Consultants Make Bad Presidents

LionsSBC12 · **Posted:** Sat Dec 10, 2011 1:38 pm

According to The Atlantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... ness/8718/

(It's about Mitt Romney)

An Excerpt:
"Now consider what a consultant does. Consultants are, as any firm will tell you, the “best and the brightest,” culled from elite undergraduate and graduate programs. But they rarely lead anything larger than a small team; the average Army second lieutenant nine months out of a third-tier state college probably has more direct reports, and more deliverables.

Moreover, a consultant’s voice is not the voice of direct experience; most of the problems that consultants analyze are ones they have never faced. And although consultants asking for your business may talk about the trove of industry intelligence they have to share, in practice, the sharing is limited: contracts forbid sharing anything really juicy, and some firms work with only one client per sector at a time. In fact, the arguments for hiring a consultant are often the same as those for seeing a psychiatrist. Both experts have helped an awful lot of people work through problems, which makes them good at listening and gives each one an arsenal of best practices to suggest to their new clients."

OldBrit · **Posted:** Tue Jan 03, 2012 2:33 am

Very true. Hence why some consultants can find it tough to move from MC into industry (as the odd friend of mine has experienced).

3underscore · **Posted:** Sat Jan 14, 2012 9:09 pm

I think more the problem the population with have with Mitt is that he was a PE guy. The firm may have had Bain in the name, but it had all to do with PE and nothing to do with consulting.

faro · **Posted:** Thu Jan 19, 2012 10:19 pm

3underscore wrote:

I think more the problem the population with have with Mitt is that he was a PE guy. The firm may have had Bain in the name, but it had all to do with PE and nothing to do with consulting.

Romney started out in Bain consulting, then went to Bain capital. He's done both.

rjdunn03 · **Posted:** Sat Jan 21, 2012 12:57 pm

LionsSBC12 wrote:

According to The Atlantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... ness/8718/

(It's about Mitt Romney)

An Excerpt:
"Now consider what a consultant does. Consultants are, as any firm will tell you, the “best and the brightest,” culled from elite undergraduate and graduate programs. But they rarely lead anything larger than a small team; the average Army second lieutenant nine months out of a third-tier state college probably has more direct reports, and more deliverables.

Moreover, a consultant’s voice is not the voice of direct experience; most of the problems that consultants analyze are ones they have never faced. And although consultants asking for your business may talk about the trove of industry intelligence they have to share, in practice, the sharing is limited: contracts forbid sharing anything really juicy, and some firms work with only one client per sector at a time. In fact, the arguments for hiring a consultant are often the same as those for seeing a psychiatrist. Both experts have helped an awful lot of people work through problems, which makes them good at listening and gives each one an arsenal of best practices to suggest to their new clients."

I'm going to read the article later, it looks interesting. But to the point from your excerpt that consultants rarely lead anything but small teams - that is true but it seems very contrived to apply that to Mitt Romney considering he founded Bain Capital, was CEO of Bain, and if I remember correctly he lead the 2002 Olympic committee. He's lead much bigger teams than a typical MC manager.

LionsSBC12 · **Posted:** Sat Jan 21, 2012 1:09 pm

rjdunn03 wrote:

I'm going to read the article later, it looks interesting. But to the point from your excerpt that consultants rarely lead anything but small teams - that is true but it seems very contrived to apply that to Mitt Romney considering he founded Bain Capital, was CEO of Bain, and if I remember correctly he lead the 2002 Olympic committee. He's lead much bigger teams than a typical MC manager.

Agreed. One of the most disappointing aspects of the article is that they don't bother to consider the differences between being a Consultant and being a Partner at a consulting firm...or CEO of a large professional services firm.

elitebag · **Posted:** Sun Jan 22, 2012 5:07 am

I agree .Consultant can't experience all the things .Sometimes discussing is more better .

Similar topics	Author	Replies	Views	Last post
The president of a consulting in GMAT Critical Reasoning (CR)	bsv180985	15	1098	Thu Dec 10, 2009 12:00 pm
From 10 people, select 1 person to make president, and then in GMAT Problem Solving (PS)	hallelujah1234	1	208	Sun May 16, 2004 12:30 pm
admission consultant full package: what to make of this? in The B-School Application	jk12	23	1514	Tue Nov 30, 2010 12:59 am
not bad in GMAT Data Sufficiency (DS)	mehdiov	4	718	Mon Aug 23, 2010 1:49 pm
Consulting!! in Ask Accepted.com	svudayag	5	1223	Mon Sep 06, 2004 7:15 am

Consultants Make Bad Presidents

Who is online

Main Navigation

GMAT Resources

Partners

MBA Resources