Managing Leadership^®

Years ago in his iconoclastic book, “Up the Organization,” (still worth reading) Robert Townsend said this about management consultants: “The effective ones are the one-man shows. The institutional ones are disastrous.” He went on to say about the institutional ones: “Don’t use them under any circumstances. Not even to keep your stockholders quiet. It isn’t worth it.” He was mostly talking about the fact that consultancies are businesses, with their own growth plans, sales targets, and agendas, which often put them at cross-purposes with their clients, a fact which they needed to find ways to cloak.

A key consequence of this, which is a major problem for all of us, is the creation by the consultant industry of management fads. They need to develop products for sale, after all, and then to convince their customers that there is an urgent need to buy them. We have all seen these come and go, from process re-engineering to “visioning” and the like. As long as consultants need to sell, authors need to establish reputations, and managers feel insecure in their positions or mastery of their craft, these fads will continue.

As long as that continues to be the case, the burden will remain on managers to employ their judgment and restraint in evaluating the presentations made to them by consultants, or the general buzz surrounding the latest fad. But the problem turns out to be more than just the fads - it is also the effect on the quality of the people selling and delivering them to clients.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal discusses a report on the problem of fad surfing by management consultants. A principle element of the piece is the observation that when a fad develops, consultants tend to flock to it, attempting to present themselves as experts in whatever it may be. Of course, they really aren’t - they’re just trying to capitalize on the latest profitable craze. The result is that the general quality of consultant advice declines. Even when the fad is based on a reasonable concept, its delivery by consultants who lack competence or experience in it can lead to suboptimal, and even negative, results. So, in time, clients, their fingers burned by the experience, begin to withdraw from anything resembling the fading craze; the field clears for a new one to take its place.

Both of these issues, the rush by clients to solve their problems by blindly following the latest fad and by consultants, however unqualified, to service that need, reflect poorly on the integrity of the managerial process as it is practiced around the world. Whether you are a manager or a consultant, your responsibility is to stay focused on the job, on your individual and institutional ability to contribute, and to avoid getting carried away by the latest trend. Think of all these management fads and crazes as chaff. They fan across your field of view, exciting your interest and convincing you that each one is an attractive - the core - target for your professional attention. All the while, beyond all this ineffectual distraction, the real target (your job) continues serenely on its way, ever more distant from your managerial control. Don’t be distracted by fads, and don’t put your fate in the hands of self-proclaimed experts, whatever their presumed reputation may be. Do your job.

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