What did the consultant leader say to cross the road to avoid the layoff?
“First, let’s align on our strategic vision for road-crossing. I’ll set up a workshop, build a decision-making framework, and put together a 50-slide deck on best practices. In the meantime, let’s form a cross-functional committee to evaluate process efficiencies. Oh, and let’s schedule a weekly sync to track progress.”
Meanwhile, the people actually getting the work done—stuck working under these leftover consultant hires from the 2020 “Let’s Hire Consultants as Leaders” era— quietly tell them just tell them to walk across. But first, they have to book time, listen to 45 minutes of how busy and self important the consultant leader is while they blow-fake-smoke and do nothing, then get a lecture on how to cross the road “more efficiently” using a PowerPoint framework with a strategic vision!
These fake leader consultants—FTE hires in disguise—are like a bad weed: there’s always more of them lurking beneath the surface, and no matter what you do, they somehow evade the pesticide while everything good withers away… Nope, nothing like that happening here!
To everyone just trying to survive the “strategic review” with a consultant leader and the inevitable chaos, solidarity. You are not alone!