consultants: the cunning linguists of the corporate world

No matter how much I despise them, there is always the possibility that it cannot be avoided. Yes, once again I was stuck in a late afternoon meeting. Contrary to my usual apprehensions, I did not think that fatigue would play a role as I was relatively wide awake and downright anxious to leave work on time to catch Game 7 of the Spurs/Pistons series. If I had to pinpoint one single element of this meeting that had me feeling a tad uneasy, it would have to be the unknown. Hopefully, this unknown would not cause me to miss the tip off at the local sports bar.

I really had not heard of this client before, nor was I clear on exactly what my contribution to the meeting would be. In the end, to my delight, I discovered more amusing material for my archive of ostentatious observations.

Consultants were the subject of the day. You’ve got to love the consultant. Everyone thinks they need one but no one is ever quite sure what they do. Even the consultant cannot tell you precisely what it is that he or she does, but will be quite clear about the cost of having it done. Want some issues raised? Want a very admirable perception of the obvious? How about a sense of having engaged an expert for the task at hand? The consultant is your guy. If you want a definitive analysis or a decision made..well…

Perhaps I’m being to hasty with the generalization. Yes, too hasty indeed. There are plenty of consultants that do actually roll up their sleeves and provide a valuable service to those that enlist them . However, just as in other “relationship building” professions, there are plenty of consultants that rarely get their hands dirty, choosing instead to operate within a very Seinfeldian, “show about nothing” framework. Such was the case with the subjects from this meeting. Almost immediately in this meeting I found myself wondering, “so what is it exactly that you’re going to do here?”

It bears mentioning that while I was not compelled to add the “emperor’s new clothes” that this pair was pushing to my wardrobe of client projects, I was quite taken by their style and technique. Like a classical musician admires a melodic run of a jazz composer, like a ballplayer gives “props” to another with Game, like a thespian pays homage to the work of another of much lesser fame, it took significant effort for me to contain my appreciation of their skills. After all, it took an extreme amount of chutzpah to step into this conference room and attempt to out-hustle three hustlers (my boss, my ceo, and me). That’s what we do, isn’t it? We hustle. We know there’s money to be made selling this stuff, and we try to figure out new and inventive ways to give that money a new home on our side of the fence.

But these were hustler’s hustlers. One would play straight man, while the other would provide the slapstick. One would be grease man to the other’s tactician. One would play warm hearted, bleeding heart socialist, while the other played capitalismic magnate. So impressive was their range that it could consume this whole narrative, but I will instead highlight three of the most spectacularly entertaining arrows that they drew from their proverbial quiver.

First was the incessant name dropping. Surely a successful run at this would leave us basking in the glow of the degree with which he is connected in the industry. However, the languishing of a dimming bulb is what ensued. One exchange went as follows:

“What is your background…Where did you get your start?” said John to our CEO.
“I was VP of Marketing at Cascade in the Northeast, “ stated our CEO.
“Oh! George Franklin and I play golf together…and that Mike Stephens is quite the go-getter isn’t he… “ John blurts out smugly
“I’m not familiar with those two gentleman. Cascade IS quite a large company…” quips our CEO.

In an another attempt to garner favor, establish some credibility and just overall impress us with the breadth and complexity of his knowledge, John pulled the multi-lettered acronym card. Having just reached my tenure in the high tech industry, I take pride in staying on top of the TLA’s (three lettered acronyms) that are often called out as frequently as…well..names in some other less technical circles. The Cistine Chapel came to mind when he uttered his 5 lettered masterpiece. The three of us were supremely perplexed when Michelangelo’s broad brush strokes coated us with T.B.R.P.F (later defined as Truncated Broadcast Reverse Path Forwarding). Thirty-six hours later, I still have not realized the relevance of this obviously very high level field of study.

Finally, in what would prove to be the make or break moment of this meeting from a “how serious should we take you” standpoint, our consultant friends stumbled mightily albeit quite gracefully. When asked about their overall knowledge of our specific industry , with respect to the players, the merits of various products, and where any of them may fall short as they pertain to the needs of their proposed project, the two of them paused as if on queue and with the appropriate amount of cloak-and-dagger stated in unison (at least for the first half of the sentence), “We’re talking to several others right now and will continue to diligently research this before we arrive at a decision.” Translation: We’re clueless. You’re the first ones that we’ve talked to. We really don’t have a clue right now how your product might conform to the needs of the application in said project, but we were intrigued by the buzzword “wireless” and the fact that your company was geographically closest to our offices so we thought we’d check you out first.

All of this proves once again that I am so easily amused.