. Happy days...

[tucumseh]

Sorry FrogPrince, but here’s good and bad everywhere.

You see the headlines about poorly performing projects, but the press, and more to the point, the MoD Gods are not interested in the majority that are run well. This forum contains many positive comments about kit. Somebody had to procure it. The current thread on Sea Harrier is a good example. Can’t recall any consultants on that – just very competent engineers, scientists and, yes, aircrew in a team that worked. If you tried to assemble such a team again you couldn’t, due mainly to cutbacks. The idiotic notion that if you cut an aircraft fleet in half, you can cut staff and funding proportionately. Put another way, the MoD staff projects to cost, not content. IPTLs take the hit, but just use scarce funds to buy in consultants. I’ve nothing against the individuals, they are just taking advantage of Government stupidity, but I ask you to accept that they bring no added value when measured against the typical competences expected of junior civil servants.

[Re-Heat]

He's an idiot in my opinion.

If someone:

(a) cannot admit that their capability does not include a function, and therefore fails to hire in outside help, they will no doubt cock it up.

(b) decides that for project x requires some expertise, and builds it up, only for it never to be required again, he wastes far more money than through hiring consultants.

It is an arrogant attitude from an outdated management thinking.

You neither need consultants for everything, nor need they be expensive if used effectively, but to stubbornly write them off entirely is akin to holding the stubborn view that man will never fly...

The problem is that effective and civil service are two words that are rarely seen in the same sentence...they have no idea how to use consultants.

[An Teallach]

The basic problem is that for civil servants and military staff officers the rewards for success are far lower than the penalties for failure. Therefore, 70% of the consultant hiring is done by:

1. People unwilling to take difficult, but often glaringly obvious decisions.

2. People wishing not to take responsibility for what has to be done, and passing it on to consultants.

3. People wishing to kick difficult problems into the long grass in the hope that they will be posted before the consultant reports.

4. People being unwilling to research and appreciate a problem and come up with their own solution.

I can see there will be times when technical expertise will have to be bought-in and will be cheaper than maintaining an in-house capability. I just never saw consultants being used in that manner!

[FrogPrince]

Folks,

It frustrates me especially because, as mentioned above, the good Civil Service people are dis-incentivised to change their ways. (sorry for previous flippancy, viewers).

What really, really, really gets me going is SCS generalists getting to the top of the food chain in a specialist area without a professional qualification to their name: Finance, Commercial / Procurement, HR etc. This rarely happens in the commercial world nowadays, why does the SCS get away with it ??

[tucumseh]

Re-Heat

“cannot admit that their capability does not include a function”


I respect the right of anyone to hold an opinion but in the context of project management (where I see the biggest expenditure on consultants) there is a simple rule which has been endorsed and applied (albeit selectively) by CDP, his senior staffs and Personnel on many occasions over many years. That is, all projects managers should be able to do any job in their (MoD) team if the incumbent is unwilling (!) or unable to do his own job, there is a vacancy, or lack of funding for staff. The list of required functional competences therefore includes Man Management, Risk, QA, Safety, System Integration, Requirements Management, ILS etc etc.

That it is only applied selectively, meaning grossly inexperienced and unsuitable staff are promoted, often never having managed either staff or more than one project (if any at all), is a common reason for employing consultants.

I agree there are occasions when a temporary or unforeseen surge makes consultants handy, but the roles I mention are routine and all project teams must make full provision for them from the outset.

[Re-Heat]

I agree there are occasions when a temporary or unforeseen surge makes consultants handy, but the roles I mention are routine and all project teams must make full provision for them from the outset.
I quite agree, but for a one-off project, building up a capability or attempting to do something that requires expertise when the capability is not there is wasteful and/or creates a capability not required again. That is what consultants are for.

There is no point in generating a capability if it is not to be used again.