I was a Management Consultant, which is a flowery name for a Headhunter, about 35 rears ago.
We did mostly Banking & Finance recruitment in the days when boys in the money market were pulling very high salaries. Our fees were 30% of the salary package which meant each gig averaged about $250,000. It was a very lucrative business, but without any scruples.
I was very good at finding the correct person for the job, but I soon learnt that the Client didn’t always want the best person, just the one that suited them. So I would always offer up three for the final choice.
Mostly they did not choose my first pick, which was OK with me, as I could then offer them to some-one else.
Dingus was correct when he said the Consulting was about telling the Client what they want to hear. Otherwise you often don’t get paid.
Back in 1997, my firm was developing a superannuation admin system for (what used to be) a very large Australian wealth management company. Eighteen people were employed on the task and were making good progress.
However, this company (rhymes with hay-gem-key) had an American CEO who decided that he had to cover his bottom and employed one of the large consulting firms (used to be Andersen) to decide whether they were going down the right path.
Andersen put 85 bums on seats, mainly raw graduates, only one or two of whom had any knowledge of the intricacies of Australian super law (and there were a lot more legislative intrictacies before 2007).
Of course, the motto of these consulting companies is that if you see the light at the end of the tunnel, you just order in more tunnel.
So they realise they can get that goose to keep laying golden eggs simply by winding up this project and putting it out to tender again, so they can get a lot more billable hours.
Pretty much every project that had one of the consulting firms in ended in misery, obstacles and back-biting. Nothing was ever their fault.
Consulting firms are where people with useless MBA’s go to pad out the numbers.
The company I worked for (I just resigned) sent me to one of the other companies they own in a sort of consultancy role. They were sketchy in the details and all they were wanting to tell me that they just want me to go in and help all the new people there how to use sales system we use (which by the way was forced on them on the day it changed over).
The reason for them wanting me to do this was because the other company was haemorrhaging money and I need to fix it. I’m thinking hang on it can’t just be the sales staff not knowing how to use the system that’s resulted in this. So I prodded a bit further and they let slip that their real concern is the staff. The new staff.
After three days at the new place I reported back and said you’re smallest concern is your new staff. Your real concern is that the system you have the company running off is in no way shape or form meant to be used the way you want you’re other company to use it.
They didn’t ask for my opinion again. All they wanted me to do was go over there and say person a, b & c sucked and you need to replace them. Anything other than that was too hard to fix and meant they had to admit they’d done something wrong.
Best part was they sent me over there in the hope I stayed with the company instead of losing me completely. Worst thing they could have done was show me how badly another company they own is managed.
Can top that toilet roll story with a tale from a good friend.
He was the procurement officer at a naval base in Sydney, as part of his ordering process he had a standard template of items such as TP, razors etc… That would get purchased per month.
The team changed the system and little beknown to him the ordering unit for TP went from Roll to pallet. However no red flags as due to a system error the price did not change.
Now imagine his surprise three or four days later when 9 trucks roll up to deliver a few hundred pallets, not rolls of TP.
Not his only ordering mistake but my favourite one.
For me, the worst examples of workplace ineptitude have occurred where a psychopathic, autocratic executive is introduced to a functioning work environment. Their usual M.O. is to destroy all existing power bases (thereby making the place dysfunctional by driving out experience & knowledge), then hire in yes men / women to work on pet projects intended to disrupt without regard for collateral damage. After a year or two of toxicity, waste, overpromising & under-delivering they move on to bigger & better things leaving a trail of destruction behind for the survivors to repair. Seen this a few times. Never understood why these types prosper.
Dysfunctional is any government department. Put in your bid for how much you are going to spend for the year to have the money approved. So what does everyone do, overestimate by a factor of two. Then come end of year, haven’t spent the money they were supposed to and now have a rather large excess to get rid of. They won’t hand it back, because if they do, their budget for the following year will be cut, so they go a spend. One unnamed centre linking people and employers together managed to fully refurbish their main street capital city premises 3 times in 3 years, just so they didn’t get their budget cut the following year. Insane.
So my personal bit of awesome government experience lolz.
Service Desk team leader decided to take ownership of the print cartridges for the building (37 Levels).
He presented his idea, and cost savings and it seemed really good so he ordered a few hundred cartridges. This just happened to be at the time of HP giving away a Nintendo WII with 3 cartridges barcodes sent in for redemption.
Little did we know he had redeemed a few hundred WII’s and sold them all on EBAY.
Have a meeting outline a expo we are having. Explain that as parents are coming, all students need to be there the whole time and you have to set up your area.
The colleague doesn’t set up (we have to get them to come and do it) and only sends half the students leaving parents wondering where they are.
Thats the same for most workplaces on the “yes man/women”. You know you’re in for a rough patch when they start saying “Know your role and stick to it”.
We have had highly experienced staff leave for lack of promotion over inexperienced 2nd year staff members into higher roles of leadership.
I laugh when they promote these people who do double the workload for LESS pay then I am currently on.
I remember going out to one location and they had printer cartridges stacked to the roof. They basically has enough to last them about 150 years. Only problem - the cartridges expire after 18 months.
He placed the order on behalf of his employer. His employer was entitled to the Nintendos as a consequence of the order. This employee, who had been given responsibility by his employer for making these orders, concealed from the employer the fact that it had become entitled to the Nintendos and instead took them for his own personal benefit.
Maybe you don’t think that’s dishonest, but I do. It’s also obtaining a financial advantage by deception (formerly known as embezzlement).
I couldn’t see the case specific to my Dept. Dept of Justice funnily enough. But yeah, it was pretty dodgy practice. This would have been around 2004 or so before I left for Sydney.