In this issue:

The Saga Continues:

Adaptive Leadership at Southwest

Selling Snake Oil:

Management Consulting's Ongoing Need to Sell Expediency Over Efficacy, and Why We Collude

The Big Blind Spot:

Reducing and Quantifying What Might Not Be Reducible and Quantifiable

photo credit: DailyKos

From the Debunking Department:

Selling Snake Oil

Management consulting's ongoing need to sell expediency over efficacy, and why we collude. No wonder so much real organizational change goes nowhere.

Management consultants like snake oil peddlers. No offense – I’m a consultant; guilty by association, if not insider knowledge.

Clark Stanley, the so-called Rattlesnake King, was the original producer of Snake Oil Liniment. It was tested by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1916 and found to contain mineral oil, tallow, chili pepper capsaicin, turpentine, and camphor, but nary a reptilian drop. Not surprisingly, it was deemed “drastically overpriced” and of “limited value”.

How often do we hear the same about management consultants?

Alignment. Accountability. Transparency. Collaboration. Teamwork. Resiliency.

Like peddlers selling Snake Oil, many management consultants profess answers for these chronic corporate ailments. Whether it’s McKinsey, Korn Ferry, Joe's Consulting LLC or everyone else in the people and organizational change, leadership, culture, performance or effectiveness game, when they profess to have The Solution, buyer beware.

Paint-by-Numbers "Solutions"

You can always spot consulting snake oil because the offering contains the following elements:

1. A proprietary model or framework that promises to unlock the secrets of human performance, usually branded by some clever alliteration such as ‘People, Process and Tools’, or ‘Why, How, What’, etc.

    

2. A “program” (it’s always a “program”) of activities based on the model that if followed to the letter will produce the desired change

    

3. The program works in all cases regardless of the nature or root cause of the issue. Any diagnostic performed is perfunctory because the program is tried and true, a product of the immutable laws of nature (“statistically proven”), deployed in hundreds of other organizations just like yours, or based on compelling “social science” (if you ever hear a consultant tell you about their “social science”, ask them for a literature review of their references). It’s the classic hammer looking for a nail.

    

   2. The program has multiple phases – usually more than 3 but less than 12 – that lay out what’s involved in attaining nirvana through easy to follow, cleverly branded, and eminently digestible steps. These are usually a series of workshops where the consultant gets to sell their model. Each step is presented with its own catchy, alliterative label, such as The Insight Incubator or the Alignment Activator or the Connection Workshop. The prevailing underlying message is 'it’s easy’ or, ‘if you follow these steps everything will work out’.

    

   3. A timeline that spells out when success will be achieved, usually in weeks (more complex issues might take a few months)

    

   4.  A glossy brochure laying out the above in short, punchy paragraphs, eye-pleasing flow-charts, and nice pictures that make it seem as if the program is a holiday in Cancun. If a few quotes from past happy souls are sprinkled in, all the better.

    

   5.  An accompanying workbook to dutifully record whatever insights or conclusions participants might arrive at through each step. The workbook spells out the experience to be recorded, and contains subtle but clear messages about the desired or expected answer (“What insights did you have this week?” “After taking this workshop I will…”)

    

   6. An audience segmentation strategy that branches and brackets the experience for the C-suite from the rest or the company. God forbid the senior group experiences anything as involved or time-consuming as the rest of the organization! The top of the house, of course, is wiser and more emancipated and just doesn’t require the same level of hand-holding as the masses. In any event they just doesn’t have the time. It’s “the organization” that needs the help, not us.

    

   7. All of this is packaged in a proposal that convincingly spells out the ROI of the program (no money back guarantees, however). No matter how complex or intractable the problem, no matter how long its historicity or ecological or technological embeddedness, no matter the nature of prevailing assumptions among senior leadership, the program is always the solution.

This is what I call paint-by-numbers organizational development and change.

It is rooted in mid-20th century behavioral science where the dependent variable is how people behave, versus how they think or feel, or the underlying emotional or psychological reasons that might give rise to what they think or feel to begin with.

Many of these approaches no doubt are well intended. The problem is they are
 

• facile

• traffic in the illusion of predictability

• eschew diagnosis for action

• based on an expert model that fosters dependency on the consultant and their program

Read the rest of this article here.

Then again, what management consultant wants to advertise that in order to achieve your desired organizational goals you will be

anxious, uncomfortable, challenged, exposed, vulnerable, seen not as all-knowing, forced to learn things about yourself, forced to give and receive hard feedback, forced to become less self-absorbed and more curious,

and forced to reckon with the possibility that some of your dearest assumptions and beliefs may be in need rethinking?

"Objectivity is a relative term because what is objectively perceived is by definition to some extent subjectively conceived of."
 

- D.W. Winnicott

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