Management consultancy report

This is the best-value management consultancy report ever - it's free, and it only takes five minutes to read. Not only does it encapsulate the key points of every management consultancy report ever written in Part A, but in Part B there is some really useful stuff - way more useful than you will usually find in such a report. 

Part A – Generic insights that sound profound but are actually really obvious

• Some of your employees are happy. Some of them aren't. For the most part, if you pretend to be listening to them, they will keep quiet.
• Costs, costs, costs!
• If you've not been making money, you need to keep the pressure on costs.
• If you've been making money, that's good, but you need to keep the pressure on costs because the competition is getting better.
• Errrr ….
• That's it.

Part B – Valuable insights that you won't get in a normal management consultancy report because otherwise you'd realise what a waste of money they were

• Management consultants don't know anything about your business. They generally just copy and paste from their previous report (after all, how different can the economy be from what it was two months ago?) having spent the time playing golf and having dinner with their next client who will also get a pretty much identical report.
• The management consultancy process is actually basically a symbiotic relationship between overpaid executives and overpaid management consultants. You pay us hundreds of thousands of pounds for pointless reports, we recommend your company to other rich clients and keep your share price high. You get a good price for your share options, we get a life of luxury for very little effort. Win win.
• Most of the employees expect to be here after you've left. They may not be paid as much as you, but they actually care more about the company than you do. And certainly more than the management consultants care about it.
• 90% of your employees could write a SWOT analysis for you on the back of an envelope for free during a coffee break.
• No manager likes to be the bearer of bad news, especially if it relates to his department, especially if it relates to a project that he has championed. When a group of managers has made the case for an idea, it is virtually impossible for them to admit that they may have been wrong. If you want the truth about such a project, you either need to find it yourself, or you need some other form of internal audit.
• It's easy to make the mistake of thinking that cheap is good. Cheap might not be good. It might just be cheap.
• A business will be successful if the fundamental business model is a good one, and it is visible. Everything else is just people hitching a ride on the money train.
• What is considered to be good management is a matter of fashion. If you don't like a particular model, just delay implementing it; in two years' time something else will come along anyway.
• Read "Dilbert". All of it.