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u/BabySharkMadness 4d ago
I have a meeting today to review decisions made in a meeting held in July.
Does anyone remember stuff that happened in July?
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u/zwat28 4d ago
I think i drank beer on the 4th day
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u/makebklynghettoagain 4d ago
I went and visited the country we fought for our freedom from. I couldn't help but think "maybe it wouldn't have been so bad"
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u/never-starting-over 4d ago
same. wait, are we in the same meeting??!!!
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u/just_nobodys_opinion 4d ago
We transcribed the meeting in Teams so Imma just g... Um... Anyone know what the default Teams retention period is?
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u/Rocketbird 4d ago
The workforce’s focus on hitting the next quarter at the expense of what we did three months ago is at the core of a lot of dysfunction in the workplace.
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u/Infamous_Ruin6848 4d ago
I assume you guys live in stoneage and there were no means to track decisions? Probably even then they wrote on cave walls.
Jokin'. I know the feeling
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u/ExtinctLikeNdiaye 4d ago
The fact that you're still reviewing decisions made in July suggests one or both of the following:
You have no real incentive to actually get the decision finalized
There isn't a real adult in the project team who knows how to actually get the decision to the finish line.
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u/Kayge SAP. This project is a red, can you get it to Green? 4d ago
Here's a different perspective.
I'd moved from consulting where I did delivery to industry. The new company was setting up a new line of business in a new region. They call MBB in who does the analysis who come back with an IT approach of "You have <this> group doing very similar work in that same region. Leverage their platform and expand; done in 24 months for $X"
Execs love it, board signs off and eventually it comes to my group. As the presiding delivery nerd I pull out the standard CYA approach "This looks great! I'll get my team engaged and for due diligence, and to get down to the next layer of detail."
Our very first meeting starts with "Thank god you guys are here! These systems are 30 years old and barely holding on."
$X is now $10X, and 24 months passed 24 months ago.
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u/ExtinctLikeNdiaye 4d ago edited 4d ago
I left consulting earlier this year and now I have to be on the other side of the equation.
I will tell you that far more times than not, the consultants think they've delivered the top picture but they're just droning on about why the approach in the second picture is better based on their proprietary methodology (which is so advanced, it lives in an Excel sheet run by a 19 year old intern who doesn't know how to use mass transit).
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u/Delicious_Oil9902 4d ago
I built maybe a third of my practices revenue on fixing these methods done by competing companies
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u/MBA-Crystal-Ball 4d ago
"My cup runneth over!"
- Client complaint converted into testimonial on consultant site
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u/CaptSpot 4d ago
Consultants optimize for logic. Entrepreneurs for consequences. Not the same. That’s why I have a problem with consultants :-)
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u/ExtinctLikeNdiaye 4d ago
Consultants optimize for billable hours and whatever the bare minimum they have to deliver under their SoW for said billable hours.
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u/shahitukdegang 2d ago
Consultants optimize for defensibility. Entrepreneurs optimize for exit valuation. Consultants can be sued for poor advice. Investors are shit out of luck if Entrepreneur executes poorly.
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u/waffles2go2 4d ago
So "consequences" means 99% failure because they literally can't do business 101?
Tell me more!
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u/PotentialAfternoon 4d ago
Is it just me or “deliver clear and actionable strategy” is not clear nor actionable.
It’s just saying “get good”.
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u/Check123ok 4d ago edited 4d ago
You’re doing yourself a disservice with this. You don’t realize you are actually making consultants look bad not clients.
What a lot of consultants forget about is that they deliver strategies that sound good on paper.
Majority of consultants (especially the large influx of junior staff) who graduated from university, and work as consultant straight out of school have never run a business, have never worked at a business, don’t understand people. If they mess up, they just move on. Consequences, ethics, law are of little impact.
I was a consultant for 12 years now I run my own business.
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u/derp0815 4d ago
making consultants look bad
Don't worry, the one thing consultants can always handle is making themselves look bad, no need for OP.
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u/firenance Financial, M&A 12h ago
Good example of this. I’m in M&A and perpetuation planning.
I inherited a business from my dad after he died with no plan. I lived it. Most of my competitors have not.
The general set up trusts, consider buy/sell, is all good but the first 90 days if you don’t have someone experienced to step in and handle affairs a trust or inexperienced or disinterested trustee is worthless.
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u/Stunning_Position345 4d ago
Honestly – as a consultant myself – I oftentimes experience the work of my colleagues as the opposite of this picture. Top: client need/brief, bottom: proposed solution of consultants.
What I really sometimes despise about our profession is that many colleagues as well as even clients seem to appreciate this convoluted bs even more than just a straightforward fix of their problem / implementation of a solution. Needs to be fancy and look good on slides.
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u/martin_niftypm 3d ago
This is why I think meeting transcripts alone are only half the answer. Three months later nobody wants to search through a two hour transcript to figure out what was actually decided.
The useful version is the decisions, owners, next actions and reasoning getting attached to the actual project while the context is fresh. The meeting should disappear. The decision should not.
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u/JacobAllenF 2d ago
If you can’t be clear, adapt your communication, and appreciate the client’s context and operational reality, I’m not sure whose fault it really is. There are dumb people, but a lot of misalignment isn’t a lack of capability. It’s a failure to define objectives and paths with the audience in mind: what motivates them, what information matters to them, and what roadmap they can actually use.
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u/aimfuldrifter 4d ago
Clients are idiots. Consultants are idiots. PMs are idiots. Staff are idiots. Everyone is an idiot.