Happy Friday!

Yesterday, someone who almost never posts on LinkedIn posted an article from the CEO of a consultancy that a bunch of their former co-workers wound up in.

The article was about transformation fatigue, and how lame consultants are part of the problem. The premise is that consultants aren't solving the "Process" problems, and that only good consultants will.

Know what my experience has been? 100% of consultants love to tell you what you "should" and "ought" to do. They love telling you about industry best practices and saying things like, "That's what Google and Amazon do."

Oh, those recommendations were in a slide deck with quotes like, "If I asked what they want, they would have asked for a faster horse," and "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

Just in case you forgot because you're tired of this crap.

My take? There is NO shortage of models, frameworks, processes, and techniques that consultants offer. They just aren't good at getting them to work or last.

Do you know how many times I've been at large clients for their Bain and McKinsey consultants to come through and exit with a slide deck with bangers like, "You are losing X million in productivity due to ineffective meetings. Make sure all meetings have an agenda and only invite the relevant people."

I can feel the value.

Here's the deal—I love these consultants because they make me look good. Here's the trick you can use the next time you hire consultants.

Don't sign a contract unless it has a measurable, desirable impact in writing.

They can razzle-dazzle with their nice clothes and power points forever, but when they slide a proposal over with vague project scope, billable hours, and the folks billing them, slide it back and have them point out where they are contractually required to bring any benefit they talked about.

They're experts after all. They've done this for all kinds of clients. Put some of the risk back on them.

I'm confident they'll push back. I'm confident they'll backtrack. I'm confident they'll bring up how many variables there are that could change everything, and that it'd be hard to pin down something like that.

The bottom line is that most consultants don't know how to make change happen at all, and you shouldn't have to bear the risk of that again.

Here's one last thing: there is a specific term in the consultant world for what I just suggested, and folks who have been in the game for a while know what it is. So don't let anyone tell you it doesn't work, isn't practical, or anything like that.

There are consultants out there, like me, who will base their contracts on measurable impact and accept the risk that comes with failure.

Sincerely,

Ryan

PS: I wrote an article about understanding capacity. I also started playing around with consolidating my knowledge, and I'm being whimsical about it, but I put some stuff out about meeting facilitation.