Bad Counsel
Justin Ling’s article “Shadow Government: The Consulting Firms Telling Ottawa What to Do” pushed one of my very large buttons: the theatre of large consultancies. I sent my last invoice for my own consulting service about two months ago, more certain than ever that the path to meaningful, lasting, and mutually beneficial change isn’t the consultant-to-client approach in practice today. Before I was one myself, I used consultants—it’s great to bring in smart, indefatigable people without positions of power or institutional biases to get to the bottom of complicated problems. Unfortunately, knowing the problem and creating a solution are miles apart. External consultants can’t fix problems mired in, or even created by, company cultures. For example, designing a complaint-handling system is of little use if the system doesn’t address the root cause of complaints. Far better to spend money on support for employees to solve the problem: it ensures that the people who have to implement solutions know why and how to do so. Why don’t we focus time and resources on this common-sense approach?
