Hiring management consultants is often just a back-covering exercise

The consultancy will, quite possibly, recommend exactly what a company wants and it’s easy to blame it when things go wrong, says Chris Blackhurst

McKinsey’s power and influence has been highlighted in a new book (Getty/iStock)

The team from McKinsey wanted to go back in time. “Let’s look at 1964 when the newspaper had record sales and see what has changed,” said their leader. I wanted to scream, are you serious? But their faces said they were.

So we journeyed to a period when there was barely any TV, no 24-hour news, no internet, no computers, mobile phones or tablets, when parents were happy for their teenage sons to deliver newspapers on their bikes, often in the dark, and there were lots of newsagents.

Quite what we were hoping to achieve was difficult to discern. Presumably my searing contribution – I’d been dispatched by the editor to meet them and answer their questions – would help form the preamble to their report, making a case for swingeing job cuts as the newspaper’s future was limited (unlike some it had not invested heavily online and was now forced to play catch-up).

All the time we had this simplistic discussion I had to remind myself that these people were the best of the best as we were led to believe, that they presumably held degrees from the top universities and that my company was paying a small fortune for their advice.

The recommendation they made tallied with the number of likely job losses whispered by management among themselves before the consultants were hired. Funny that.

The problem is when an industry has no incentive to get government to be independent. A therapist who has their client in therapy forever obviously isn’t a very good therapist

Of course, management consultants like McKinsey do the client’s bidding. In this, they’re no different from lawyers or public relations advisers. Their first act is to ask the client what they’re looking to achieve. They then work backwards from that.

So, why bother, why use them at all? Because they form a barrier between boardroom and workforce: “Don’t blame us, it was the management consultants who said it.” Because they validate board decisions for shareholders: “The management consultants recommended it.” They’re even a buffer against the union: “It wasn’t us, it was them.”

In the case of McKinsey that’s more apposite as they’ve achieved that hallowed status, along with Bain and Boston Consulting, of being prestigious names that the City and Wall Street look for when a corporate makes a strategic move. If one of the trio (and to them can be added the consulting arms of the “Big Four” accountants) has not been immersed in the process, why not? Best to wait for their approval. You might lose your job if you don’t hire them, but you won’t if you do.

The bosses of the group that owned the newspaper were especially consultant-prone. We used to laugh that they must have had advisers telling them what to wear each morning – so reliant were they on outside “experts” for what could seem the most innocuous and obvious of decisions.

It was bizarre. They weren’t stupid but they needed consultants at every turn. In fact it was a back-covering exercise and, once having retained third-party assistance it became a habit. Another joke was that so bad did their addiction become that they were employing consultants to check up on the consultants, to review the hired help’s work. Actually, it was not that fanciful – I’m sure at one point they had a team of consultants looking at overall strategy which included the last overall strategy drawn up by another group of consultants.

They have no expertise in whatever it is they’re advising in. Yet we trust them and pay them, like some sort of security blanket

A depressing aspect was that so much was unsaid. You criticised the likes of McKinsey at your peril. “They’re a good thing, live with it.”

That sacrosanct attitude extends far and wide. There is very little criticism, not much focus, on the consultants’ industry – probably because virtually all organisations everywhere use them and rely upon them.

This dependency is, however, highlighted in two new books, When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe, and The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies by Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington.

Perhaps it will be an exercise at business school: instead of, why do London buses all come at once, why do two critical books about consultants appear pretty much at the same time? No matter. They each make for fascinating if depressing reading.

In their book, Mazzucato and Collington argue compellingly that consultants know less than they claim, cost more than they seem to and in the long term, prevent the public sector developing in-house capabilities. It’s true, the inability of government officials to think for themselves, to display initiative, is frightening. “We’re not against consultants,” says Mazzucato, a 54-year-old economist at University College London. “The problem is when an industry [has] no incentive to get government to be independent. A therapist who has their client in therapy forever obviously isn’t a very good therapist.”

That has certainly been my own experience, that once contracted they’re never away. No job is too small for the consultants’ once-over.

Mazzucato holds up Brexit as a case where consultants were all over the decision to leave the EU. Where they appear not to have been used was in foretelling the practical, day-to-day ramifications of the paperwork-filling sort that bedevil importers and exporters, and the shortages of staff in sectors like hospitality. That’s always the sense with consultants, that they’re theoreticians, smartly dressed, clever back-seat drivers. Put them in the front line and their sophisticated models soon crumble.

This is the weird thing: they have no expertise in whatever it is they’re advising in. Yet we trust them and pay them, like some sort of security blanket.

Another place I worked, there’d been long, awkward high-level discussions about rising costs, especially wage bills. We clearly had to make redundancies. Around 50, but not 50 exactly because that appeared made up. The consultants were sent for. In the chat, the number 47 was mentioned. They went away and produced a detailed, ring-bound report complete with PowerPoint slides. Cut to the end: the workforce should be reduced by 47.