Management consultants are supposed to be the smart independent problem solvers that are called in to fix the biggest or most acute problems in an organization. They also are an incubator for future talent and often go on to take senior management roles at many of the clients that they advise.
Names like Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company and McKinsey and Company are legendary fixers that are supposed to have the best minds recruited from the likes of the Ivy Leagues and Rhodes Scholars. Before I get into my experience on the sharp end of the management consulting stick, let me be clear that I think there are a lot of smart management consultants and I think in many cases they can add value by voicing an objective and convincing voice to help better steer organizations in a more productive direction.
However my lasting impression of my experience with the methods of management consultants left something to be desired and to get an idea of why, it first helps for me to give some context to my former work environment.
Working Across Cultures
I suppose by this point, I have made my career pretty much about being a foreigner or being in a foreign organization. I have worked for American, European and Asian companies but my most vivid experience of working with management consulting concepts was when I worked at a Japanese company.
As many people know, Japan is an exceptional country and culture in many ways. In terms of social cohesion and work ethic, I have not seen anything like it. It’s even an exception in inflation and national debt. I have a strong admiration for many characteristics of Japanese culture from my time working for them. Their commitment, sense of duty, attention to detail and constant striving for perfection are admirable. All of these particularities of their culture helped propel the country to first world status after the disaster of the Second World War. It also led them to have the unhappiest people in the rich world which I discussed a few years back in this post. Just a look at the people being packed in the subway for their commute is enough to make you miserable.
Source: Tokyo from the Inside
The rigidness of the culture and the plethora of social norms above and beyond Western culture is also what leads many firms to struggle to succeed in Japan. Japan is a place that brings their goods to the world, not necessarily brings in goods and business from abroad. Their social norms touch all facets of life and I got to know them all too well while working with the Japanese. From not being able to leave until your boss leaves, to the myriad of paperwork and discussions I had to have to get the organization to make decisions and reach “consensus”, there were a number of pitfalls that I could see those that didn’t get to know the culture falling into if one were to just walk in and try to change things on day one.
One facet of the culture that is important to understand is kaizen or the constant striving towards an unattainable perfection. It is the force behind many of the mastery you see in Japan. From the world renown sushi chef, to the quality of the millions of automobiles churned out of its factories every year, kaizen is at the heart of everything. It means repeating everything to the point of mastery, and then repeating it again, because there almost is no such thing as mastery, only kaizen. See how that works? Well one group of people that didn’t understand this concept were the management consultants from McKinsey that came into steer the company in the right direction one day.
In Come the Golden Boys
Source: Rotten Tomatoes
Senior management at this firm likely sensed something was wrong. Middle management was telling them everything was fine but they kept hearing about low employee satisfaction and morale that was translating into stagnating market share and shrinking profitability.
Whether it was management or the consultants that identified that middle management may be the problem, I cannot know, but the solution that was suggested by the management consultants did attempt to skip over middle management and go straight to the front line workers.
What they suggested was to create focus groups that were composed of associate, VP and Senior VP employees that would have free range to suggest the most important changes that they think should be implemented. These would be the changes that middle management was too high to see but were obvious to people dealing with real client issues on a day to day basis. It was an attempt to break the cautious, conservative hold that middle management had on the firm by going directly to the little guy to give them the power to suggest real and big changes.
Before I get into what happened, it helps to understand where the concept came from. I had read about cases similar to this in business school. Basically the concept tries to embody a lot of the ideas detailed in this Inc. article on how to motivate your employees and make them feel more empowered. The version of the idea that I heard was at a car factory where they noticed that employees were not feeling motivated and middle management seemed to be telling senior management that everything was fine and there were no big improvements to be made.
So focus groups were created with the line workers directly and they were asked how to improve their job or their part of the assembly line and were empowered with the authority to actually make those changes with management support.
The results at the (I’m assuming it was American) car factory were fantastic, the workers who were looking at one process on the assembly line all day started suggesting ingenious yet common sense solutions to much of the process. Their suggestions to screw something in from the bottom rather than the top, assemble one piece right next to another etc. drastically improved productivity at the plant with the added benefit of making their workers feel more empowered and have a sense of ownership in their daily work that they didn’t have before.
I assume after these gains happened, the factory was more efficient, the workers were more happy, the management was happy with the results and the management consultants collected a hefty sum and walked away happy as well.
That isn’t kaizen though, because kaizen never ends.
Unintended Consequences
When this assembly line focus group solution was brought to Japanese management, they implemented it right away all over the world. Division managers were to create focus groups and bestow them with real power to make changes and implement them within their area. Then the middle managers had to report back with the changes they saw implemented to senior management.
The first round went relatively well, although no big changes were initially accepted at least they were debated. Many employees I think were skeptical that the company was really willing to change its culture of conformity let alone its processes. Middle management happily reported the changes they made to senior management and everyone was to be satisfied. After the first changes came though, rather than the response being contentment and a win, the response was: kaizen, go back and do it again.
And they did, again…
and again…
and again…
and again…and you can see where this is going.
This went on for 2 years, until people became so demoralized by the process they just stopped showing up to the meetings all together. Hundreds of hours were wasted trying to come up with new proposals that would give the division manager something to show his boss and also check the box that the group “did” something. Rather than make the company more efficient, it left the workers even more demoralized and frustrated because it seemed like they were being forced into another pointless exercise in order to win corporate brownie points.
Conclusion
I’m sure that long after the consultants were paid and went on to their next client, we were still stuck doing our kaizen focus groups, with the authors of this concept having no idea of the bi-weekly torture sessions they had caused for thousands of workers across the world.
After having worked at a number of different international companies, I can say that cultural knowledge is still one of the most underrated business traits that one can have. Not just language but having cultural context and foreseeing consequences of changes long down the road would have saved my former co-workers and myself hours of wasted precious man hours and productivity.
It’s also why diversity is not just a politically correct buzzword, it actually matters because in this case, if someone had the cultural knowledge and foresight to see how this could get out of hand, they could have stopped it before it even was presented to senior management and an alternative solution that fit better with the national culture of the company could have been proposed. So don’t be scared of the new guy and his different ways, he may save you one day.
