Why are consulting companies so successful? Is it all connections? Their role in appeasing investors by external intervention and change (no matter how useful)?
Prestige and the perception of impartiality, alongside the ability to serve as fall guys. And to a significantly lesser degree they can tell you things you actually don’t know or make recommendations when you’re stuck because they’re an outside set of eyes.
What this means is when you decide to make a controversial decision they can take the heat in place of experts, and unlike internal experts you don’t wind up in a particularly flimsy situation when you inform them of what they’ll be suggesting. And if it all goes as poorly as it might you can blame them. (And everyone knows this so the consultants are shielded)
And for the situation where you don’t actually know what to do, theoretically thet may or may not be bad at it. If you’re stuck you’re stuck and not only can they possibly help, they can definitely provide cover for a bad call or an unwinnable situation
To a certain degree they’re a result of people in a position to spend large amounts of money whose job is to make calls.
It is all connections and a box checking for the board and/or CEO.
The CEO can deflect bad outcomes on the consulting company for suggesting doing what the CEO had in mind to do, but didn’t have the board’s approval.
Corporate consulting is such a giant fucking grift and they are responsible for the enshitification of so much.
Why are there no employees to help you on the sales floor or at the register? The CEO wanted to hit a performance metric to maximize their bonus and brought in a consulting company to advise. The consulting company looked for low-hanging fruit, which is cutting costs in the form of payroll. The CEO dips when there is no meat left on the bone. The next CEO hires a consulting company to maximize the bonus and then you get fake sales to mask a following price increase. CEO dips and the next CEO’s consultants gives the consumer a rewards program to harvest data to sell and drive sales through psychological manipulation(See Kohl’s cash).
Corporate consultants are horrible people with business degrees looking to harvest marrow from a stripped corpse.
Why are consulting companies so successful? Is it all connections? Their role in appeasing investors by external intervention and change (no matter how useful)?
Prestige and the perception of impartiality, alongside the ability to serve as fall guys. And to a significantly lesser degree they can tell you things you actually don’t know or make recommendations when you’re stuck because they’re an outside set of eyes.
What this means is when you decide to make a controversial decision they can take the heat in place of experts, and unlike internal experts you don’t wind up in a particularly flimsy situation when you inform them of what they’ll be suggesting. And if it all goes as poorly as it might you can blame them. (And everyone knows this so the consultants are shielded)
And for the situation where you don’t actually know what to do, theoretically thet may or may not be bad at it. If you’re stuck you’re stuck and not only can they possibly help, they can definitely provide cover for a bad call or an unwinnable situation
To a certain degree they’re a result of people in a position to spend large amounts of money whose job is to make calls.
It is all connections and a box checking for the board and/or CEO.
The CEO can deflect bad outcomes on the consulting company for suggesting doing what the CEO had in mind to do, but didn’t have the board’s approval.
Corporate consulting is such a giant fucking grift and they are responsible for the enshitification of so much.
Why are there no employees to help you on the sales floor or at the register? The CEO wanted to hit a performance metric to maximize their bonus and brought in a consulting company to advise. The consulting company looked for low-hanging fruit, which is cutting costs in the form of payroll. The CEO dips when there is no meat left on the bone. The next CEO hires a consulting company to maximize the bonus and then you get fake sales to mask a following price increase. CEO dips and the next CEO’s consultants gives the consumer a rewards program to harvest data to sell and drive sales through psychological manipulation(See Kohl’s cash).
Corporate consultants are horrible people with business degrees looking to harvest marrow from a stripped corpse.
Consulting companies are just esoteric quacks but for businesses.