Years ago the newspaper company that I worked for decided to implement a process whereby employees could come up with ideas, from the bottom up, and actually implement those ideas. It sounded good. In theory. The process started with a weekend seminar at Mahoney State Park where employees from all of the paper's divisions and from all levels of responsibility met to put together a plan to produce this process whereby grass-roots ideas would percolate upward. We were facilitated by a consultant whose name I can no longer recall and several employees of a newspaper in Ohio who had implemented a similar program. The details of that weekend are fuzzy, but what we came up with was a complicated plan to affect change. Anyone with an idea could bring together three other employees as a change committee. These four people had to be from four different parts of the company and would be charged with doing the research needed to figure out what was required to put their idea into action. There was also a team of "coaches", usually employees who had been through this weekend intensive seminar, who would guide the teams of four and help them in the process. There may have also been a committee to screen the ideas and decide which ones would be put into practise. Some of you may have already spotted the problem: we had built a parallel, albeit temporary, bureaucracy, completely independent of the established chain of command. This shadow structure was given the authority to make decisions and implement changes in areas in which there were already managers who were being paid to take care of these things. After about two years of paying exorbitant consulting fees, the program disappeared.
The next useless consultant story involved the company that I most recently worked for, a locally owned grocery chain. This company operated two main types of stores: "conventional" stores and a type of store alternatively referred to as "low price", "price impact" or "box store". The so-called leaders of the company thought that they were losing sight of what their low-price stores were supposed to be about, so they brought in a man who had operated a chain of box stores on the West Coast. On his arrival in Lincoln, this consultant went on a tour of all of the company's box stores. The consultant, whom we'll call Dwayne Loomis, looked somewhat like Levon Helm and talked like your worst stereotype of a backwoods Southern redneck. Dwayne roared through all the store, insulting store managers and employees, using his favorite expression: "chicken-shit" to describe displays. The whole time a member of the executive committee was at his side as he demeaned managers and treated them with extreme disrespect. Finally we had a big meeting at the central office as Mr. Loomis regaled us with stories about how successful his stores in California were,and how well he competed against Wal-Mart. Some of his stories just didn't ring true and one manager started asking pointed questions, poking holes in his claims, until eventually Loomis backed down from most of his claims. The company put a lot of his ideas into practice, butr within six months had reverted back to the old ways.
Another consultant was one that I mentioned in the "Sexual Harassment" post. This consultant was another one who spent most of his time insulting employees and managers while members of the executive committee stood by and let it happen. He also used many ideas that, minimally altered, were stolen from another consultant whom he had worked for ten years previously. He had meetings, and then meetings about the meetings. Every meeting was ended with a recap and then, on Friday, a recap of all the other recaps. It took a full year for the first work group to launch their one idea: changing the recipe of the dough used to make hard rolls. It became obvious to many people that any consultant that this company hired was being hired to tell us how stupid that we were and that they would stay on long past the point of being useful.
The final consultant is one with whom I have had personal, face-to-face conflicts with. This particular consultant sucks companies in primarily because he is a very effective public speaker. He is animated and dynamic and has a great memory for faces and names. One trick that he pulled at a three-day seminar of his that I attended was to point to me at the end of Day Three and accurately recall where I had been sitting at each session. Most people, after sitting through one of his presentations come away favorably impressed, and go back to their businesses with some usable ideas; I know that I did. The problem with Harold (and that's his real name) is that he never, ever comes up with new information. If you've heard him once, you've heard all that you'll ever hear. He will give new titles to old material and is very good at identifying the trends in the grocery business and assembling his old material in a way that applies to the new topic. Despite the dearth of anything new, my former company kept bringing him back. A few years ago, he was brought in to facilitate a strategic planning meeting. I wasn't present at the meeting, but second-hand accounts from those who were present indicate that once again, old material was recycled. What he accomplished was to set up seven committees to come up with ideas and programs in seven categories in the company. people in the company did all the work and he still got paid. My own run-in with Harold occurred at a staff meeting at my own store. After I had run through all the agenda items, Harold asked for ten minutes, which I gave him (it turned into 25). He used his time, after a quick acknowledgement of what I did right (in his opinion) to tear apart virtually every aspect of how I ran the meeting. The managers in attendance were stunned. I left, pretty angry, not only at how I was treated, but at how my immediate supervisor, the VP of Operations, sat by and let it happen. When I returned from lunch an hour later I was accosted in the aisle by Harold and by the VP and asked why I was so angry. He was confrontational and insulting and continued this behavior after I asked that we take this discussion of the sales floor. He accused me of lying. Eventually, after the VP intervened, he apologized. However he used this incident at the Strategic Planning meeting the next day to brag about how humble he was, although he managed to attack and insult another store director soon after.
Nothing that any of these consultants had to say contributed anything solid and measurable to the company, all of them (except the first one mentioned, at the newspaper) were demeaning and insulting and dragged things out in order to get the biggest paycheck. Meanwhile, executives who were supposed to be coming up with ways to improve the company relied on these outsiders. Consultants, at least those that I have come on contact with, are pretty useless!
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