October 26th, 2018 9:30 AM
Most of the time, a consulting company acts as an agent that is outside of the political process, so yes. Conversely, almost universally, the upper 1/2 of any consulting organization is far better than the upper 1% of any department they work for. The reason is simple: all companies that hire consultants within a 3 to 5 year window, are solving the same problems in all their customers within different political and incentive structures – and so none of the problems are ever difficult – only getting them done in the political structure of the organization. The problem is simple economics: people in companies invest in what they do, and change, success, or falure, threaten those investments (their property). A good consultant discovers these investments and promotes them and illustrates how they contributed to the current success. Unfortunately for example, most tech innovation other than improving user interface workflow tends to be a waste of money and all strategy and marketing and strategic consulting is just a way of circumventing a management organization malinvested in a prior.