Small Firms, Big Problems

The first thing you notice when you move to a smaller firm is how much more freedom everyone has. No process, no approvals, no problems, right?



After a while, you start noticing how much more personality everyone has. She does everything but gripes constantly; he does nothing and no one seems to care. I would say that everyone is writing their own job description, but that's not true because no one even has a job description.

It's a free-for-all. If you do something, it becomes your job. If you don't do it, someone else has to pick it up.

You'd think that everyone being slammed with various tasks would lead to them all pushing back when someone doesn't do their work. But no! They're all so worried about losing someone (and thus having even more work piled on) they just suck it up and figure out how to pick up the pieces. Everyone basically just does whatever the hell they want to get by.

This is probably ok for the B and C players out there, since they can just coast by and hope the money never runs out, but it sucks for those of us who actually get shit done. I'm picking up work from Mr. Foot Shuffler (seriously, dude, pick up your damn feet when you walk!), Eeyore (yeah, I get that you're unhappy, thanks for sharing!), Forget-Me-Now (we just talked about this!), and even Ms. In-Charge (isn't it your job to manage these people?)

But still, it was a good move. I was suffocated at The Big Firm and was never going to get ahead with this attitude. I'll probably be running this place by next year. So what's to complain about?

Oh yeah. The clients. But that's a story for a different day.

Do Big 4 consultants have deep tech skill(s)?

I thought you all might enjoy reading this piece by Keith Townsend: Do Big 4 consultants have deep tech skill?

TL;DR: No (cf. Betteridge's law of headlines)

"In the end, the value of hiring a Big 4 management consultant is that you get a broad range of knowledge and the capability to answer tough business questions. A good adviser will help you ask the right questions and guide you to partners that can help create and implement detailed execution. I would not hire a Big 4 to deliver the technical portion of a project. I’d wouldn’t hesitate to engage them to help provide some rigor and oversight but not manage the actual execution."

It's always fun to hear what an ex-Big 4 consultant thinks of his old life. It's also fun to see him dance around what he really wants to say.

So are you saying I'll help you "ask the right questions" or "answer tough business questions?" I imagine it's going to be one of those two.

And as for hiring me to implement, I'm sorry, but I'm a consultant. We don't actually do what we propose.

Consulting Mad Libs

Ever notice the eerie similarity of consulting deliverables to Mad Libs?

It seems that as a firm gets more "mature" (in the procedure sense) all of its output becomes a massive game of "fill in the blanks." Just like Mad Libs. Need a deliverable for a small backwoods paper company? Fill in the blanks. How about a Wall Street financial? Same deliverable; just fill it in.

Oh, sure, firms like to pretend they're not doing this. "All of our deliverables are bespoke," quoth the faux Brit. "We wouldn't dream of passing off some former consultant's work for some other company as yours! Your problems are so unique and engaging, after all!"

But it's simply not true. The more I crash the conference rooms and cubes of companies all over this big world, the more I realize that everyone is just as screwed up as everyone else, and usually in the same way. I bet I could literally "global search and replace" the company name on my last deliverable for my next gig and it would be 90% of the way done. In fact, I bet I just did!

And it's not just us consultants who are doing this. I just took a gander at some legal papers (thankfully I'm not getting served this time!) and lo and behold it's an obvious paste-up. Change the names and addresses, update the property listing, and you're good to go. And just like my deliverables, the bulk of "the doc" is a standard set of appendices unabashedly attached. I bet they didn't spend more than an hour constructing this nuclear bomb!

Don't get me wrong. This isn't really a bad thing. Would you really prefer a totally-from-scratch document? Don't you think the Mad Libs approach is the best possible way to avoid omission and undesirable creativity? Let's just come clean. It's Mad Libs all the way down.

Note: The Mat Libs logo is used for illustration and parody. They don't endorse this blog, no way, no how. If you're not familiar with Mad Libs, check out their site. They're awesome!

What is a "3-4-5 Consultant"?

There are many terms in consulting that just sort of seep through our consciousness without needing to be defined. But this kind of "consultantese" can mean trouble for newbies. So it is with "3-4-5", an important but opaque term of art in this industry. What does "3/4/5" mean to a consultant?

Put plainly, "3-4-5" means that, for each week you're working:

• You'll spend 3 nights at hotels
• You'll spend 4 days working at the client site
• You'll spend the fifth day back at the office

In other words, a 3-4-5 consultant can be expected to be away from home for four days and three nights just about every week.

Usually, the "3-4-5" schedule looks like this:

• Board a regional jet Monday at 5:30 AM for a flight to some lame city (Rochester? St. Louis? Frankfurt?), spend a long Monday at a boring office park, skip dinner, and get a late check in at the Hampton Inn (since that's the best they've got out there)
• Listen to a bunch of dispirited B- and C-players complain about their life all day Tuesday and Wednesday at the client site, the Applebee's, and the "inn"
• Pack up Thursday morning, skipping the waffles, and make an excuse to disappear at noon so you can fly back home before missing another night
• Fill out expense reports and attend "team meetings" all day Friday

Metaphorically, however, "3-4-5" is a promise from the firm. It means they intend to achieve some mythical level of "work/life balance" by "allowing" you to be home more than half your nights. "We're the good guys," they'll claim during your interview. "Unlike those body shops, we give our consultants a 3/4/5 week, treating them like the professionals they are!"

The new hire hears this and immediately dreams up a "3-2-2" scheme, traveling all day Monday, eating at fancy restaurants and going out clubbing three nights, and heading home first thing Thursday before skipping the last day of work. Do not fall into this trap. This is not how it is!

In reality, "3-4-5" often devolves into "4-4-5" or even "5-5-5", since the client never agreed only to have you on-site four days. Plus, "we have a staff meeting first thing Monday, and where were you Thursday at 4:30 when we needed you?" I've known many consultants who fly on Sunday and Saturday, even!

So there you have it. An ideal "3-4-5" consultant spends three nights and four days on the road. Sometimes.

What In The World Is A Deliverable?

If there is one constant in consulting it is the production of deliverables. But what the heck is a "deliverable" anyway? This is one of the first lessons in consultantese that new consultants learn...

Deliverables are pretty much what we consultants do: Deliver stuff. So, leave it to the consulting mind to come up with a suitably vague yet descriptive term for whatever we crap out at the client site!

A deliverable can be anything, but traditionally it's a full written report, printed and bound, delivered with an accompanying presentation. That's the Ultimate Deliverable.

But lately I've been successful in lobbying for lesser deliverables. After all, aren't bound reports kind of "1970's Rand" and don't we live 4 decades in the future?

After wowing my clients with my mad PowerPoint skills, I began de-emphasizing the printed report. Finally, I just delivered my write-up via email, focusing entirely on the preso.

Then came The Big Move: I modified the SoW to specify the report as an optional component, leaving just the presentation as the master deliverable.

Wouldn't you know it, the clients jumped all over the chance to save $10k by not having a printed report prepared. Sales went up, and management got on board. Yes!

Now I loathe The Deliverable a little less, since it's usually just a presentation. And, as every consultant knows, you can get away with pretty much anything you want in a presentation!

"Project Report" illustration by Nick Bramhall

Use Whoever's On The Bench

Warming the Bench by LouisRiley

Lots of people are aware of the old "bait and switch" perpetrated by the Big Firms: Show up with Mr. Incredible during sales, then staff the project with Jane and Joe College once the contract comes in. Maybe Incredible turns in the final report and attends a few dinners, but he really had nothing to do with the project.

Many folks don't realize it, but small firms do just the opposite. When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And when Bob is "on the bench" he instantly becomes an expert at everything.

I have always been pretty easy to bill. Too easy, in my opinion, since I was always billing! But my firm was loaded with odd experts and expert oddballs who seem to spend too long on the bench.

Instead of firing the oddballs, most firms will find a spot for them. I've been asked to "massage" the resume of various dead wood staff, adding my own bullet points to their skimpy skills. I've even been asked to portray them as experts and "support them remotely" when they had a question!

What a racket! Big or small, clients should watch out for the switch. And wannabe consultants should be wary of both situations, since games like these can really affect your reputation!

One Last Hurrah for Her

IT consultants are mostly men, eliminating most opportunities to hook up with co-workers. It's much easier to pick up a real estate agent at the hotel bar than try to convince the much-hounded hotties of IT they should bed down with you! But sometimes the cards fall in your favor, with a woman consultant on the hunt for a boy toy!

I was lucky enough to be part of a multi-disciplinary strategy project, including servers, applications, organizational realignment, and even human resources advice. Yeah, you heard that right: We had an HR consultant on our team!

I wasn't sure who they'd get for that role. Our company sure as hell didn't have anyone remotely qualified! But one of the local managers had a friend who'd just retired from a lower VP of HR role at a respected company, so they brought her in for one last hurrah as a consultant.

I had just turned 30, so a recently-retired teammate barely even registered, even though I heard it was a woman. Instead, we all settled on the back tables at the hotel bar, watching baseball before we kicked off our new project. Consultants are known to drink. And considering the nature of the job, we're known to drink well. But nothing could have prepared me for that night!

After a few hours, our new team member arrived. "Lilith" was hot. There's just no way around that. Even at 60, she was slim and ready for a young stud like me. And this girl could drink: She started by ordering a bottle of red wine, much to the shock of us con-boys!

She immediately zeroed in on me. She plunked down her bottle and glass, looked me in the eye, and began to spill the beans. She wasn't recently retired, so much as fired. Her offense? Boredom. And she was also recently divorced after 35 years. Her offense? Boredom.

She wanted to know what the consultant life was like, so who was I to deny her that? I needed to pick up some new dress shirts anyway (it was a long project) so I offered to take her into the city with me. You never saw anything like the eyes on this bored old dame when a guy half her age offers to take her to Macy's, dinner, and drinks in the big, bad city!

I was young enough not to know what I had my hands on. We had a fantastic night on the town before cabbing back to the hotel. I was even too naive to understand why she needed me to carry her bags back to her room! But it didn't take long to figure out what she had in store once the door closed.

We didn't see each other again after that week. It turned out she was fired for incompetence as well as boredom, and even a consultant needs to show some capacity to produce deliverables. I hear she retired for good the next week, not needing the money or work anymore. I also hear she shocked her friend by shacking up with a young stud there half her age. Who saw that coming?

She reached out once, letting me know how much she enjoyed our night out and making sure I was ok with it. A class act!

The Client is Always Wrong

The hardest-learned lesson for any young consultant is how to be wrong. After all, you're the expert, right? But we're all painfully aware of our own limitations; otherwise we'd be in sales!

It's important for a good consultant to acknowledge and admit his limitations. It can even become a sport! Once you're gray enough, you can plead ignorance to almost anything and still get the gig!

I once admitted to the client's main point of contact that, until that meeting, I had never even heard of the product I was developing requirements for! Never mind that I knew it pretty well; I just wanted to see what he'd do! Of course, he kept the project going. After all, he had picked our firm…

But have you ever noticed that the client is almost never right? In fact, it's fair to say that the client is always wrong about everything, from requirements to the final punch list.

This may just be the hardest-learned lesson for an old consultant to face: You're going to tell them one thing and they'll do whatever they decide anyway. The best you can hope for is to convince them, through and through, all of them, that your way is best.

If you can't get real heartfelt buy-in, you're just as bad as they say consultants are!

Whatever. You know we're all even worse!

Jet Lag? What Jet Lag?

Post courtesy of alert guest blogger/consultant Gideon...

Early in my "career" as a for-hire bullshitter, I joined a company with "international presence" and experienced my first bout of real jet lag.

In this case, "international presence" meant we were working with a multi-national with offices in the US, UK, and continental Europe. It wasn't that international, in retrospect, but sure seemed exotic to a 20-something like me!

I had crossed the Atlantic a couple of times before, but I wasn't the air ninja I am today. So I boarded the (randomly-selected) plane and found my (cheap coach) seat. I was thrilled! In a few hours I'd be in Swinging London, telling the limeys how to do it!

As most young guns can tell you, your first solo international flight is an adventure. The snacks! The romance! The free booze! The trying to sleep in coach! Of course, I partook. And partook. "Keep 'em coming!" says I!

By the time I landed in London, I had spent the entire night drinking and smiling in my little seat, and the cold, humid air of Heathrow was not enough to rouse my rapidly-wearing body.

My boss (the bastard) had somehow talked his way into business class and was smart enough to sleep the whole way. We met up at "baggage reclaim" and hopped in a (client company) car for The City. I was already yawning.

We reached the financial district and headed straight to our all-day meeting. Our bags were whisked to The Thistle ahead of us. The luxury! We strode into the glass and steel Edifice of Importance and met up with a half dozen spotty grotty brits to begin our meeting.

I managed to make it through introductions, taking my seat next to the boss at the head of the table, but then it all came crashing down. The moment I was no longer standing, I felt the flight and the booze and the time difference hit me.  The room became a nursery, with the warm air of the projector lulling me to sleep with its sweet song.

I still don't know what happened in that meeting. Somehow, I avoided getting fired even though I slept through the whole thing. I even kept that London gig for a few more trips!

Did I learn? Hell no! I stayed up late, drank and smoked, and even picked up a local specimen of the female persuasion when my "mates" didn't show. But that's a story for another day!

-Gideon
@No_EPO

Consulting Moment of Zen

I'm in a meeting with my client. She says, "I need you to fly down to {insert name of random small city} tomorrow to get a handle on what's going on with the conversion.". I say, no problem, I'll grab an afternoon flight so we can lay out a plan in the morning.

My client says, "...you actually like traveling, don't you?".

Does that make me a bad person?

Alexander Hamilton & Organizational Design

Yesterday I’m at my first engagement kickoff in a room with a firm partner, VPs and Managers.
They all have MBAs from Wharton and Georgetown.
I have a mini-MBA diploma photocopied from the back of my 10 Day MBA book.
(a.k.a. I have no idea what’s going on).

At one point, I was confused about the difference between a centralized and a decentralized organization. Apparently my confusion was obvious by my face, and a Level 4 noticed.

Level 4: You look confused. You studied political science, right?

Me: Yes…

Level 4: Centralized organizations are like Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists. Decentralized organizations are like Thomas Jefferson and Republicanism.

.

For Visual Learners:

(Centralized Organization)

(Decentralized Organization)

The sad thing is once he said, that I understood.