Are All Consultants Corrupt?

Why don't these firms change?

Why don't they change? Let me give you an analogy from my own life. I am a fat smoker. I don't need another speech to tell me that I should stop smoking and lose weight. Clear lungs, a longer life, a better sex life -- I accept that it's a fabulous strategy. But please, no more speeches. Now, people in professional services have heard all the speeches before too: Give great customer service, be a team player, manage your people. It's not that they don't believe the strategy.

The problem is, whether it's me giving up smoking or them starting to give great customer service, any kind of improvement requires short-term sacrifice and short-term pain in the name of a better long-term future. There are very few businesses that are truly interested in maximizing their future income stream.

Professional-services firms need to have an ideology. They need to know what they stand for. They need to have nonnegotiable, minimum standards. They need to be able to say, We will not accept work that goes against our standards, because that's not who we are. The problem in professional services is that because the environment is so bountiful, you can get everything wrong and still have a nice income.

I'm not picking on any one profession. They're all equally bad. They treat people poorly. They don't train well. They have no quality assurance. They don't collaborate with one another. They don't show any interest in their clients. You would think that this would kill them. But they're only competing against each other. So as long as nobody wakes up, they can all make money doing this shit. Why are there so many bad professional-services firms out there? For the same reason that there are so many fat smokers.

But don't most firms know that they're not measuring up?

Here's a little quiz that I've been giving professional-services audiences for the past seven years. First I give them three categories to classify how they feel about their work. Category one is, "I love this stuff! I just love doing it." Category two is, "I can tolerate it, but that's why they call it work. I do my job, but I have no emotional investment in it." Category three is, "How the hell did I end up doing this junk?"

The results are always the same in all professions around the world. You get about 20% who say, "I love this work"; 60% to 70% who say, "I can tolerate it"; and 10% to 20% who say that what they do is junk.

Then I give them a second question. I say, "You've told me about your work. Now tell me how you feel about your clients." Again, I give them three categories to classify how they feel. Category one is, "I really like these people. I enjoy serving them." Category two is, "I can tolerate them. I'm responsible and I give good service, but there is no real difference between today's client and tomorrow's client." Category three is, "These people are idiots who work in a boring industry."

The results for the second question are pretty much the same as for the first. About 20% love their customers, 60% to 70% can tolerate them, and 10% to 20% can't stand them.

What the numbers say is that most professionals like their jobs one day a week or less, and the rest of the time, they just tolerate what they do. Then I ask them, "Do you think your clients can tell?" To which everybody says, "Yes!" Well, what are the business implications of that? For most professional-services firms, the answer lies in their mission statement: We won't screw up, but we're nothing special.

I tell them, If that were me, I'd slit my wrists! That's true for one very simple reason: I don't want my tombstone to read, "He did tolerable stuff for tolerable people because they paid him." I'm not that much of a whore. Do I do it occasionally? Sure. I'm no more noble than anyone else. But that's not the issue. The issue is, Is that your life? Why would you want to spend your life doing stuff that you can just tolerate, working for people you don't like? Especially when you realize that you can make more money doing work that engages your passions. The only sensible business rule is, Life is too short to work for idiots. So if you're working with people who are shady or crooked, get out!

Alan M. Webber (awebber@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company founding editor. Visit David Maister on the Web (www.davidmaister.com). To join the online debate about Enron and its associates, click here.