There are basically three types of consultants: the independent (you and I), the influence peddler (whom we have discussed earlier in this book), and the large management consulting firm.
In the beginning, I must confess to a certain amount of awe concerning the large consulting firm that is incorporated with a zillion names on the door and letterhead. How could I possibly compete with or stand up to them? Their names are like household words in the business community, and their offices look like banks.
I had received my first three calls for purely consultative work many years ago. One of them was from a large organization. On my first exploratory visit, the executive in charge opened the meeting by tossing a weighty report across the desk at me. It was eighty pages long and most handsomely (and expensively) bound. The name of the esteemed consulting firm embossed in gold leaf on the cover made me gasp. This was my very first major consulting assignment. Surely no one expected me to stand alongside, let alone be in the same ball park with them! I looked up, and the client, his face purple with rage, threw three words at me: "Read that horseshit!" He then went on to tell me that the eminent consulting firm sent in "some young with a newly minted master's degree in business administration from Harvard" who had no actual experience and nothing to recommend him but an expensive necktie and an attaché case that was the talk of the office complex. Three weeks later, the firm presented my client with a bill for $5,000 and the report I held in my hands. This report was a perfect example of a high-school student's attempt to puff up a paper about a book he had never read (as we discussed in a previous chapter). The eighty pages were devoted to defining the problem, complete with a table of contents and index. "Dammit," yelled the client, "I know the problem. I know it well enough to try to get some help around here. I need some solutions." I felt on much firmer ground then.
I offered to tackle the job and complete it in one working week. I went to work on the following day. I was there four hours, when I recognized the impasse. The middle-management executive in charge, who was as-signed to assist me in gathering the required data and information, was a total incompetent. He had obviously covered his tracks and fooled my predecessor. He had kept no records in his division for five years, and he had instructed his clerical staff to do likewise. There were no sales records, no packing slips, and no invoices. All that remained were bookkeeping entries in the ledger books in the controller's office. I quickly assessed the cost to management of writing to all its resources requesting duplicate documents and reconstructing the whole picture. At three o'clock, I asked to see my client in private. I explained what I had found, why it would not pay him to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and why I could not give him the answers he wanted. I was careful not to mention the other consulting firm. I strongly recommended that he dismiss his division head for either incompetence or the cover-up of something more serious. I told him that, although I had set the week aside for him, it would not be fair to charge him the full fee, since I could not fulfill my original function. I would put into writing what I had found and simply charge him my daily fee. It was immediately apparent to him, as it had been to me all day long, that the prestigious consulting firm had taken him for a long ride by stretching this futile situation into a three-week project and filing the nonsensical report. One month later, this client called me back and retained me to administer that division on a free-lance basis. I worked on that project for one year and put the division back on its feet.
Since then, I have never worried about competition from the behemoths of the profession and certainly not from my fellow independents. The bigger they are, the less functional. Small is beautiful. The bigger they are, the higher their overhead and their fees, and the better my chances. Some companies that are highly specialized are effective. But those that claim to be able to solve all problems in all fields under the guise of "management consulting" are pulling the wool over sleeping eyes. Lots of luck to them.
You will have no competition.
