28th October 2002

TAKING THE WOOF WITH THE SMOOTH

The Management Consultancy

They’re slaves to the City’s corporate machine. They never leave the office, except for the odd schmoozing session in their local chi-chi wine bar. If they brought some old rope to work, they’d probably get some money for it.

This is why I’ve never particularly fancied being a management consultant. Eugh. But when one firm invited me down for a “workshop” last week, I thought I’d go along anyway. Despite ridicule, vitriol and general abuse from my friends (which I’ll return when they’re all city slickers), I thought it would be an interesting insight into a career so notorious that no-one quite knows why.

We are in the midst of the Milkround, of course. Not sure why it’s called that. I was disappointed that the Business Analysts – or, air quotes, “BAs” – weren’t wearing long white Dale Farm coats, in honour of this annual squeeze on the universities’ udders. Instead, they were, to a man, garbed in white shirts with, variously, tasty pink check, blue stripiness or rather awful variations and hybrids of the two.

So I wasn’t going to get a job for the sake of the couture. But the location, oooh, the location. I turned up at the office, slid up the escalator and beheld the shining, towering edifice of glass, metal and gleaming smugness. Can’t be bad – and right in central Central London. I felt rather like I should have had a knotted handkerchief, a cat and be listening to the bells of a local church telling me profound things about my life.

Instead, I was privy to the babble of my peers. We fell into distinct groups, those of us waiting at the top of that escalator. Those who really wanted to do the job – slick suits, active eyes, chuckles in all the right places – and those who, well, had just been invited along and came for the hell of it – slightly embarrassed recognition, relaxed cynicism, and healthy spurning of the aforementioned shirts. Mine was green. Dark green. I was a latter-day Robin Hood, a provincial yokel come to rob the rich.

But I was genuinely interested to find out where all this wealth came from, what on earth the Analysts, er, analyse. We had a general spiel about how wonderful the company was, offices across the globe, their pro bono work (all of 3%, how socially aware), yah de dah de dah … But I wasn’t there for the Powerpoint. I was there for the workshop, the chance to see, hear, feel the consultant’s job at first-hand. So what scintillating piece of big business were we going to look at? Just what do these movers and shakers move and shake day-to-day down there in the city? What challenge were we, the next generation of corporate innovators, going to be faced with on that auspicious Monday?

Dog food.

Specifically, whether a wet dog food company was suffering from the competition of dry dog food products. The finest minds in the land, and me, mused on this great question at some length. We bounced ideas off the professional consultant, following his leads, barking up the wrong tree, with him occasionally throwing, um, a spaniel in the works. All highly serious debate. Terrier-like, we collectively gnawed on the problem of declining profitability. The President of my University’s debating society across the table expounded the merits of dry dog food and suggested we take over small southern European manufacturers of said canine product. Internet delivery, dog com if you will, was mentioned. My brainwave was that we should start manufacturing cat food too …

Never before has a facetious comment been treated with such an earnest reception: apparently this was a dynamic solution, a pro-active, creative way of dealing with the company’s ills. My high-flying acquaintances had seemingly become my pedigree chums. But the dog-eat-dog world of the consultant wasn’t for me. It was the real world at second, third, fourth hand. If I was in dogs, I wouldn’t want a job second-guessing their gastronomic opinions. I’d want to actually be ruffling their shaggy manes and smelling their pungent ordure – be at the sharp end, you know?

It beggars belief how so many wet-nosed graduates go for really cushy jobs in London offices, with all their trappings – the wealth, apartment, foreign trips and glossy coats. Don’t get sucked in. Just walk away. Top breeders recommend it.

© Ben James 2003