Mark Law, Lead Tutor
Expert consulting practitioner & career mentor with extensive industry knowledge & experience.
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There’s nothing like a bit of fun at work or over a drink afterwards!
This is the nearest I can do online to buying you a drink, enjoying a chat and of course swapping some jokes.
Wine Bar at the Institute of Directors
For a real life drink on me, why not book onto one of our courses?
A physician, a civil engineer, and a consultant were arguing about which was the world’s oldest profession. The physician remarked, “Well, in the Bible, it says that God created Eve from a rib taken out of Adam. This clearly required surgery, and so I can rightly claim that mine is the oldest profession in the world.”
The civil engineer interrupted, and said, “But even earlier in the book of Genesis, it states that God created the order of the heavens and the earth from out of the chaos. This was the first and certainly the most spectacular application of civil engineering. Therefore, fair doctor, you are wrong: mine is the oldest profession in the world.”
The consultant leaned back in his chair, smiled, and then said confidently, “Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?”
Consultants have to be adaptable and operate in whatever political environment they find themselves in. Here is what a major international firm of consultants currently advises its clients as best practice in different political systems around the world:
SOCIALISM: You have two cows. State takes one and gives it to someone else.
COMMUNISM: You have two cows. State takes both of them and gives you milk.
FASCISM: You have two cows. State takes both of them and sells you milk.
CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
EUROPEAN FEDERALISM: You have two cows which you cannot afford to keep because of milk imported from a member state with cheaper labour. So you apply for financial aid from the European Union to subsidise your cows and are granted enough to carry on working them. You then sell your milk at the original high price to some government-owned distributor which then dumps your milk onto the market at the price that drove you to subsidies to make Europe competitive.
Here are five sure signs you’ve worked too long as a consultant:
- You can’t stop using words that don’t exist.
- You feel a constant urge to give advice on subjects you know absolutely nothing about.
- You use so much jargon in bed that your other half thinks you are speaking a foreign language.
- You firmly believe that an article in Wikipedia is all it takes to make you an expert.
- You think Darwin would have made a better job of selling evolution if he had put his ideas into a 2 by 2 matrix.
Of course, none of the above applies to me…
A recent MBA hired by a blue chip company was asked by his boss to engage one of the elite consultancies on a major strategy study. Here is a transcript of their conversation:
Rookie manager: ”Can you explain how ??? & Company calculates its fees for this type of engagement?”
Grizzled engagement manager: ”It’s very simple. For this type of study we charge £250,000 to answer three questions.”
Rookie manager: ”Crikey, isn’t that rather expensive?”
Grizzled engagement manager: ”Yes it is. Now what was your third question?”
PIs => Perverse Incentives (an old management accounting joke)
KPIs => Key Perverse Incentives (newer management accounting joke)
CHAOS => Chief Has Arrived on Scene (Royal Navy)
WIIFM => What’s In It For Me? (useful for winning stakeholder support)
BOHICA => Bend Over Here It Comes Again (those who resist change)
SUMO => Shape Up or Move On! (for those who resist change)
FIFO => Fit In or xxxx Off! (for those who continue to resist change)
JFDI => Just ‘Fxxxing’ Do It (for those uncertain about what to do next)
WAG => Wild Arsed Guess (Royal Air Force)
SWAG => Scientific Wild Arsed Guess (Royal Air Force)
NIMBYs => Not in My Back Yard
BANANAs => Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything (Local Government)
WOMBAT => Waste of Money, Brains and Time
SOBO => Statement of the Bleeding Obvious
RTFM => Read the ‘Flipping’ Manual (useful for co-workers)
RTFQ => Read the ‘Flipping’ Question (useful for those taking exams)
THE 7 Ps => Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance
GIGO => Garbage In Garbage Out
FUD => Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
“A vision without a strategy is just a hallucination…”
“Free advice costs nothing until you act on it…”
“Never let a good crisis go to waste”
“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity, the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty…” (Winston Churchill)
“Why invent mediocrity when you can copy genius…” (on benchmarking)
“Never work for your clients, aim to work with them”
“Have you ever noticed that the word ‘Career’ is both a noun and a verb and that both meanings are contradictory?”
“There is no such thing as an organisation, there is only disorganisation…”
“Consultants, like advisers, should be on tap but not on top…” (Civil Service Proverb)
“A true expert aims to know more and more about less and less until they know absolutely everything about nothing…”
“A stockbroker is someone who invests your money until it’s all gone…” (Woody Allen)
“Rescuing a project or company without changing the team is like trying to polish a turd…”
“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”
“Men are from Mars, women are from Venus and teenage children are from Uranus.”
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever… (Mahatma Gandhi)”
“I may be paranoid but that doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me…”
Consultants are normally advised to match their client’s attire so that an external observer cannot tell the difference between consultant and client. This has two benefits for the consultant.
Firstly it reassures the client, i.e. “Hey, this guy is one of us”.
Secondly it allows consultants to melt invisibly into the client’s organisation which makes them much more difficult to spot during a cost cutting exercise.
All of this does, however, make the following fashion advice for consultants rather puzzling:
Q: What is black, yellow, furry and looks good on a consultant?
A: A rottweiler…
Institute of Directors
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