Accountancies have bolted on non-accounting services in the same way pharmacists dispensers bolted on front-of-house sales of cosmetics and liquorice. Like tinkers of old they knocked on the doors of organisations: ‘Any jobs we can do for you?’
Craftsman: Definition. One proficient in a craft or trade. (One who knows how to fix their stuff ups).
Professional: Definition. One accredited with a body of knowledge, who abides by a set of principles, with peer review and ongoing learning.
In the 17th Century folk consulted an oracle for advice.
Then more recently in the 19th Century they consulted a physician or an engineer.
Companies then used accountants to provide objective numbers which depict vital aspects of an organisation–but not all of it.
Gradually accountancy firms expanded their services to do any job the organisation could not, or did not want to do.
Like tinkers of old they knocked on the doors of organisations, some of them were clients they already knew, and they inquired: ‘Any jobs we can do for you? And these are the people we have whom we can put at your disposal.’
Accountancies bolted on non-accounting services in the same way pharmacists dispensers bolted on front-of-house sales of cosmetics and liquorice.
What are consulting services?
Private and public organisations want to improve. They have heaps of jobs which they want done and some they do not want to take responsibility for, like firing staff; tasks they would be happy to pay others to perform and to wear the fallout.
Elements central to the helping relationship are qualifications and experience to do the job, accreditation, ethics, fees, sharing of power and responsibility, indicators of success, unintended consequences, managing mistakes and repaying unused fees. These more obscured ingredients are often assumed in the excitement of finding someone who can ‘make it better for us’.
Due diligence matters are often settled on the golf course, in flight lounges or sailing clubs or college old boys’ reunions.
The consulting industry has grown influenced by the seventies fads, especially the pervasive dogma of Chicago School neo-conservative economics.
Dogmatic tenets include: small government, belief that the private sector does things better than the public sector, shedding staff lowers costs, and just buy in a private contractor as needs arise.
What happened?
Public servants went on to contracts with targets. Vice Chancellors became accountants with a flair for public relations.
Private sector notions like entrepreneurialism, managerialism, (anyone can manage anything), profit maximisation, and everyone is a customer metastasised from the new age neo-con policy nostrums. Redundant staff put up their shingles now retreaded as consultants.
Corporate memory was trumped by rashes of shallow MBAs; the degree you get when you haven’t had an education. These courses presented a degustation menu from disciplines such as sociology, psychology, statistics, history and health offered in a Reader’s Digest form.
Power and control.
The international spread of consulting bodies, their profits, their government affiliations and the power given to them suggest that if the media are the fourth estate these are now the fifth estate.
‘Accounting consultancies had become one stop shops that provided core professional services across operational and government areas. Unfortunately, the systemic risks of these dynamics were not recognised before it was too late.’, Page 63.–‘The Big Con’ Marianna Mazzucato and Rosie Collington.
Why?
So how come so many smart people at the top of government or commerce or industry are gulled into massive expenditure and dubious outputs?
The fact that the hirers of consultants are senior managers and members of boards means two things. One, their egos are prone to manipulation by high status consultants who are expensively housed and liveried. Same suburbs, same recreations, same colleges.
Secondly, often these senior people are systemically ignorant of what is really going on in the organisation. ‘And anyway, what would they know?’; and then it’s easier to discuss cutting staff when those impacted are absent from the consult.
So what? What needs to happen?
The material of administration, running a company or a government remains mostly the same. Tools improve from the abacus to the computer. But it is in the processes of management where effective changes are needed.
Reliable resources.
Management consulting requires a reliable set of skills and values. The Tavistock Institute in England and the Sloan M.I.T Management School and others have developed deeper understandings to educate consultants to help organisations. Consultants need to be asked to declare their training, experience, and ethics which are the ingredients of their marketable skills. They need to be utterly trustworthy and free of conflicts of interest.
Standards of helping.
Helping is the most exquisite of arts. Helpers have developed guilds and professional associations to establish their professional skills and ethics.
Clients give away their power to get help. That power is easily abused. And the worst corruption is the corruption of public and professional people–who are supposed to set a good example.
Michael D. Breen
Michael Breen, twenty years a Jesuit, then educational psychologist (Boston College) and researcher, (Ireland) student counsellor,(Bathurst and Wollongong Unis) organisational psychologist,(private practice, mostly in W.A.) Zen practitioner Dai Boku.