CONSULTANT: A jobless person who shows executives how to work. CONSULTANT (or expert): Any ordinary guy more that 50 miles from home or office. CONSULTANT: someone who takes the watch off your wrist and tells you the time. I don't work here. I'm a consultant. Top Things a Consultant Shouldn't Tell a Client ----------------------------------------------- That was my first guess as well, but then I really thought about it. You should see the hotel I'm staying at. I just realized that I was in junior high when you started working here. I like this office space. I'll have them put me in here when you're gone. My rental car looks nicer than that junker you're driving. Sure it'll work; I learned it in business school. So what do you need me to tell you? Of course it's right; the spreadsheet says so. I could just tell you the answer, but we're committed to a 3 month project. What are you, stupid? Top Things You Shouldn't Say at a Consulting Interview ------------------------------------------------------ I'm a t-shirt and jeans kind of person. Do you pay overtime? I hate flying. I'm useless without ten hours of sleep a night. There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Do you cover rental cars for collision? Stanford taught me that working in teams is great for slackers. I think three letter acronyms are for people too stupid to remember whole phrases. Two words: family first. Call it what you want, it still means firing people. Top Ways To Know You're Dating/Married To A Consultant ------------------------------------------------------ Referred to the first month of your relationship as a "diagnostic period". Talks to the waiter about process flow when dinner arrives late. Takes a half-day at the office because, "Sunday is your day." Congratulates your parents for successful value creation. Tries to call room-service from the bedroom. Ends any argument by saying, "let's talk about this off-line." Celebrates anniversary by conducting a performance review. Can't be trusted with the car-too accustomed to beating up rentals. Valentine's Day card has bullet points. Refers to lovemaking as a "win-win". Top Ways to Know You've Got the Consulting Bug ---------------------------------------------- Can't stop using words that don't exist. Worried that he who dies with the most frequent-flyer miles wins. Use so much jargon in conversation, friends think you're speaking a foreign language. Constant urge to give advice on subjects you know nothing about. Always-hyphenating-words-that-don't-need-to-be-hyphenated. Keep seeing bullet points everywhere. Can fit the thematic undercurrents of War and Peace into a 2-by-2 matrix. Tired of having a social life beyond work. A two-page story in Business Week is all it takes to make you an expert. Firmly believe that an objective viewpoint means more than any real work experience. Top Things You'll Never Hear from a Consultant ---------------------------------------------- You're right; we're billing way too much for this. Bet you I can go a week without saying "synergy" or "value-added". How about paying us based on the success of the project? This whole strategy is based on a Harvard business case I read. Actually, the only difference is that we charge more than they do. I don't know enough to speak intelligently about that. Implementation? I only care about writing long reports. I can't take the credit. It was Ed in your marketing department. The problem is, you have too much work for too few people. Everything looks okay to me. A factory has a major problem that closed their manufacturing line. A consultant is brought in. The Consultant wanders around the factory floor, listening, poking. Finally, he takes out a small hammer and taps gently a few times on one particular piece of machinery. The factory line roars back to life, production once again in progress. The factory managers are ecstatic. A week later, the factory recieves the invoice from The Consultant. The price was $900 for less than one hour of work. The factory's business people fumed and asked The Consultant for an explanation. The Consultant offered to send in an itemized invoice. The business people said, "yes, please do." A second invoice arrived. It had two line items. Item 1 was, "Rectifying Problem with Hammer Hit...$1" Item 2 was, "Knowing Where to Hit the Hammer...$899" Once upon a time, an American automobile company and a Japanese auto company decided to have a competitive boat race on the Detroit River. Both teams practiced hard and long to reach their peak performance. On the big day, they were as ready as they could be. The Japanese team won by a mile. Afterwards, the American team became discouraged by the loss and their moral sagged. Corporate management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A Continuous Measurable Improvement Team of "Executives" was set up to investigate the problem and to recommend appropriate corrective action. Their conclusion: The problem was that the Japanese team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, whereas the American team had 1 person rowing and 8 people steering. The American Corporate Steering Committee immediately hired a consulting firm to do a study on the management structure. After some time and billions of dollars, the consulting firm concluded that "too many people were steering and not enough rowing." To prevent losing to the Japanese again next year, the management structure was changed to "4 Steering Managers, 3 Area Steering Managers, and 1 Staff Steering Manager" and a new performance system for the person rowing the boat to give more incentive to work harder and become a six sigma performer. "We must give him empowerment and enrichment." That ought to do it. The next year the Japanese team won by two miles. The American Corporation laid off the rower for poor performance, sold all of the paddles, cancelled all capital investments for new equipment, halted development of a new canoe, awarded high performance awards to the consulting firm, and distributed the money saved as bonuses to the senior executives. How many consultants does it take to change a light bulb? I'll have an estimate for you a week from Monday. A man walks into a Silicon Valley pet store looking to buy a monkey. The store owner points towards three identical looking monkeys in politically-correct, animal-friendly natural mini-habitats. "The one on the left costs $500," says the store owner. "Why so much?" asks the customer. "Because it can program in C," answers the store owner. The customer inquires about the next monkey and is told, "That one costs $1500, because it knows Visual C++ and Object-Relational technology." The startled man then asks about the third monkey. "That one costs $3000," answers the store owner. "3000 dollars!!" exclaims the man. "What can that one do?" To which the owner replies, "To be honest, I've never seen it do a single thing, but it calls itself a Consultant." |
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