Why I Suck as a Consultant

In last week's Time, there was a commentary by Michael Kinsley about Mitt Romney's penchant for outside consultants, and how he'd use them if elected president. Kinsley has this to say about consultants:

What exactly do management consultants do? I asked this of a McKinsey [& Co.] recruiter many years ago. He said, "We provide expertise." I said, "But you're thinking of hiring me, and I have no expertise." He said, "We'll train you." Nothing about that interview dissuaded me from the view that consultants spend at least as much energy and brainpower selling themselves to clients as they spend doing whatever the client pays them to do.

In the beginning, at about the turn of the last century, what management consultants offered was much clearer. It was called Taylorism, after its inventor, Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor called it scientific management, and it involved slicing up industrial processes into bite-size tasks and then doing detailed time-and-motion studies to determine the most efficient way to perform them.

All that's left of Taylorism among management consultants today is a pretense to scientific precision in whatever it is that consultants do, which generally involves parachuting into some situation, being smarter than everybody else, coming up with a solution--or at least a PowerPoint presentation--and then leaping onto their horses and galloping away. Who was that masked man? At their best, consultants see a situation with fresh eyes and bring some useful analytical tools. At their worst, they are a prestige play verging on a protection racket. Hey, Mr. CEO: Every other big company has hired McKinsey. What's your problem?

With all respect to other legitimate radio consultants, it is easy to fall into the consultant-as-god mindset; after all, entire radio stations schedule their lives around us, and nothing is as heady as a room full of people listening to you with full and rapt attention.

Here's why I suck:

• When they are, I clearly label my pronouncements as opinion, not research-backed gospel.
• I admit when I'm wrong.
• I don't think, say or imply that I know more about the station or the market than the client.
• I do not come with a set of stone tablets (which are a bitch to get through airport security anyway). The best solutions usually come about as a result of collaboration.
  

Hey, we're all good radio guys, and you could be consulting for me ... but there is real value in having another good radio guy - one who knows what's going on in lots of different markets - take a look from the outside. That, to me, is what good consulting is.

And that should be enough.