consultants

In the late 1960’s, minimills like Nucor started using a new process that could produce low grades of steel more efficiently than the big integrated steel makers. These, however, were the lowest margin products in the industry and didn’t seem much of a threat to the big guys.

You may know that I value skepticism in the sense of questioning the taken for granted.  In this post I question the  central tenet of the customer business.  And I question the insight and expertise of customer gurus and management consultants. Let’s start with the central tenet.

You've probably come across many self-claimed innovation experts in the past and it seems like anyone who has a different way of saying or doing something is calling themselves one. So many dumb things I’ve heard these people said about innovation. Some are snake oil consultants promising to help clients to innovate and to organize a company for innovation. There are some selling to clients how to be creative. I’ve heard people promising clients that they can improve innovation success rate from 4% to 80%! 80% wow, if that’s the case, this consultancy should worth a few billions at least. Google would have bought them already!

by: Idris Mootee

“Clients Realize That to Succeed at Their Own Projects, They Need to Think Like Consultants” is the headline of article from the Consultant News published by Kennedy Consulting Research. Clients shouldn't think like consultants, read on to understand why.

by: John Caddell

In earlier segments of this thread, we discussed how "bringing the outside in" is imperative for companies to keep aware and humble enough to avoid complacency and drive their organizations forward successfully. By contrast, companies in which the context inside the company drowns out voices from the outside tend to attribute their successes to their internal competencies, blame their failures on outside entities, and stagnate their way to failure.

by: John Caddell