the consulting consultant

Fred Flintstone (we’ll call him that) is a senior Project Manager. His boss, a senior executive, has just called him in to say that they (whoever ‘they’ are) think he needs some “consulting consultants” to help deliver a new project.

Let’s follow the story now in ‘real present time’.

A vast budget, which he didn’t even know existed, has just been ‘found’ in order to pay the mega-bucks associated with the consultancy concerned and one of the consulting consultants senior partners will be coming in tomorrow for an initial meeting.

On the given day Fred puts on his good suit to meet the senior partner only to find out later in the day that there is no need to have a meeting as the consulting consultants have met senior management and they all see each other as strategic partners. Even better news, so he’s informed, is that the first consultants will start to arrive next week.

Fred’s struck dumb by this revelation.

His boss normally struggles to decide what to have for lunch, due to the risks of being criticized by someone for having made the wrong decision – yet here he is being dynamic. He’s also flouting a budget of millions for consultancy fees, when Fred’s project has previously been strangled for want of a new server.

Fred’s incredulity is self-evident but he’s told the decision comes from “the top”. What that means is that his boss hasn’t a clue what’s going on either but he doesn’t want to ask.

The first meeting
The consultancy’s senior partner arrives. She’s smart, attractive and obviously has a streak of steel in her character.

After about 30 seconds, Fred realizes that he’s been weighed, measured and instantly dismissed as not being a key influencer or decision maker. Quite simply, he’s not worthy of any more of her time.

She departs with the bare minimum of professional courtesy, saying he’ll be meeting ‘his’ new guys next week.

He tries to enjoy the moment because he knows from experience that it’s probably the first and last time he’ll ever see her. From now on her job will be to infiltrate the stratosphere of his company and to cross-sell the services of her consultancy into the organization.

Fred’s new team arrives
So, a team of consultants arrives and sets up shop in what has up until now been Fred’s project team.

He bravely tries to define roles and responsibilities for them but quickly sees that he’s considered to be little more than an administrative facilitator for their largely independent activities.

A “team within a team” culture soon develops and poor old Fred realizes that the individual consultants are, in fact, reporting to their in-house senior partner and account manager – the same one who is always too busy to spare him any time.

After a period, he asks for a frank chat with his boss to try and explain that the company’s paying a fortune to a group of consultants who are notionally part of his team but over whom he, in reality, has no control whatsoever. In fact, he’s hazy about what they’re doing day-to-day, as they won’t tell him.

The boss is sympathetic but says he can’t do much about it. The trouble is, the consultancy’s senior partner account manager is a close friend of the CEO.
Fred professionally asks for the terms of reference for the consultancy’s activities and their success criteria but the response he gets is that he’s being small-minded and failing to see the bigger picture.

Accountability
A week or so later, there’s a serious screw-up.

One of the consultants has made a major error and upset someone in the company. The senior partner has apparently parachuted in and met the person whose feathers have been ruffled.

It’s a case of oil on troubled waters and all that.

Fred hasn’t been involved at all nor does he have a clue what’s going on but he’s called in to his boss’s office and reprimanded for not being in tight control of his team. He’s strongly advised to send an apology to the offended individual, pointing out that the problem arose because he’d failed to sufficiently brief the consultant concerned.

In vain does he protest that he’d predicted this sort of thing would happen and that he couldn’t have prevented it in a million years because he’s by-passed daily in terms of work plans and activity control.

Fred’s boss suggests that he perhaps needs some remedial resource-management training and should start to think ‘out of the box’ a little more. He pretends to be grateful for his boss’s insight.

The chickens return to roost
One weekend he’s at the local racetrack with his family and by chance spots the CEO and his family in the first-class corporate hospitality stand. They’re clearly part of a group with the senior partner of the consultancy and her family. It’s a bit like looking up at The Gods on Mount Olympus.

Amazed at this co-incidence, Fred is just SO pleased to see everyone getting on so well together and regrets that he has neither the financial means nor social standing to gain access for his family to such exalted circles.

On the very next Monday morning, he’s told that Internal Audit is coming in to look at his project’s books, given he’s running a huge forecast-to-completion overspend. When they arrive, Fred goes through the figures and points out that spending was actually well within budget until such time as ‘his’ consultants arrived.

Internal Audit look grave when he’s unable to provide them with a terms of reference for the consultants or any meaningful explanation as to what they’re actually doing.

A week later IA’s report goes to the board and overnight the consultants disappear. Fred hears they’re suing the company for early termination of contract and that the corporation’s lawyers are recommending paying up a seven-figure sum.

His boss calls him in a day or so later to say that his project is being assigned to another project manager who, it is felt, has a greater degree of budgetary control acumen. Fred’s being re-designated “project coordinator” and may be given the chance to manage a major project again, once the CEO has forgiven him for the consultancy fiasco.

Fred goes home that night, safe in the knowledge that his career and the corporation itself are in such safe hands.

This is, of course, entirely imaginary. Such things couldn’t ever happen in real life – could they?

My regular disclaimer: Consulting Consultants is a figment of my imagination. To protect the innocent all names have been changed, characters combined and events compressed. Certain episodes are imaginative recreation, and those episodes are not intended to portray actual events.