I’ve run my own business for seven years. I’ve made less money than Bill Gates but (possibly) more money than you. Either way, I haven’t made enough to be able to retire yet and as I review my meeting schedule from the past year, I’ve come to realize why: I’ve never hired a consultant. You know, those people who have all the answers for how to succeed in business? Here I am—a dopey CEO who is not a consultant—stubbornly keeping my business in operation without hiring any of them.
Oh, I’ve met with lots of consultants. They come to see me all the time. They look around at my palatial office—big picture window, comfy executive couch, AM radio antenna fashioned out of a coat hanger—and they instantly believe they can provide me all the answers I need to transform my business into The Success I Have Always Envisioned.
I am the problem here, of course. They talk, and I don’t listen. OK, I listen. It’s just that I can only listen to consultants for about 43 seconds per presentation because that’s usually about how long it takes for them to say something like: “I deal with the area where the circles intersect.”
Of course. The area where the circles intersect. I played dodge ball. I know what that means…I have no idea what it means. But this guy sure seems to.
“Did you ever consider the synchronicity that occurs during the intersecting region, D.F.?”
I inform Theo the Theorist that I remember “Synchronicity” and all the other Police albums. I liked “Ghost in the Machine” best, but that’s me. Pretty soon he’s getting desperate.
“What would it take for you to buy into a program that would give you more profits, more satisfaction and more free time?” he asks with a perfectly choreographed fist pump. I think about that. It sounds pretty good. So I ask Theo to get out of my office immediately so I can start getting some work done, which seems like the only remotely possible path to the sunshiny scenario he just painted.
Poor Theo. But he’s hardly alone. His consultancy is called Alignment Associates. Shortly after he was sent packing, I received a visit from a guy who calls his practice Eight Figure Skating.
“Don’t you mean ‘Figure Eight?’” I foolishly ask.
“No, D.F. It’s Eight Figure Skating. You see, skating is a metaphor for the way we try to take control of our businesses. When a skate glides across the ice, it’s like it’s kissing the ice.”
“Oh,” I say. “You mean like those idiots who put their tongues on frozen poles?”
He leans forward with his left shoulder. It appears he’s practiced this a few times. “D.F., that skate has made the ice its own, like we CEOs need to do with our markets, our innovations and our people. Just like that skate kisses the ice.”
I think about how that would go over in my office. Then I decide to stop thinking about that for fairly obvious reasons.
“I still don’t get why you say ‘Eight Figure’ instead of ‘Figure Eight,’” I say. “A figure eight is something from figure skating—not that I care about figure skating because I don’t—but even I know that.”
He gets a big grin on his face. I’ve seen grins like this on consultants before. He’s about to say something he thinks is clever. “D.F.,” he says, and then he pauses. Oh boy. The pregnant pause. He learned this in Dale Carnegie, I betcha. “Would you like to make $10 million?” Then he leans back on the comfy CEO couch, folds his hands and gives me a gotcha look.
“Sure,” I say. “I mean, I was thinking $700 million but why be greedy? Ten million will be fine.”
“Well then,” says Mr. Eight Figure, “you will be making eight figures!”
Gosh, look at the time. Mr. Ice Kisser needs to go now. But he’ll be followed by others.
Perhaps the best was The Coach. Business coaches are everywhere, and almost anyone can become a business coach. Ex-real estate agents. Ex-bankers. Exidor from “Mork & Mindy.” If you can pay for the training and you have time (and what unemployed schlep doesn’t have time?), you can teach CEOs how to run their business like you would run one if anyone would actually give you a job.
The Coach was intense. “D.F.,” he said. “Do you realize that most CEOs only use five percent of their business grey matter?”
While I’m trying to decide between about 35 possible wisecracks, The Coach continues. “Now you’re probably wondering what I mean when I talk about business grey matter.”
No. Actually, I’m not.
“Business grey matter,” he continues, “is the sum total of the intellectual electrons that fire between our balance sheets, our shop floors and our boardrooms. Do you know what neurologists have discovered in the chasm between the left brain and the right brain?”
There is only one possible answer to that question: “Smuckers?”
“D.F., this chasm is where all CEOs store their strategic blisticulation devices! This unleashes all the profit-making power that eludes most CEOs simply because they can’t get down inside the chasm! D.F., do you want to explore the chasm? Do you want to go grey matter spelunking with The Coach?”
Do I! Do injection molding presses swim?
I don’t know how CEOs in America run their businesses successfully without these guys following them around. They don’t know about strategic blisticulation devices in the grey matter chasm. They don’t know about kissing the ice. They don’t know about the intersecting circles and old Police albums.
It’s comforting, in a stupid sort of way, that even weirdos like these people can find something to do within the capitalist system. If you can spin yarns like these, there has to be someone who’s going to listen to you, rub their chins and think to themselves, “Ah, there’s great wisdom in that.”
More power to you, consultants. Live long and prosper—and leave a voicemail telling me all about it. I’ll listen to it right after I unfreeze my lips.
