Posts tagged consultants really do have another language

So there’s this new show on Showtime that’s about management consultants.

I’m digging it.

As a former member of that little fraternity, it’s heady watching a show about an industry I actually know something about. I worked for three consulting companies over a 12 year period, after getting my MBA. The show is highly stylized and exaggerates a bunch of stuff - its TV fiction, not a fuckin’ documentary - but I get a kick seeing the vagaries of the profession paraded on the screen.

This gem, for instance:

“Deck: basically a PowerPoint presentation for the client. That’s what we do. We make PowerPoint decks and we stuff em with numbers to sell our way of fixing the company - just enough to sell them some more.”

When I worked for a small firm, we actually tried to - and did - help companies, and it felt good. But when I worked for large consulting houses, whose entire business model is based on selling more consulting work? That quote rings true, son.

So, yeah - there was no boinking of clients, flying first class all the time, or wearing suits 24/7, like they do in the show. At least, not in the firms i worked for (which were not, admittedly, the McKinseys, BCGs, or Bains of the world.)

But the living in airports? The spreadsheets and death-by-PowerPoint meetings? The other, undecipherable language that is Consultantspeak? All true.

House of Lies. I dig.