TEARING DOWN CHESTERTON'S WALL:

The book divides the consulting industry into two broad divisions and identifies the Big Four and Big Three of each: McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group and Bain & Company in management, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and EY in accountancy. There's a host of others, be they large or small (or "boutique", as they sometimes refer to themselves, with a laughable pretentiousness).

Names and identities are irrelevant in one sense: they all play the same game. Consultants claim to have unique insight, wisdom or situation-specific skills that can do the job better than the organisation that needs it done.

They give it the hard sell with references to partners' academic qualifications and published papers (often these are not peer-reviewed and, in fact, were sometimes published in the company's own in-house pseudo-academic journal -- the old adage that "self-praise is no praise" comes to mind).

Consultants cite similar situations which they "successfully" -- this is usually debatable -- negotiated for suitably impressive-sounding clients: Fortune 500 corporations (mostly Western) or government departments. They bamboozle with references to the latest spoofery in management theory or economic/political science.

The client doesn't have a grounding in any of this stuff, which is partly the point: it's hard to tell if you're being played when you barely understand what you're being told. But it sounds highfalutin' and intellectual, so that's usually enough to make the sale. Indeed, that's why people bring in consultants in the first place: they're the experts, supposedly. The average chief executive or minister should and does feel as if these people know what they're doing.

In many cases, however, consultancies do little or nothing to improve the business or public service. Worst-case scenario, they actively cause damage. [...]

At one point, the book points out that, in "simulated scenario" interviews/tests for entry to consultancies' graduate programmes, those who score best are the candidates who comes across as most confident in what they're saying. In other words, it barely matters what you're proposing, whether it's a good or bad idea: the most important thing is that you sound as if you believe it. 

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