Find Me Someone To Think For Me

A recent article in the British newspaper, The Guardian, deals with another sadly common manifestation of Hamburger Management: an inversion of values when it comes to corporate decision-making. The article, written by Guy Clapperton and called “Lost the ability to think for yourself?” reports that managers are becoming “hooked” on using consultants to do their thinking for them and make their decisions.

Organizations often use consultants in lieu of staff when they have freezes of head count. That’s understandable (though it makes a nonsense of the supposed cost-savings the freeze on head count is established to produce), but the real problem is how these consultants are being used.

Quoting Alastair Clifford-Jones, chief executive of British management consultancy Leadent, Clapperton points to what Jones calls “consultancy addiction:” the process by which clients get so hung up on having consultants around that they won't let them go, using them to do their thinking and make their decisions, and creating a sense of being dependent on their advice. Organizations often use consultants in lieu of staff when they have freezes of head count. That’s understandable (though it makes a nonsense of the supposed cost-savings the freeze on head count is established to produce), but the real problem is how these consultants are being used.

Logically, the most important elements of any business are those concerned with thinking and making decisions, especially decisions on strategy, since everything else flows from them. Subsequent implementation, difficult though it may be, and the day-to-day running of the business are nearer to tactical routines. Deciding on matters of strategy and thinking through the options are pretty much what senior managers are paid to do. So it seems amazing to me that one senior manager quoted in the article seems to be saying exactly the opposite.

The consultant should help with the business and not run it. They can put a new IT platform in, put a required change in, but not run the day-to-day business.

It is as if generals were required to rush in and fight the enemy hand-to-hand, not waste their time on battle planning and supervising the overall engagement.

If something must be outsourced, surely it should be the most routine aspects of the business? But such is the premium on action and busyness in the world of Hamburger Management, and the fear of seeming to waste time stopping and thinking, that corporations employ extremely expensive “strategy consultants” to do most of the vital thinking required, while using their own senior managers to do the routine work of running daily business operations. Maybe it is a belief that to be “in control,” you actually have to have your hands constantly on the levers. It is not enough to have decided what must be done and issued the plans and instructions. You actually have to be in direct charge of making everything happen. It is as if generals were required to rush in and fight the enemy hand-to-hand, not waste their time on battle planning and supervising the overall engagement.

Here’s another quote from the article:

Businesses have long been using the adjective “strategic” as a proxy for “loss making,” a malady that has been exacerbated by the rise of expensive strategy consultants.

Indeed, sometimes managers try even to avoid the appearance of having spent any time on the despised process of thinking about their business:

Often people ask consultants in to build their credibility after a decision has already been made—and that's when they ask the consultant to do the presentation, so that it looks independent.

Why should an “independent” decision seem better than one made in-house, except through a corporation’s innate lack of trust in their own people? Surely, the in-house managers should be far better placed to understand their own business and reach the right decision than someone from outside, who probably has little direct experience of the organization’s markets and customers?

When thought follows action, you are already in trouble.

Actions follow thinking (or they should, provided that any thinking is done at all). No action can take place without some prior thought, except for reflexes like snatching your hand away from a flame. When thought follows action, you are already in trouble. But that is what Hamburger Management does. It focuses people on actions and allows them to pay others to think for them, using the spurious justification that outsiders will “have a broader viewpoint” and “a wider industry knowledge.” This is code, of course, for the other staple of Hamburger Management: imitation. What many consultants do is transfer actions between organizations, so each one ends up doing what all the others have done already.

Is that a recipe for creating unique value and outsmarting the competition? I think not.

Technorati tags: business strategy decision making business thinking slow leadership