>Also, this lets the CEO appear unbiased to all the people who "lost". So they can get on board with the new policy but not feel like the CEO shot them down personally, which is bad for morale, can lead them to quit, etc.

The flip side is that it is also bad for morale for someone to be recommending a solution for some time, the recommendation is ignored, a consultant is hired, the consultant recommends the same solution, and then the recommendation is implemented. This is exacerbated when the consultant's fee is some large percent or maybe even a multiple of the salary of the person who originally recommended the solution. It makes the original employee feel worthless and doubt the leadership's ability to properly evaluate solutions.

As a consultant I like to flip this situation around, and let the internal staff who are already advocating for the direction I feel is best to be my biggest cheerleaders. Engage them early, let them know you're there to help them personally, and they'll help you do a better job when presenting your shared ideas to the brass.

But... it’s not your shared idea.

It’s their idea, and the company didn’t have a process in place to let them present it except through your consulting engagement. Sure, if it’s a good outcome for the employee to work with you to get things implemented fine, but it still stings a bit that someone from the outside was trusted more than an invested employee before any traction occurred.

See also: “let’s hire a consulting firm to recommend an operating model to us.” (Often before we’ve asked our own employees)

I don't control the situation I've walked into and the events preceding, but I can control the outcomes. I'm not there to take credit for other people's work, but if management isn't on board with their ideas, I can oftentimes help to frame the message so it will be better received. If the "rank and file" is willing to work with me, I'm going to bend over backwards to make sure they have a seat at the table and that their existing work is recognized. I get paid either way so there's no point in trying to take all the credit.

I understand that, as the employee whose ideas have gone unheard, this whole situation may be perceived as a ridiculous waste of time and money. Sometimes it actually is. It might be management's own inability to discern good ideas from bad, a poor understanding of the business or technology problems they face, the solutions available on the market, or lack of trust in their own staff.

More often it's simply managers looking for a broader perspective from an outsider who has engaged other organizations with similar business and technology problems. I start with the understanding that they're sincerely looking to do the right thing until they give me reason to believe otherwise.

This is a really refreshing and inspiring approach, and it speaks to the importance of "tactically deployed empathy." You're one of the good ones :)

Do you have any recommendations on resources/articles/books, either for "rank and file" trying to ensure their messages are framed well, or for consultants or others who find themselves in situations helping ideas to cut through the noise?

I'll share one that I've found incredibly helpful in the past: "Never Split The Difference" by Chris Voss https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014DUR7L2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

I think it’s much more often managers trusting the advice that they paid $3 million for more than the advice that they’re paying $100k/year for.

It doesn’t matter that the $3M advice is given by someone barely more than an undergraduate. McKinsey wouldn’t still be a company if they fucked people over like that would they? (hint: They would)

I understand why you’re there, and I’m with you having worked as a consultant in this role a number of places. Once you’re in the seat there’s a way to do it right.

The OP’s point about morale impact,however, still stands regardless of a consultant’s intentions, I think. Further, the fact that shorter engagement consultants will not really understand your org even with outside experience which is hugely exasperating for “human capital”, “change management” or “just do X” IT improvement decks.

So many organizations go straight to the outside instead of trying to establish some healthy internal dialog around improvement. To me this is an anti-pattern, and happens to be hugely profitable for consultancies.

My boss' (we were internal consultants) mantra was "we can accomplish anything if we don't get hung up on who gets the credit". She is one of the best I worked for.

Large firms do have the ability to offer ideas from a different perspective. Their value isn’t 0 for ability to give new ideas.

Meta, but this comment reads exactly like it was written by a consultant.

They literally wrote "As a consultant..."

That's one of the biggest red flags that something may have been written by a consultant. ;D

>The flip side is that it is also bad for morale for someone to be recommending a solution for some time, the recommendation is ignored, a consultant is hired, the consultant recommends the same solution, and then the recommendation is implemented.

Speaking as a consultant, my experience has been the opposite. I have walked into many organizations, said <obviously good thing>, and been hailed as a hero by the handful of folks who had been saying <obviously good thing> all along because FINALLY someone gets it! These are people who have been killing themselves in the trenches fighting this fight forever. When you finally show up and resolve it it's like the Army of the Dead in Return of the King. Fight's over, you can go bask in your "told you so" afterglow now.

It also turns out that most of the time, those people may have been smart enough to get <obviously good thing>, but were pretty bad at communicating the value of <obviously good thing> to anyone who mattered or at making a plan for how to get from <bad thing> to <obviously good thing>.

All of this is not to credit McKinsey or any of big consulting. They mostly provide a "signature method" to launder your your obvious observations into a glitzy powerpoint presentation to make it look like you applied rigorous testing and experience to what was really a cursory observation your entry level analyst made. All the people with actual experience are too busy killing themselves at business development and facilitating this "observation laundering" process to apply their brain power to developing actual insights.

The "told you so" afterglow wears off when the people they told take credit, get bonuses, and still don't listen.

When you are a junior staff you don't understand why decisions are made rather inefficiently. You only come to understand as you move up the ladder in the organization.

There is nothing stupid or evil about how "organization" behaves. It's exactly same as the society we all live in, just at a smaller scale. When you are in the position to make the call, you see that someone's idea may be as good as someone else's idea. How do you decide which idea is right? Do you choose one and fire the other with another idea? What happens when a wrong decision is made? This is the exactly reason why CEO or executives make compromises. They have responsibility to make sure that the organization survives no matter which scenario pans out. Junior staff often don't understand this because they can always move onto another opportunity when things collapse. As their career progresses, they also come to understand that you can't torch the field just because you don't like the crop growing there - it's much harder to find fertile land to begin with.

> Junior staff often don't understand this

As people move up they either still know the business or they don't. Not trusting the people whom are running the actual business is IMO terrible.

The COO at the company I work for (recently left) could describe the daily work in detail. He could have conversations with any recently hired staff, various level of management, but also with the board, investors and customers. Lastly, he (amazingly) knew all the people he worked with before. No matter if that person 10+ years later is still in the same position (or not).

IMO having a good network, being able to communicate with various levels is highly beneficial. Your post seems to suggest some staff should not be taken seriously. That's utterly weird to me.

> How do you decide which idea is right?

From your post it seems one of the options is not to listen to staff. Further, junior staff won't gain experience if you do not let them develop.

> They have responsibility to make sure that the organization survives no matter which scenario pans out.

For one, why isn't this explained? Secondly, some decisions are bad without actually going into it any further. Then multiple years are wasted while everyone involved knew this from the start; they were just not listened to.

IMO regarding "scenario pans out": for some cases it's entirely true. But also sometimes it's not the case at all... just nobody listened to the people running the business and too much disconnect.

Wasn't sure if this was an autocorrect problem, but if it wasn't, by "exasperated" did you mean "exacerbated"?

Yep, although I can't blame autocorrect. I simply spelled it wrong and lazily chose the first suggestion from the browser's spell checker without giving it much thought. Thanks for the heads up.

Ironically the situation is exacerbated leaving the person exasperated.

Also /s/moral/morale, although they can be closely related: People imposing immoral policies definitely create bad morale!

Thanks. At this point I should probably go ahead and hire an editor to review my comments before publishing.

Speaking as a frequent commenter and author, I suggest this is teh system working as intended. There are not letters to the editor you put in in envelope and mail away.

When HN "published" your letter to the editor, it's not printed on atoms and distributed all over town, or mailed out to subscribers.

You can post a comment, edit it, and maybe even fix something based on feedback. I suggest that without being completely slipshod, it's better to go ahead and make a comment when you have a coherent thought.

The community will help you sort out any spelling, grammar, or attribution hiccups. I think this is a good thing for everyone, reducing friction and eliminating even self-gate-keeping.

Mixing up two homophones is not a tragedy. Someone not contributing because they fear that they'll be snubbed for getting a word wron? That's a tragedy.

JM2C, &c.

if you don't want to feel like you're pandering to HN comments, you can probably hire a consultant to do the proof reading for you! =D

I cut out the middleman and just pay people to comment for me entirely. This one cost me $34, one dollar per word. But punctuation is free so it is not a bad deal.

Wouldn't one enjoy some benefits from being proven right?

I've been in this position. The feeling of satisfaction wears off in a few minutes. My resume was updated later that week and I was on to the next adventure within two months.

And this was with a DR who stuck up for me and mentioned to the CEO directly that we paid a consultancy big bucks to tell us something a chorus of engineering team members have been saying for years.

Their loss. Your new employer's gain.

Sorry to hear that. Hope things worked out.

It did! I wasn’t even super pissed about it, was just the straw that broke the camels back

I haven't seen enlightened management who appreciate people who are proven right. It is mostly interested in people proven wrong face consequences. Those who got it right are just doing their day job.

Right up until you realize the 23 year old snot who made the recommendation billed ~$3 million against your ~$100k salary.

McK will bill $3 million, the 23 year old may get at best same as your $100k salary. Which makes everyone feel sour, esp the youngster for getting 3% of what their boss charged the client...!

I think the snot is pretty happy with his ‘all expenses paid’ little vacation.

The person billed that for the consulting company, but I doubt they got that much. Consulting companies burn both ends.

If you look at entry-level consultant salaries at McKinsey and then divide by the fact that they're often working 7-day, 100-hour workweeks... you'll quickly discover that your "23 year old snot" is actually making around minimum wage on an hourly basis. They could be flipping burgers instead with a lot less stress.

The consultants aren't the ones taking the money home, the firm is. So don't blame the 23 year old. He or she is honestly just doing their insane best to pay off their huge student loans.

100 hours a week at federal minimum wage is less than $38k. These people are not making anything remotely close to minimum wage.

But federal minimum wage ($7.25) is a lot smaller than, say, the NYC minimum wage ($15), which is more relevant. At the NYC minimum wage, 100-hour work weeks get you about 80k a year, which is about the base pay for an undergraduate new hire at McKinsey.

The 23 year old is hoping to become a partner someday and then really rake in the bucks by leveraging successive new crops of 23 year olds.

Ideally, but unless that person was well known for their opinion then the consultants usually get all the credit.

Consultants fill positions with responsibilities that are short term. You have to ask yourself whether you are in a position that bears saying in what will happen from your long term viewpoint. If not then lobby the consultant to make it so e.g. by changes in operating model, creation of a Centre of Excellence etc. If there is a failure in hearing people ideas the presence of a consultant is as much a symptom as it is an opportunity.

I completely agree with this sentiment, and now I add any and all analyst responsibilities I come across to my desk just so that I can better articulate my recommendations in c-level business language

I know y’all want to repeat the whole thing about consultants we've all heard before, which sure, is “exactly this”, but the article goes much deeper, and is specific to the government.

Here, consultants are ripping off taxpayers because a Clinton-era rule financially incentivized the government to outsource work to “entrepreneurs”. This department is literally given a percentage of the money it gives to consultants.

GSA gets a cut of contract purchases that go through them but this makes sense because it incentivized them to be better alternatives than an agency’s own contract shops. Typically working through a GSA schedule like this can lead to faster turnaround and lower prices - nobody can charge the government more than their best commercial customer, legally, under this framework. If you don’t get value, put your own RFP on the street.

The incentive to get more dollars if you get more under management as a contract-service-provider does make sense. They’re not a monopoly on procurement in government, despite the author writing a book about monopolies.

Note: in some cases they have monopolies on some things in government, but not procurement.

Thanks for providing the background on how this came about, it makes a bit more sense now.

Could we get the same result by allocating the GSA a flat amount based on what they need and then penalize them by cutting the budget if no one uses their services, just like we do for other agencies?

No, the structural/legislative design of the GSA protects it from penalties because most of Gov't procurement is routed through its offices both Military (with caveats of course) & Civilian. The GSA spends money to reduce spending.

Interesting. I was discussing hypothetical possibly better arrangements, however, it's clear from the original article that the GSA doesn't currently operate this way.

Isn't this the definition of a kickback?

A kickback is when you personally get reimbursed for your decision, which isn’t the case here. A government office is being funded by a fee on services rendered.

"Referee" is too unbiased a word. Shocking how frequently the consultants' conclusions mirror the arguments posed by the side that pays their fees.

Money is one thing, but there's also just plain old information bias. Politics don't go away when the consultants come in. The consultants are going to be working closer with the group that brought them in. It's not uncommon in my experience for the 'other group(s)' to ghost the consultants.

Except the consultants don't always put forward the one best solution, they put forward the solution of the person paying the dollars.

I remember one awkward situation i was familiar with where two diametrically opposed groups both notionally hired the same consultancy firm to write their respective proposals/submissions.

No points for guessing whether the consultancy offered the same advice...

Funny in one sense, but only because if you don't laugh you'll cry...

See, the problem is that when companies get big they stop thinking in terms of values and start thinking in terms of equilibria.

A values approach to this problem would be promoting people with good taste, and then building a culture of acquiescing when they decide to step in. If someone doesn't like that, fuck 'em. Yeah it might hurt in the short term, but every time you let people with bad taste stall the show you erode your culture a little, until one day you come to work and realize that nobody can decide anything anymore.

An equilibrium approach is to say "well, a consultant will cost $3M/year, and potentially pissing off Alice and Bob and Carol and maybe Dan is painful and it's difficult to calculate how much that will cost, and $3M < UNDEFINED == TRUE so let's hire McKinsey".

I have a huge soft spot for economics, but the thing about equilibria like this is that they never account for externalities and long term costs, and $3M < UNDEFINED is just bad logic to use, and also it's spineless and cowardly and people should know better.

> Within any organization, you can have 3 or 6 important people pushing in completely different strategic directions. And it can be clear to any unbiased observer that there's only one good, responsible choice,

Or, there ISN'T a clear exactly one good responsible choice, it really is a matter of judgement and/or choice of priorities/values... and then whoever can exert the most control over the contractor can still get their way by getting the contractor to pick their side.

> "but that's just your opinion, man".

TIL The Dude is a phenomenal businessman.