You have to think of it like the nutritional supplements industry. They make mountains of money because people have certain misgivings or insecurities or unrealistic goals (or all of these things) with regard to their health. Would life go on just fine without the entire supplements industry? Sure. But that wouldn’t do anything to assuage the health concerns that people perceive themselves to have.

The same is true of the consulting industry. Because companies _also_ have certain misgivings or insecurities or unrealistic goals with regard to their health.

I've always suspected that at least some of it is information laundering.

I used to work in engine development and calibration. There aren't many people who know how to do engine cal and it's incredibly important to get your engine emissions certified to sell in a market like the USA. The problem is that most people who know how to do it work for a car manufacturer (OEM). So when I had that on my LinkedIn I would get pretty regular messages from some consultancy or another offering hundreds of dollars per hour to chat with me about my expertise. Of course I couldn't go talk to a competitor but I'm sure a lot of engineers were happy to make a few hundred bucks chatting with some generic consultant who was writing a general industry report with anonymous data and background info.

Well the customer was usually a competitor or a foreign automaker exploring entering the US market. Everyone who could help them understand the timelines, cost, and process worked for their competitors. So the critical info got passed through consultancies into sanitized anonymized reports; laundering.

Note: I'm not sure whether talking to a consultancy would have violated my employment contract at the time but I never took the calls so I had no reason to look it up. I know that coworkers did and just called it a gray area. I pass no moral judgement one way or another.

My working theory is that in many cases, it's one of those absurdities that are actually necessary because the world isn't always rational.

If you're the CEO, maybe you know exactly how your org should be restructured. But maybe it means stepping on a lot of toes and hurting people you have close relationships with.

If you get the blessing of management consultants you can at least say it's not personal.

Scapegoat as a service. You hire them to put a stamp of approval on any silly idea you have, implement it, etc. Then, if it turns out badly, well...it wasn't your fault.

Management consultants exist as a liability shift. Boards or exec management pay them money, the consultants interview them in private, the consultants give them their ideas back. This provides two things: cover, and political lubricant. Worth every penny when the alternative is completely dysfunctional management teams, or when it is your reputation or job on the line.

1. When I was 8, my mom told me that people got paid what their work was worth to society. When I was 12 she told me not necessarily. She said this: "You were only 8. I was trying to make it simple for you."

2. Management consultants get paid by shareholders to outsource blame for decisions made by management.

It's self-propagating nonsense. In the immediate post-dotcom crash, I worked for a company that was run by a bunch of young HBS grads, who all had management consulting backgrounds, (and a few minor dotcom successes). They regarded themselves as geniuses. They couldn't make a decision on anything.

Their preferred working style was to not make decisions, and to hire consulting firms to make the decisions for them. So they hired these even younger consultants, who would work for a few weeks, and make their recommendations, and then those recommendations would not be put into action. No. Instead, more consultants were hired to review and then discard the work of the previous consultants. Rinse and repeat for a few cycles.

I cannot resist one story. The initial HBS/management consulting CEO was replaced by a new CEO, someone who had run one of the early search engine companies, and had a similar background. He turned out to be no better. What I found very entertaining about CEO2 was his business past. He was known for two decisions. 1) Declined to buy the very early Google for high six figures, when he had the chance. 2) Decided to buy Blue Mountain -- think Hallmark cards but online -- for $780M. Greeting cards. 3/4 of a billion dollars. 1000x the cost of Google at the time.

Yes, hindsight and all, but still. If I had made both decisions by flipping a coin, my expected value would far exceed what this business genius accomplished.

The people criticizing use of management consulting are not usually the same people who make the decision to use management consulting.

There is no disconnect and your comment does not attempt to explain why this is some sort of contradiction.

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It's easy -- because companies are people. Management is also people, and sometimes management admit that they may not know what others know. Especially if that management came from the trenches, not and MBA school, so they know very good how to row, but not so well in management (or at least they think they are). So, having money, they seek paid advice from someone who knows it more.