The Arrogance of Consulting

As I near my sixth year in the management consulting industry, I confess that I have very mixed feelings towards this industry. My experience has led me to believe that, on the whole, my company does in fact add value to their clients. But I'm not so convinced that the consulting industry in its entirety is really adding as much value as their high fees and prestigious reputation would seem to indicate. (I'm not, by the way, the first to say this - there are several recently published books on Amazon.com focused on this very issue, none of which I have read).

At the core of the industry, I see one of the key problems to be that you have very smart people talking in very convincing and articulate ways about things they barely understand. They certainly understand these things far less than the managers for whom they are consulting who have often been in that one industry for 20+ years. I think the Enron fiasco is a perfect example of how little consultants often know about what they are saying. In that example, the consulting firm McKinsey, the best of the best (with fees to prove it), was intimately involved in all aspects of the business model at Enron. And the whole thing was a massive disaster built on a house of cards (with fraud and illegal market manipulation to boot; remember those brown outs in CA?). The theories behind the model had no bearing on reality, and the trendy managing techniques being employed turned out to be contrary to common sense (see Malcolm Gladwell's excellent article titled the Talent Myth).

I've been meaning to blog about one encounter I had with a very senior partner at my firm several years ago, which I think is fairly representative of the "confidently talking about things you don't understand" phenomenon. I was in the kitchen one afternoon looking for a source of caffeine. Rather than coffee, I chose to go for a soda. Naturally, I went for the highest caffeine-content option, Mountain Dew. As I was purchasing my caffeine-loaded soda, in walked the partner and the following occurred (admittedly, it's a paraphrase of a conversation that occurred several years ago):

Partner: "Hey Paul. Getting a little sugar for the afternoon?"
Me: "Well, I really need some caffeine, but I don't feel like coffee, so I thought I'd get Mountain Dew."
Partner [taking on a somewhat authoritatively demeaning tone of voice - my perception of course]: "Well, soda doesn't really have much caffeine in it."
Me: "Actually, Mountain Dew has fairly high caffeine content, especially compared to other sodas."
Partner: "No, that's not right. Soda doesn't have a lot of caffeine in it; Mountain Dew is no different. You should get coffee if caffeine is what you want."
[At this point, I opted not to say anything further. I knew that he was wrong, but it didn't seem in my best interest to argue with him.]

Note of fact: I know I'm right. That's not arrogant - I've just informed myself on this point. See this website for a full breakdown of caffeine content by a variety of types of beverages. Here are the basics: A 12 oz. can of Mountain Dew contains 54 mg of caffeine. A Diet Pepsi contains 36 mg and a Coke Zero 35 mg. That means MD contains about 50% more caffeine than other common sodas. According the website above (values vary somewhat depending on the source), a generic cup of drip coffee contains 133 mg of coffee and a generic instant coffee contains 93 mg, so MD has roughly half the caffeine content as a cup of coffee, which is, I would argue, a significant amount of caffeine. To further this argument, a generic espresso shot has on average 40 mg of coffee, so your single-shot latte may very well have less caffeine than my can of MD (it's a common misconception that an espresso has as much caffeine as a cup of coffee - per volume, espresso does have more caffeine, but for a serving of one ounce/shot, it actually has less, so if you want the same eye-opening effect as a cup of coffee, opt for the double shot).

I think it's fairly obvious that I was highly annoyed by this discussion because the partner was factually wrong but was so confident and authoritative in the way he said it. (This makes for incredibly awkward situations in client meetings when you have to correct a partner for something they said when their oral presentation makes it seems as if what they said is as factual as noting that the sun will rise tomorrow.) Now I'd like to make one thing very clear at this point - this partner is incredibly successful and smart. He is almost certainly more intelligent than I am and is undoubtedly more motivated (I have it on good account that he graduated number one in his class from a very prestigious business school) and from what I can tell is a very good consultant. But that doesn't mean he was right. What it does mean is people, unless they have very good information, are very likely going to listen to and believe him, even when he is wrong.

Luckily (or by design), we are a niche consultancy, with incredibly deep experience and expertise in our chosen industries and areas of focus, so it is much less likely we would find ourselves in a situation in which we are significantly less knowledgeable than the client (they may know more about their particular company or issue, but we likely in aggregate have more knowledge of the industry by a factor of 10). But when you start talking about general strategy consulting firms, they often have less specific expertise. If there are more consultants out there like the partner I encountered in the general consulting space, and I believe many if not most of the highly successful consultants have similar personalities, I imagine they are often running into situations which they know little about. Yet they are still offering authoritative advice that could have a significant negative rather than valuing-adding impact on the company.

I don't mean to go into detail on the solution, but I think this concept generally calls for a more open-minded and collaborative approach to consulting in which we openly admit when we don't know things. (I think it also more widely calls into question the need for so many general strategy consulting firms). The problem is the most successful consultants need to appear to understand it all in order to get in front of the C-level members of a company, coupled with the fact that the attitude at many of the more prestigious consultancies is that of "we know best: listen to us" rather than a more collaborative mentality.

For me at least, the lesson is to not be as confident and authoritative when speaking about topics, even those I think I understand fairly well. One of the simplest ways to handle this is phrasing. For example, instead of saying, "soda doesn't have a lot of caffeine in it", say something like "correct me if I'm wrong, but to my knowledge soda doesn't have a lot of caffeine" or "I'm under the impression that all sodas have a relatively low caffeine content, but let me know if you have evidence to the contrary." Of course, if you caveat every statement with this sort disclaimer, your presentation could become unnecessarily cumbersome, so you need to use such phrasing with discretion. And don't forget to use a tone of voice that portrays not only authority, but a willingness to listen and change you POV. Easier said than done.