Management consultants - what's not to love?

[Banquo's Ghost]

You know that old saw about the definition of a management consultant: someone who borrows your watch and then tells you the time?

Here's a wonderful example.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Black tape red tape

Black tape is being stuck on civil servants' desks to show them where to put their keyboard and pens - at a cost of £7million.

Union officials slammed the efficiency drive as "madness" and added: "It's demoralising and demeaning."

Workers at the National Insurance offices in Longbenton, North Tyneside, were picked for the pilot project.

The Public and Commercial Services Union's Kevin McHugh said: "This office has been open for 60 years and people have managed to find their pens and staplers without consultants helping them in that time."

The black-tape project is part of the nationwide Lean programme, run by consultants Unipart, which has already required staff to move their personal belongings off desks.

The PCSU said: "We had a situation in Scotland where staff were asked, 'Is that banana on your desk active or inactive?' meaning were they going to eat it? If not, it had to be cleared away. It's madness."

But a HM Revenue and Customs spokesman said: "Lean is all about how we can work more efficiently to deliver an even better service to customers."

I'm off for an active banana.

[KukriKhan]

From Unipart's website:

Through our showcase approach to introducing lean, we can not only talk about the theory, but demonstrate how you can implement a culture of continuous improvement that delivers sustainable benefits to your organisation and to your customers.

Ah yes, workplace culture fixers. We have them here too. No kids' pix at desk, no food, no chit-chat... "All business on-the-clock". So the ever-so-efficient, therefore ever-so-happy employees give ever-so-helpful assistance to ever-so-grateful customers.

Balderdash (we don't use that word nearly enough, I think).

[Banquo's Ghost]

In my day, Unipart delivered oil filters to dodgy mechanics on industrial estates. My, haven't they come on?

Codswallop is another under-used favourite.

[Sjakihata]

Oh my God! Im getting a job at such a place, they utilize the Lean concept and are consultants for leadership and management.

Will I survive?

To be continued...

[Ser Clegane]

Oh my God! Im getting a job at such a place,

You will be assimilated

Trust me - the pain will subside quickly...

[Sjakihata]

I should hope so. It's as a student aide only, but still... the horrors will haunt me in the middle of my innocent dreams...

[doc_bean]

We have a lot of consulting firms trying to recruit 'us' off of campus these days, many of them make the mistake of sending me two packages since the particulars of my curriculum are rather peculiar.

Seriously, if you can't notice that you're sending the same package twice to the same person how are they supposed to be able to optimize a real business ?

[InsaneApache]

Piffle!

Another word that due a comeback.

[BigTex]

We have a lot of consulting firms trying to recruit 'us' off of campus these days, many of them make the mistake of sending me two packages since the particulars of my curriculum are rather peculiar.

Seriously, if you can't notice that you're sending the same package twice to the same person how the **** are they supposed to be able to optimize a real business ?

Now that is by far one of the funniest things I've heard all day.

I've never really understood the point of having a person paid to tell you how to run your company. I believe Henry Ford would have a few things to say about them.

Looks like those companies have been bambuzled, 7 mil for tape...

[Strike For The South]

I have a job to that means I can complain.

[Hosakawa Tito]

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

This is just absolute tosh!

?

?

?

?

Seriously, what are they thinking?

[Duke of Gloucester]

We have a lot of consulting firms trying to recruit 'us' off of campus these days, many of them make the mistake of sending me two packages since the particulars of my curriculum are rather peculiar.

Seriously, if you can't notice that you're sending the same package twice to the same person how are they supposed to be able to optimize a real business ?

But it will be cheaper to send out the same package twice to a few people than to implement systems to prevent this happening. The fact that you have not realised this indicates you are not Management Consultant material. You have also spotted something that few MC would: if your well designed systems that work so well in theory end up annoying people, they won't work.

[rory_20_uk]

Personally, I like the sound of the job:

• Good pay
• projects change frequently
• you never have to implement changes
• of you're wrong it's not your company that folds

[KukriKhan]

In this neck of the woods, the actual people brought in to do the 'time/motion' study are between-jobs English Majors and Chemical Engineers, hired on a per-job basis., with a short orientation course in "organizational effectiveness",or whatever it's called nowadays.

I dated a woman (English Major) who was trying to get on with the local schoolboard. While waiting for that gig, she hired out as a management consultant to put food on the table.

[Husar]

• if you're wrong it's not your company that folds

That's a very good point, I should consider doing that job.

[Del Arroyo]

Sounds like the army. Fact is that most people, even when ordered to do things that are simple and beneficial, won't unless forced.

[doc_bean]

But it will be cheaper to send out the same package twice to a few people than to implement systems to prevent this happening.

Errr...it should take about five minutes to program, you have a list of names, you cross-reference names and adresses, if twice the same you don't send. While certainly more expensive you have to look at the indirect benefits, like right now I can tell people the story of the ineffiency of consulting firms and several smart people who might have considered working for them will now think twice. Also my general opinion of consulting is pretty low, which will make me hesitant to use them further in live, which might or micht not make a big difference to them.

It's not always the price of doing something right that's important, sometimes the cost of doing something wrong should be taken into consideration.

The fact that you have not realised this indicates you are not Management Consultant material.

I'm a pragmatic person, consulting often seems to theoretical for me. Besides, the whole idea of mass hiring graduates with no job experience so you can indoctrinate them more easily and then make them tell people 'on the floor' how to do their job just doesn't feel right to me. Must be my working class roots

You have also spotted something that few MC would: if your well designed systems that work so well in theory end up annoying people, they won't work.

Consulting suffers from a lot of problems imo, reality being the biggest

[Duke of Gloucester]

I am sorry you did not take my statement that you are not management consultant material in the complementary way it was meant.

The bit about costs was less than serious too.

[doc_bean]

I am sorry you did not take my statement that you are not management consultant material in the complementary way it was meant.

The bit about costs was less than serious too.

I was just playing along

..and venting

[Andres]

Consultant...

Seems like great fun: make people believe you can add something valuable to their company, annoy them with stupid "innovations" like the fine example in the first post of this thread, ask alot of money for it and have fun for several years afterwards laughing at those idiots who implemented your absurd advises....

Afterwards you have lots of material for a succesfull career as a stand-up comedian

[yesdachi]

This is how big companies deal with the 2% of people that go over the top with the personal belongings and cluttered desks. Rather than just confront the messy person they spend 7 million on a way to shoehorn everyone into being unhappy.

Reminds me of the beginning of Joe verses the volcano.

[English assassin]

Seriously, if you can't notice that you're sending the same package twice to the same person how are they supposed to be able to optimize a real business ?

Ah yes, I remember a marketing mailing once with my name on it somewhere that elicited an angry reply from one recipient along the lines of, "if you can't get my name, job title, or department right, why should I trust you to be my lawyers?"

Which I have to say was an absolutely fair comment.

(I'm better at law than I am at marketing, honest)

Sometimes I can see this from the consultants side though. We "rebranded" a few years ago. Now, for some reason, the powers that be decided they didn't want to look boring. (Why? heaven knows) So they hired a man in a skirt (I kid you not) from an outfit called Zoot Loot and the Big Bananas (or something) and told him to give us an exciting visual identity. And to be fair Man in Skirt did just that.

And then those of us who actually deal with clients pointed out that a lot of our time is spent writing letters to other lawyers in which we try to establish how clever we are and how stupid they are, (or anyway this is what a lit crit person would call the subtext) and other generally heavy duty stuff, and, hey, maybe this dayglo pink stuff didn't have quite the, what's the word, gravitas, we were looking for.

Not Mr Skirts fault though, he was just fulfilling his brief. I think he may actually have cried when it was rejected. He'd never have made it as a lawyer...

God, I still remember the debates in partners meetings about whether to have a "s" at the end of the name or not...