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A couple of weeks ago CNN Money published their new Fortune Global 500. Ofcourse there are no big surprises in the top 10; but with my strong track record in Finance and Retail it is quite interesting to see Wal-Mart as the biggest of the bunch and ING Group on a impressive 7th position while the rest of the top10 are basicly oil-related energy companies.
At least as interesting are the Top 20 Money Losers and the Top 20 Money Makers. Money makers are obviously in the oil/gas industry… So the top 20 consists of only a couple of outsiders. Ofcourse Microsoft is raking it in, but the big surprise to me was seeing Vodafone in the top 20 of Money Makers. It has only been 5 years ago that Arun Sarin’s head was on the line but apparently he took all the advice on board and it stearing in the right direction, think I’ll send him my congratulations
One of the reasons I find Vodafone’s accomplishments surprising is that fact that competitors are well represented on the loser-bench. At number 2 within the money losers list is Sprint Nextel who is losing 1+ million customers per year…Number one in the losers list is General Motors, although I have no experience in that industry it didn’t surprise me. But as the number 9 in the Top 500 list, it is no surprise they can take a big hit and move on (slowly but surely… but not to slowly). Others billion-losing-companies are (in)directly related to the American car industry or hit by the credit crunch.

Thanks to the Top-Consultant forum I have a nice little movie to start the day with a smile and it can be found (obviously) on YouTube. Enjoy and thanks Tony.

In one of the comments someone requested the link to the consultancy forum I keep mentioning here. For some reason I assumed everyone already knows the Top Consultant forum ? Ah well…

Sorry, sorry, sorry. Since I am working in the financial industry at this moment (large European bank involved in a merger) I am way too busy for my blog. Basicly that sucks! But then again, this blog doesn’t pay my bills…
I bumped into this great little cartoon about the current credit crunch (and how it all could happen). Spot on!

Having to work with a lot of different clients, on a lot of different locations, with a lot of different departments it is always striking how much IT departments are similar (disorganised usually, but more about that later). I tend to keep up with some IT related news and websites. On of them is TheRegister with it’s great BOFH stories:

“The Boss hands over a document from a consultancy firm and the PFY bashes the name into a search engine.
“Hmm,” he mumbles, looking at the company’s website.
“What?”
“They say that the partners have a combined experience in computing of over 60 years.”
“And the company consists of a couple of COFs?” I suggest.
“COFs? What’s a COF?” the Boss asks.
“Crusty Old Fart. I.e. someone who was there when dirt was invented.”

That made me smile… again

I was reading up on a consultancy forum and bumped into a funny quote in an outsourcing discussion. Usually I am grumpy on a monday morning, and most definately outsourcing to India is not funny but this really made me smile: "Never mind the quality, experience the cheapness :)"

For the last couple of days my blog was broken; my apologies for that. Since it is a free service I am not complaining; only wondering if the people behind The Pirate Bay are actually focussing on their side-project BayWords since it is taking days now to get it fixed. As in my job I figured out a solution and work-around so everything should be fine now (although external links to my website might still not work properly).
Thanks to Florian for notifying me about the problem. Check out his consultant blog www.killerconsultant.com for some interesting postings!

A lot of the time I hear consultants from several companies (strat but also IT) complain and moan about the amount of hours they work and the pressure involved with their job. I have been on dozens of projects with a lot of clients and I can assure anyone that it isn’t as bad as everyone keeps telling. Working 14 hours per day for weeks on end doesn’t happen; once in a while a couple days one most deliver and 14 to 18 hours are no exception. But this is never lasting for a long time, within a week things tend to be normal (approx 9 hours a day). And for those who are actually working 70-80 hours per week every week: you suck at your job! If you are working 70-80 hours per week on a regular basis you apparently are very inefficient OR can’t manage your time OR can’t manage your client! I have had weeks where I effectively working anything from 20 to 80 hours per week. The average will be around 50 hours per week. It takes some balls to manage expectations of clients and partners but that’s all it takes to have a bit of a normal life.

And the moaners about pressure ? Get lost! Get another job! I wouldn’t be able to keep a job down if there wasn’t the pressure, chaos and deadlines. But again; this is just over certain periods. At this very moment (friday afternoon 1:30 PM) there is no pressure at all; I could easily have a nap on my desk and nobody would notice nor any deliverable would be late.

One last correction to all of them that blag and overestimate their own importance with their long hours: yes, as a consultant you do tend to work harder and longer than anyone at your client. But hey, wouldn’t you take a bit easier if you were working in line management ? Yes.

A lot of people in the industry regularly doubt the effectiveness of consultants within their organisations. Excuses like ‘they dont know the organisation’ or ‘they dont have enough experience’ are commonly used to predict the failure of consultant deliverables. In this post I will (try to) defend the position of consultancy within the market (on a high level).

How can consultants advice a company they hardly know ?
As an outsider I, and other consultants, will never know all the details and history of a company. Most likely I will never even come close to a full understanding of the culture and way-of-working. But I don’t get hired to try to understand the complete organisation, I get hired to find a problem and define an approach to resolve the issue (for example; bad performance of certain part of the organisation needs to be improved). In a lot of cases the problem is well known within the board, with a bit of luck they also know the solution. So why doesn’t higher management start working on a solution? Several reasons come to mind: they want to justify a million dollar investment or change program upfront and check with consultancy companies who have been in similar situations at other companies. Or the solution is basicly bringing some ‘bad news’ to a large number of employees, usually this means that we (consultants) are the messenger and get abused for delivering that ‘bad news’. Simple as that.
In some cases I get called into clients who don’t know what the problem is, although they suspect some part of the organisation is underperforming. With a lot of skilled people with a large number of years of experience within the company. As a result those skilled people are very well informed about their way of working, are involved in the local company politics and dont have a clear insight how this could work better (for example from experience within other industries or companies). In those situation I can walk into the company with a ‘fresh view’, I don’t (have to) get involved in politics (at least on the low level). Without knowing the history of the company I can question any procedure, process, strategy or way of working. To an extend I can even doubt every single employee within the company. Having no experience with the company will have its pro’s in such a situation.
So how can consultants add value ? We are great at bringing bad news, we are great of having an open mind approach, we can question anything within the company with making that ‘career limiting move’ and we can apply are ’schoolbook’ approach into the real world (No, that doesn’t mean we simply copy the academic approach into the company).

How can juniors (associates/analyst) of a consultancy firm add value to a company?
Well, quite frankly, they can’t. Not really. But ofcourse they do have their added value to the firm who is doing the research/advice. A kid just out of university with excellent results can make it into management consultancy with the tier-1 and tier-2 firms. Those academics starting a career in consulting will be disappointed at first; they will be (ab)used for number crunching, creating decks and all sorts of support tasks. It is not exciting, it is not challenging, it can even become boring. And to make it worse; expectations about your energy, effort and input are high. The only added value you can bring at the lowest level; work a lot of hours, incl. evenings and weekends so you will not disappoint the more senior people in your deliverable.
Back to the original question; can juniors add value ? Well, not really, they are their to support the more senior people and make their life easier. In the process of number crunching (excel) and creating decks (powerpoint) the juniors will actually learn a lot about a certain company, a specific industry and/or a part of the local or global market. The skills, experience and knowledge of more senior people is basicly delivered to the company in deck created by the juniors. Content delivered by the tier-1 and tier-2 firms is from a certain standard, and that’s most definately not the (low) academic standard.

I know this blog gets read once in a while… it would be nice to receive a comment Or contact me my email: dutchconsultant(at)gmail.com