Consultants don’t always get the highest ratings. The bad 90%, old jokes ruin it for the rest of us.
Knowing 90% of the trading tricks is the smart CIO’s first line of defense. Here are 7 of the most deadly consulting scams you’ll face as an IT leader.
1. Fix an anecdote
Bad things happen to even the best-run IT organizations. A fixed anecdotal scam is similar to a Texas bull’s-eye, but in reverse. The consultant finds the circle, paints a ring around it, and declares it to be tree rot requiring immediate consultant-led attention.
Individual incidents may be nothing more than random incidents. It doesn’t deserve the CIO’s attention unless it relapses despite the consultant’s overreaction.
2. Ignoring trade-offs
Every change involves trade-offs. When evaluating an IT organization, consultants are paid to identify problems and recommend how to address those problems. Some of the things CIOs pay for are fixes that do more harm than good. A classic example would be to encourage a centralized organization to be decentralized, while other decentralized clients should be centralized.
However, the ignored tradeoffs are not limited to centralization/decentralization issues. Many fixes disrupt the way IT is good at, destroying them as much as they fix them. A prudent CIO will ask what the pros and cons are for any change the consultant recommends, and what the consultant plans to mitigate.
Not all IT managers are as brilliant as expected. Also, some IT managers view consultants more favorably than others.
It’s not uncommon for CIOs to encourage consultants to promote managers they like to positions that will reward them with extra work, whether or not they are the best managers to lead that position.
4. Make the business case
Consultants love this. This is where CIOs engage them to build a business case for pet projects or priorities rather than deciding whether or not they have a business case.
To create one, we start with predetermined answers, work backwards from there, and use curated data, one-way analysis, questionable practices such as inappropriate statistical tests and selective anecdotes to define and justify a successful strategic program. Depends on… Surprise! … Principal contract for the consultant’s employer.
5. Disguised Expertise and Exaggerated Experience
To be fair, Flight 5 is usually a conspiracy between CIOs and consultants competing for contracts. This is achieved by providing a combination of methodology, case studies and references. The methodology has all the depth that PowerPoint offers, and the case studies resemble real-life engagements like movies “inspired by real stories”. reference? Carefully selected clients and client managers (see “Selective Alliance Promotions” above) have had positive results. Sometimes I was the only customer with positive results.
What case studies and references don’t do is describe the results delivered by the actual team the consultants will be staffing the engagement with. It’s impossible, because…
6. Win and Hire
This is less common with delivery teams than consultants who did the work that led to the victory that created the need for delivery teams, but still…
Few consulting firms maintain a bench of any size. As a result, winning contracts is often far more stressful than winning them. After winning a contract, the consulting firm hires the necessary staff to execute the contract, familiarizes the new hire with the methodology, puts the practices required by engagement into practice, and establishes a working relationship with the new manager.
If the problems inherent in this practice aren’t obvious, ask yourself what your success rate is when hiring talent all at once.
7. Promising ‘Best Practices’
In some consultancies, the results IT delivers are less important than delivering them the way the consultants are accustomed to (which is not acknowledged for “best practice” but is common practice).
So consultants must patiently explain why the way IT has successfully supported the enterprise since God created the soil must be replaced, transforming IT staff from skilled professionals into apprentices.
caution
Not all consultants are guilty of all of these misconduct. But we all know they are competing with other consultants who know them and may succumb to temptation.
And there are plenty of CIOs who fall for them. In other words, putting it into practice can be a winning strategy.
So be warned and beware. But don’t be one of them.