“I Don’t Need Any More Consultants; I Need People Who Do Things!”
This is a verbatim quote from one of my clients yesterday. (And, yes, I do things. My client prefers to think of me as a contractor.)
This pontificating instead of producing problem isn’t limited to consultants. How many times have you sat in a meeting where nothing got done but a lot of talk? Oh, sure, minutes may have been taken…but did anybody ever read ‘em, much less do anything on the list? I knew it was past time for me to leave Corporate America once and for all when I was invited to a meeting to plan a meeting. (Or, “How to look busy and CYA at the same time, without actually doing anything that could possibly cause trouble.”)
So, it’s great to talk wild ideas and wide-eyed concepts (good place to start) or about strategy (and you need one)…but eventually somebody needs to do something…and it may be risky. Otherwise, your company could die from planning obsession disorder or analysis paralysis.
Related Posts:
Run, Run Like The Wind If You Hear
Why I (Still) Hate Consultants
Business Planning: Those Killer “What Ifs”
The Strategy Disconnect
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August 17th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
What you’re talking about in some cases can be called the “Knowing-Doing gap.” People know what needs to be done, but no one does it. This is especially true of medium and larger-sized organizations in all of the three sectors.
I’m thinking that part of this is the “It’s not on my performance objectives,” attitude and part of it is because most people are not innovators or early adopters on the Bell curve. Anything new added to their environment is a disruption, not an asset.