Consultants hate failure

TalkBack 1 of 27:: Next »

Thread View
Flat View

Falling into a trap that consultants shouldn't: Mr. Berry is making some serious generalizations from some pretty limited experience (and this is said with all due respect to 20 years in the industry--but I know it's limited experience, because with half that I have seen plenty of counter-examples); something you should avoid in consulting, if you hope to discern your clients' circumstances accurately and serve them well.

Not all consultants want to build long-term relationships with clients; some of them simply want to make their money and move on to the next. If it's true that failures affect business in the long run (which is debatable in light of other points I'll get to in a moment), one needn't look any further than nearly any publicly traded company to see that long-term interests are frequently sacrificed in favor of short-term profits. Certainly not all consultants feel the costs from failed projects. If BSG Alliance offers fixed-fee projects without escape clauses then I can understand why Mr. Berry thinks this, but it's certainly not true in many (most?) situations where additional problems mean additional hours and the terms are time and materials. The more time, the more materials, the more money.

The business repercussions are rarely as substantial as are implied and the reasons should be obvious--as Berry says "...failures are never black and white" which leaves as much room to point fingers at the company as the consultant, and beyond that, the abysmal rate of project success in this industry leaves many companies far more forgiving than they might be with non-technical projects. And frankly, the fact that the technology is so difficult for most people to understand results in a lot of room for unethical behavior without much fear of getting caught. You don't have to search any further than the recent US government lawsuits against Accenture, Sun, and HP consulting services for various egregious ethical lapses going back to 1998. That's ten years of tolerance for fraud, not just failure--if you can get away with something so serious for so long, what are a few extended failures along the way that let you pocket a few extra bucks? And even after this, does anyone really think those firms are going to stop churning out profits? Heck, it almost makes me want to go out and start sinking projects.

I can see where the arguments that he provides are good motivators for achieving project success, for a scrupulous and ethical consulting firm, and in that light I applaud what he has to say, because it says good things about Mr. Berry and about BSG Alliance. As a broad view of the consulting industry, however, I believe it's terribly naive, and businesses looking to engage consultants should enter into such engagements with less rosy assumptions of ethics and motivations.; Posted by: IMS_Scott Posted on: 10/26/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use