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Steve Jobs Critics about Consulting

Steve Jobs once made a critical comment about consulting, suggesting that consultants lack the experience of seeing their recommendations through to implementation and the opportunity to learn deeply from their mistakes. He said:

"Without owning something over an extended period of time, like a few years, where one has a chance to take responsibility for one's recommendations, see them through all stages, and accumulate scar tissue for the mistakes, one learns a fraction of what one can. Coming in and making recommendations without owning the results is a fraction of the value and the opportunity to learn. You get a broad cut at companies, but it's very thin and two-dimensional."

Additionally, many people believe that "Consultants get a bad rap because it’s very easy to pretend you’re an expert in something you’re not, and they don’t get to learn the depth of the issues."

What are your thoughts on these critiques from Steve Jobs and the general public? How do you think they align or conflict with the consulting profession today? Are there specific ways in which modern consultants can or have addressed these criticisms? How do consulting firms ensure that their consultants have the depth of knowledge and accountability necessary to deliver real value to clients?

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Florian
Coach
on Jul 09, 2024
1400 5-star reviews across platforms | 500+ offers | Highest-rated case book on Amazon | Uni lecturer in US, Asia, EU

Hi there,

Interesting question!

2 quick perspectives on this:

  1. The lack of ownership and hands-on responsibility over the long term (e.g., the full life cycle of a product or the lifetime of a strategy project and implementation) is definitely a key reason why many people leave the profession after a few years. 
  2. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of how consulting firms operate with regards to their expertise. Client-facing consultants (who are often extremely junior and may lack industry-specific expertise) act as the interface between the client and the support organization of their firm that is active in the back. When you hire a McKinsey team, for instance, with the classic model (EM+2), the team will constantly pull in the firm's experts in the analysis, the problem-solving etc. This is the part that clients usually do not see but you are not hiring just 3 people and a partner, you are hiring the full organization. 

Cheers,

Florian

Pedro
Coach
on Jul 09, 2024
Bain | EY-Parthenon | Private Equity | Market Estimates | Fit Interview

It depends what is the reason why you hire consultants.

If you are doing a reorganization… well, experienced consultants have seen many organizations and went through many reorgs. Sometimes they do multiple reorgs in the same organization (not because the previous one went bad, but because the organization evolved and needed to change). How does that compare with the workers of the company… who've done none? But at the same time, they know their company and can provide valuable inputs and insights. And they should still be in the driving seat, not the consultants. Consultants give advice. Companies that don't challenge that advice are abstaining from providing the valuable inputs that are needed for the project success.

Regarding strategy… same thing. Consultants are great to analyze the market, bring insights about the competition, find new opportunities… but the decision has to be made by the company, not the consultants. It's all about the combination between the expertise of the two that brings success. Consultants bring the options and the evidence. But they don't have the specific business experience.

The real issues usually are with process improvement. Very frequently you'll have consultants improving processes whose impact they won't really understand - and you'll have decision makers accepting those changes because they also don't understand the consequences (but want to cut cost, or streamline process, or some other objective). And here, once again… the issue is the same. Who's on the driver seat? It has to be the company employees, and not the consultants.

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