Sometimes. More often, they bring in outsiders to articulate a decision they have already made, especially if it’s going to be unpleasant.
Yes. It's shocking how much of what you see in the papers is driven by consultants and investment banks. There are a few companies who disavow the use of them, but most are unafraid to bring in hired guns.
The not so smart companies hire large teams of consultants who stay there for years. These are expensive employees.
The smart companies use the consultants well to get rapidly informed about certain decisions - such as an acquisition or strategy.
The really smart companies use consultants to help build knowledge or capacity (e.g. how to analyze a potential acquisition) and then kick them out immediately afterwards & keep doing it themselves. VCs were good at this.
The extraordinarily smart compares are spending too much time hanging out with customers and understanding their unmet needs to worry about hiring management consultants. Of course there are consultants that can help with the ability to observe customers as well...
CEOs can't be experts at everything and often don't have the time necessary to research everything they need to research. So as such it's quite reasonable to get people to help them out, especially when you are a new CEO and have to get up to speed really quickly. Getting people from outside the company rather than inside the company minimizes the chance of the information the CEO gets being biased by deep rooted corporate culture or by sycophants or back-stabbers looking out for their own best interest.
Apparently: dictionary meaning = apparently [əˈpærəntlɪ əˈpɛər-] adv (sentence modifier) it appears that; as far as one knows; seemingly
Kara Swisher reported at http://allthingsd.com/20120330/yahoo-layoffs-set-to-begin-ne... that
"Thompson, along with consultants he has hired from the Boston Consulting Group, presented the possible plan in front of Yahoo’s senior execs on Tuesday. "
Lacy from Pando "We’ve heard that Thompson has spent most of his tenure thus far holed up in the executive suite with Boston Consulting Group. "
So there have been some reports but I don't work at Yahoo and haven't seen this with my own eyes. Hence "apparently".
Did that help satisfy your 'honest curiosity'?
Do CEOs really ask outsiders for ideas on how to run/turn around a company? I am in the wrong profession! I wouldn't mind dispensing advice on how to do things I have no experience in doing, all the while pulling in 300+ $ an hour. Somehow I can't visualize (say) Steve Jobs outsourcing thinking and decision making.
The closest thing I've seen in software is a couple of instances of bringing in agile methodology consultant/book author types to save failing projects. Those didn't work out well either.