Perhaps one of my most favorite quotes I've read on hackernews:
"This was one of those big eye opening moments for me. Consultants are hired mercenaries in coporate warfare, they don't care about you, they don't care about your company or the rivalries or the squabbaling. You pay them a bunch of money to come run roughshod over your enemies by producing reams of analysis and Powerpoints, to fling the arrows of jargon, and lay siege to your enemies employees by endlessly trapping them in meetings and then they depart.
Consultants are brought in to secure your flank, to provide air cover and to act as disposable pawns in interoffice combat.
They are not brought in to solve problems, to find solutions, or because of their incredibly acumen. It's because they have no loyalty or love but money."
As a former consultant, it do be like that sometimes.
Great quote :) Now I'm remembering why consulting burned out the consultants too. You go in thinking you're going to help strategize some big initiative. But you realize you're caught in some political drama and to survive in the contract, you have to figure out what makes your point of contact successful.
How do these things play out? Say the CEO wants to fire the CTO, how do they go about engaging consultants for the job? Do they discuss their goal explicitly with the consultants or is there some sort of underhanded language where the consultant team somehow understands why they are being hired?
If you are being explicit, do you risk leaving a paper trail behind which might come back to hurt you? But if you are not explicit, maybe the consultants end up finding out that the CTO is in fact performing really good.
It’s one chat between engagement director and client. It can go in any direction.
I’ve seen consultants come in, bury the truth in a 150 page report, lie about the truth in the executive summary, and then misdirect in the presentation. No one reads the report. CEO does whatever they want by spinning the consultant result in any direction they want. As long as they have just a bit more juice than the victim, the performance works as intended.
The expectations are absolutely communicated, but usually behind a closed door, between the CEO and a consultancy's senior partner that may not even be involved with the project directly (because he's too high up). And there's no paper trail behind it (the CEO wouldn't want to be blackmailed later), but the agreement is upheld, because consultancy knows that if they don't deliver, there will be no further contracts coming in from that CEO.
Mostly, the CEO will want to do something. Either people are on board with it, or the bus will have many stops for people to get off.
Consultants can be sincerely engaged around the change.
People who are entrenched in their self-absorbed politics may get off the bus.
There is not much of a secret language other than outside consultants providing third party perspective that may or may not be considered. Generally, employees who don't want to play ball with change (for example, digital transformation in an established company) will start to stand out.
Employees and departments may try to make things seem more difficult than they are, or be more difficult they need to be.
Aligning with company direction and helping execute them can be helpful.
The most important law in all of this is a double edged sword: Perception is reality. Make reality and perception the same. There will always be people committed to misunderstanding. If people are spreading untruths, whether it's death by a hundred cuts, or death by a thousand cuts it's another thing.
CTOs are relatively junior C level executives and can benefit from learning more about dealing with other C-Level situations before they find them. Yet, they present a great deal of consolidation of people, processes, impact and as a result power that this power can be targeted by other leaders who feel their influence is decreasing.
As a CTO its important to remember to understand theres many types of CTOs, and examine what type you are and where your sklls need to grow
Most people who speak to C-Levels don't understand it's not about impressing them, as much as speaking with impact. Sticking with this in a good way can be helpful.
Still, these types of undermining initiatives are often brought about by CFOs still trying to oversee tech despite any meaningful literacy in tech. Beware the CFOs. And to an extent understanding there may be different consultants other than management consultants.
The irony of most articles is it's about impressing and not impact.
So employees who speak to impress can sometimes stay on the employee / management track.
Leaders who look for leadership track people are people who know how to have a conversation that is direct, sincere, and done with proper considerations.
Employees who try to impress the csuite are trying to show off. Impact is the 2 sentences that you lead with that unpacks the explanation if needed. If you summarize quickly then you have time to unpack and discuss more on equal footing as them as a problem solver. Executives aren't just handling the thing one employee is talking about to them. Understanding value, effectiveness, etc and how it aligns with the leaders you work with is critical.
If they share the vibe of handling problems and not making small things sound bigger than they are, they can stand out.
I'm trying to look for an article about this if I find it I'll share it.
This really shouldn't be an "eye opening" moment for anybody. Or at least it's only part of one. Do you think the senior executives are your best friends? Or the middle managers? Or even the entry-level ICs? Which of them would you prioritize over your livelihood, the ability to support your family? Hopefully very few to none.
Of course they care about money. When you pay somebody a lot of money to spend a lot of time doing a task they wouldn't do for free, it shouldn't be a shock that they care about the money a whole lot more than the task. Employees have more of a stake in the long-term success in the company so the incentives are a little different, but the principle is the same.
It also doesn't answer OPs question even slightly. Some manager(s) decided to spend of lot of company money hiring consultants. They definitely thought it would be good for themselves, maybe they thought it would be good for the company (ie investors and remaining employees) too. Why did they think those things, and are they ever right? One would expect them to be correct sometimes. People don't get addicted to literally lighting money on fire, they get addicted to gambling because sometimes they win.
"This was one of those big eye opening moments for me. Consultants are hired mercenaries in coporate warfare, they don't care about you, they don't care about your company or the rivalries or the squabbaling. You pay them a bunch of money to come run roughshod over your enemies by producing reams of analysis and Powerpoints, to fling the arrows of jargon, and lay siege to your enemies employees by endlessly trapping them in meetings and then they depart. Consultants are brought in to secure your flank, to provide air cover and to act as disposable pawns in interoffice combat.
They are not brought in to solve problems, to find solutions, or because of their incredibly acumen. It's because they have no loyalty or love but money."
- Kneebonian