WHAT THE BOOK SAYS
- Extreme caution is needed when dealing with management consultants
- There is a lot of information about the workings of Andersen, Boston Consulting Group, Bain, McKinsey, Gemini and their clients
- You can find their products in here too – BCG’s matrix (Growth; fast/slow – Cash; high/low – fill in stars/dogs/cash cows/question marks), the balanced scorecard, and Gemini’s transformation or re-engineering concept
- It warns against fuzzy concepts like “world class” which cannot be defined or measured, and creating a “consulting fantasyland” which sounds reassuring but doesn’t actually get you anywhere
- Just before he died, McKinsey confessed that making real decisions in business is a lot harder than getting paid to advise people what to do – sometimes it is fine to admit that you don’t have all the answers
WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT
- There are many parallels to be drawn between client/agency relationships and those between companies and consultants. There is a checklist of how to deal with consultants, which could equally apply to clients dealing with agencies:
- Why are you doing this?
- Do you need outsiders?
- Who will work on the business?
- What will it cost?
- Never give up control
- Don’t be unhappy even for a day
- Beware of glib talkers with books
- Value your own employees
- Measure the process
- If it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it
- Being aware of these theories will increase your strategic capability
- Consultants are better than agencies at applying market learnings from one client to another, and at re-packaging their skills many times over
WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH
- This is not a classic marketing textbook where you can grab a few diagrams and claim you have read it – you need to absorb it and use the examples
- The parallels with agency faults could shoot you in the foot if mishandled