alt Hacker NewsI'm now in a stage of my consulting career where I sometimes really get called into big organisation just to find out, that whatever they need to do is already panned out and they all want to do it! Still they call me cause ... it's a big decision and the "higher ups" (which quite often are not even part of the workshop/session then) want an external expert voice. cause the responsibility for this decision lies with them and they can not share it up or sideways, so they share the responsibility partly external.
As the plan quote often (not always) is already very good I mostly end up making sure the goal is measurable in a quantitative and qualitative way, trends towards to and away from the goal are visually available and distributed , and its clear who is responsible to look and report them.
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>I mostly end up making sure the goal is measurable in a quantitative and qualitative way, trends towards to and away from the goal are visually available and distributed , and its clear who is responsible to look and report them.
Unrelated to the post, but it sounds like you and I do similar work and have arrived at similar conclusions but I often fail to get organizations to actually spend the correct amount of time identifying these success indicators - which I think are critical to focus and scope stability. I’d love to chat sometime.
I once worked on a public sector project as a consultant, spent a year doing studies for similar projects that had been done elsewhere, resulted in a document presenting a budget and timeline with options that I presented to their board of elected officials. They wanted the number and timeline to be half of what we showed, and scope unchanged.
I opened my mouth to argue, my partner at the time cut me short "we'll see what's possible".
We spent the next couple months massaging numbers under his supervision removing all contingency, selecting the most optimistic paths and assumptions, and plain lowering numbers. Until, for all intents and purposes, our document was the same but showing the numbers they wanted with out signature at the bottom.
They were very happy with our work. They're elected officials you see, they are concerned with re-election and appearing to behave reasonably with money. I got a promotion out of it.
The project ended costing 30% more than what we initially planned and took 30% more than our estimate.
So basically, you're adding formal processes to ensure accountability. ;-)
Ah yes, ass cover as a service.
There's a classic article (2010) about it: https://thetech.com/2010/04/09/dubai-v130-n18 (HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1257644)
The difference is that while the decision has been made, it isn't necessarily very good.
I always thought that was a big reason for buying external consulting. Reminds me of that George Clooney Movie
This is no secret, most of "big 4" consulting is about telling directors what they want to hear anyway (eg layoffs) but wrapping that in a glossy report with a logo on it
> I'm now in a stage of my consulting career where I sometimes really get called into big organisation just to find out, that whatever they need to do is already panned out and they all want to do it! Still they call me cause ... it's a big decision and the "higher ups" (which quite often are not even part of the workshop/session then) want an external expert voice.
"Clients always know how to solve their problems, and always tell the solution in the first five minutes."
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/566213.The_Secrets_of_Co...