Blue Chip Black Eye?
September 2, 2020
DarkCyber spotted “Accenture India Staff to Face Brunt of Layoffs.” The write up reports:
Technology major Accenture is expected to lay off around 25,000 people or least 5% of its global workforce…
Interesting. The received wisdom in the consulting world of blue-chip firms is that when the economy goes down, consulting revenues go up.
Is this a black eye for Accenture’s sales executives or a signal that “received wisdom” may not work in the Rona Era?
Stephen E Arnold, September 2, 2020
McKinsey? Not Wonderful? What?
September 1, 2020
Our esteemed leader (who is now Lord Stephen E Arnold. Believe it or not.) used to be a management consultant. Although I have worked on his research team for more than eight years, I have no idea what he did or does. Every time we meet, he’s playing with his computers. Helpful, right?
What do management consultants do? Slate knows and reports that management consultants “sell what you’re buying, as opposed to what they’re selling” in the article “How McKinsey Helps Companies Avoid Responsibility.” At least the only management company that is following this modus operandi is McKinsey and Company. McKinsey and Company is a top blue chip management company and has been in business for almost a century.
Accounting professor James McKinsey founded his namesake company on basic accounting principles: use financial records to project future revenue and costs. This concept is standard today, but no one practiced it in 1926. McKinsey was selective about his client list and become legendary among top-tier clients. When Marvin Bower took over the company he added another mantra to the company: always putting clients’ interests above McKinsey’s.
In the 1950s, a new slew of problems arrived with the postwar economic boom and McKinsey took it upon themselves to help companies succeed even more, This included wading through middle management and telling companies to fire people if needed. McKinsey consultants are happy to be scapegoats for downsizing:
“‘And the McKinsey consultant who gives the manager that advice also gets to avoid having to feel responsible for putting people out of work. ‘If I’m working at McKinsey, when I decide to give the best professional advice I can, following the principles of integrity that McKinsey insists on for its workers, I don’t characterize myself as having fired 50,000 people,’ [Yale professor Daniel] Markovits explains. ‘What I’ve done is give the best professional advice that I can. And that’s a perfectly apt way to think about your life, but from a systematic or a structural perspective, it insulates everybody from responsibility for terrible outcomes.’”
This led to massive layoffs from the 1970s-1990s, but it did keep companies afloat and cemented the concept that a company’s only responsibility is to maximize the value of shares. McKinsey expanded into government and public sector work, including the Trump Administration, and foreign countries: China, Turkey, Russia, and South Africa, Saudi Arabia. McKinsey consultants advised corrupt regimes about “better business practices” that resulted in harming humans and quality of life.
McKinsey is always interested in serving their clients’ best interests, but it has dirtied their hands to the detriment of harming others. How evil is DarkCyber own Lord Stephen? He pays for lunch, but that may be his sole saving grace. (Yes, he wants to be called Lord Stephen. Maybe he will tell the team how he went from rural Kentucky to “lord”?
Whitney Grace, September 1, 2020
Silicon Valley Style Journalists Want to Be Digital Peter Druckers
August 27, 2020
I wrote about the New York Times’ journalists who wrote about one another. I suggested that these “real” news professionals were taking a short cut. Boy, I mischaracterized what was happening. The problem is escalating because Silicon Valley-style journalists want to be like Peter Drucker. The management guru had a Ph.D. and a knack for nailing trends. Perhaps his most timely today is the phrase “knowledge worker.” Today’s “real” journalists want to skip the Drucker trajectory of management by objectives and thought leadership over decades. The Silicon Valley journalists want to get right to it: Stories about technology to grand statements about the way life should be. Not just tech life, but life in general.
The most recent example, in my opinion, is “Why People Can’t Stand Tech Journalists: An Interview with Casey Newton.” Mr. Newton lit up my radar when he suggested that Jeff Bezos give a weekly speech to explain Amazon. After viewing the Congressional hearings, I am not confident Mr. Bezos knows what is going on at Amazon, but I know that a “real” journalist telling the world’s richest man is the journalistic equivalent of Google’s sense of entitlement.
Once again we have two “real” journalists talking to one another. And what do we learn?
The spine of the “real” journalists’ baseline assumption is, “People don’t like us.” Once again a big generalization created to make “real” journalists into underdogs. I noted this statement:
The tech press, I think, has done probably the best work of its life collectively over the past four years.
Let’s do a quick show of hands. Who thinks that this statement from the “real” journalist pundit person will resonate like Dr. Drucker’s knowledge worker or management by objectives phrases? Here’s the Sillycon Valley statement:
I’ve been thinking about what we’ve lost because everything is so noisy and spicy.
Memorable. Noisy and spicy. Like a budget quasi ethnic restaurant and its comidas?
Several observations:
- The merging of entitlement, social justice, and inside baseball produces information that in some ways is as destructive as the output of nation states seeking to influence behavior in the US
- The laziness of talking to someone in the next cubicle or while standing on line at Philz Coffee is evidence of a serious problem. Thought leadership does not flow from unsubstantiated opinions.
- Journalism, whether at the New York Times, the Murdoch outfits, or zippy Silicon Valley-type “real” news producers is becoming indistinguishable from the yammerings of mid-tier consulting firms and student who couldn’t get an “A” from Dr. Drucker.
That’s a less-than-positive situation in my view. Has Mr. Bezos attended to the demand that he give a weekly speech? The answer is, “No.”
Stephen E Arnold, August 27, 2020
IDC Has a New Horse to Flog: Artificial Intelligence
August 26, 2020
Okay, it is official. IDC has a new horse to flog. “Artificial Intelligence” will be carrying a load. Navigate to “Worldwide Spending on AI Expected to Double in 4 Years, Says IDC.” Consulting firms and specialized research outfits need to have a “big thing” about which to opine. IDC has discovered one: AI. The write up states:
Global spending on artificial intelligence (AI) is forecast to double over the next four years, growing from US$50.1 billion in 2020 to more than US$110 billion in 2024, according to the IDC. Spending on AI systems will accelerate over the next several years as organizations deploy AI as part of their digital transformation efforts, said IDC. The CAGR for the 2019-2024 period will be 20.1%.
In the Age of Rona, we have some solid estimates. A 2X jump in 48 months.
Why, pray tell, is AI now moving into the big leagues of hyper growth. Check out this explanation:
Two of the leading drivers for AI adoption are delivering a better customer experience and helping employees to get better at their jobs.
Quite interesting. My DarkCyber research team believes that AI growth will be encouraged by these factors:
- Government investments in smart weapons and aggressive pushes for projects like “loyal wingman”
- A sense that staff must be terminated and replaced with systems which do not require health care, retirement plans, vacations, and special support for issues like addiction
- Packaged “smart” solutions like Amazon’s off the shelf products and services for machine learning.
These are probably trivial in the opinion of the IDC estimators, but DarkCyber is not convinced that baloney like customer experience and helping employees “get better at their jobs” are providing much oomph.
Stephen E Arnold, August 26, 2020
Gartner Group: Planning Its Next Generation of Marketing Pitches
August 25, 2020
If you are a fan of Gartner, a mid-tier consulting firm, you will want to navigate to “Gartner Hype-Cycle Adds 20+ New Technologies.” Now the “new” part interests me. Examples include:
- AI-assisted design (maybe Eli Attia’s method or Google’s approach?)
- Biodegradable sensors
- Differential privacy (like having one work mobile and one personal mobile?)
- Composable enterprise (I have zero clue what this means)
- Health passports (like a receipt for passage to Poveglia (a Plague Island in 1793?)
- Social distancing technologies.
The write up reports:
Trust models based on responsible authorities are being replaced by algorithmic trust models to ensure privacy and security of data, source of assets and identity of individuals and things. Algorithmic trust helps to ensure that organizations will not be exposed to the risk and costs of losing the trust of their customers, employees and partners. Emerging technologies tied to algorithmic trust include secure access service edge (SASE), differential privacy, authenticated provenance, bring your own identity, responsible AI and explainable AI.
When will AI create the Gartner hype cycle? Will use of that technology generate “trust”? Gobble down a biodegradable sensor and social distance. The future of consulting is … no human consultants. That might be a step forward? Come to think of it. An AI generating a hype chart might actually use numbers and data, not opinions of those good enough to work at a mid tier consulting firm.
Stephen E Arnold, August 25, 2020
CB Insights Is Moving Fast with VentureSource Acquisition
August 23, 2020
CB Insights is a market intelligence and business analytics platform that provides insights for venture capitalists, startups, angel investing, and more. Companies use CB Insights’s data to make business decisions, develop products, and project long term goals.
CB Insights wants to remain one of the top market intelligence and business analytics platforms. The firm has upped its game by investing in machine learning and AI algorithms to its platforms. CB Insights’s biggest selling points are the quality/quantity of data.
CB Insights recently acquired the Dow Jones VentureSource dataset, announced in the blog post: “Our First Acquisition: CB Insights Acquires VentureSource Data From Dow Jones.” The VentureSource acquisition adds more information to CB Insights’s platform:
“The VentureSource data assets will significantly expand our private markets coverage and strengthen our position as a leader in emerging technology information and private market data.”
It means instead of searching through various market intelligence platforms, the Dow Jones data sets are now available through CB Insights. CB Insights promotes itself as moving fast so its clients can too. They are quickly integrating the VentureSource data set into the CB Insights.
CB Insights is probably using its own data and AI to power their own business decisions. At least they get it for free.
Whitney Grace, August 23, 2020
The Flywheel Thing
August 21, 2020
About a year ago, a marketing person asked me, “Why don’t you talk about the Amazon flywheel?” I replied, “Flywheel. What flywheel?” Sure, I knew about the Bezos buzzword, but that does not mean I have to use it when I write about the world’s largest online bookstore. I prefer jazzier words and phrases; for example, cat’s pajamas, wizards, and high school science club manager, etc.
“Question Everything or the Strange Loop Principle” seems to come down on my side of word choice. The essay asserts:
First, let’s see how Collins himself describes what he calls the Flywheel Concept. For that, I’m going to borrow from Collins’ own Turning the Flywheel: a Monograph to Accompany Good to Great. But first, we have to discuss Collins’ word choice and the mechanics of an actual flywheel. He picks “Flywheel” for a reason: he believes flywheels accurately describe the sort of dynamics he identifies in some very successful companies that go from being average – “good” – to being leaders – “great” –.
Now the flywheel in business:
So whatever Collins wants us to understand about great businesses, he thinks a flywheel is a good shortcut to get there.
The there is growth, maybe exponential growth. One problem:
Therefore, flywheels are great at describing something that holds a lot of momentum, but not something that behaves exponentially, or that self-reinforces itself.
Now Amazon:
I think Amazon is a great example of something I can’t quite point at but that seems to reinforce itself (I have no evidence that it’s exponential in any way. Just that it seems to go on and on forever without the need for more energy). As it sells more, it’s able to sell cheaper, which leads it to sell more, which leads it to be able to sell cheaper, and on and on. Businesses that find such self-reinforcing “mechanics” have something strong going for them.
The bottom line:
Here’s this guy who’s arguably the new Peter Drucker, revered by entrepreneurs, world leaders and executives alike, not only basing a huge part of his knowledge production on a shaky concept that’s named and explained with a shaky mix of words and examples applying it all in a very shaky way to his own life.
Yep, imagine that. Management thinking which is shaky. Nope, no flywheels for me.
Stephen E Arnold, August 20, 2020
Thinking about Risk: No Clip On Bow Tie
August 15, 2020
I read “Risk Bow Tie Method.” I worked through the write up, which reminded me of a reading in one of those professor-assembled Kinko’s books students HAD to purchase. The focus is a management procedure for thinking about risk. Today, there are some interesting topics which MBA study groups can consider on a thrilling Zoom call. As I examined the increasingly detailed diagrams, the procedure seemed familiar. I ratted through my files and, yes, I had a paper (maybe I snagged it at a non-Zoom conference in England in the 1990s) called “Lessons Learned from Real World Application of Bow Tie Method.” There’s version of this document available at this link.
The idea is that something happens like Covid, serial financial crashes, social unrest, private enterprise controlling information flows, etc. None of these is too serious. The idea is to make a diagram that looks like this one from the 1990s Risktec person’s write up:
If you want to be a consultant, you need a diagram without explanations. The idea is to bring discipline to a group of people who would rather check out TikTok videos, browse Facebook, or fiddle with their Robinhood account. But a job is a job, whether in person or on a Zoom call.
The advisor systematically works through the “logic” of figuring out the issues related to the minor risk an organization faces; for example, an enterprise search vendor failing to meet its financial goal for the quarter as cash burns and employees “work” from home. Yep, fill in that logical diagram.
Exercises like this are a gold mine to a consulting firm. Blue chip outfits focus on these “big picture” methods. Mid tier consulting firms and sol practitioners with a Wix Web site and Instaprint plastic stick on sign for their automobile may have trouble landing enough work to pay for working through the Bow Tie Method.
So blue chip consulting firms embrace these types of fill-in-the-blank exercises. The consultant gets to “know” the participants and can set the stage for recruiting an insider to function as a cheerleader absent pom poms. The “report” allows the consulting team to identify which options are better for the company with the data presented created by the … wait for it … the employees who participated in the Bow Tie Method process. To be fair, the consulting team has to create a PowerPoint or similar presentation. Some consulting firms just write an “Executive Memo” and move to selling follow on work.
I must admit I thought of the popular song by Stevie Wonder with these lyrics. Note: I modified the last line to match my reaction to the attempted rejuvenation of the Bow Tie Method:
His father works some days for fourteen hours
And you can bet he barely makes a dollar
His mother goes to scrub the floor for many
And you’d best believe she hardly gets a penny
Living just enough, just enough for the consulting.
Several observations:
- Is the Bow Tie Method the correct one for our interesting times? Plug in Covid, fill in the boxes, discuss options, and what do you end up with?
- Is the Bow Tie Method and other thought frameworks matched to today’s management climate? Twitter, Facebook Google, Amazon, and other FAANG outfits create risks, and I am not convinced that objective consideration of the risks to these organizations are top of mind for the top managers at this time. It seems as if the consulting frameworks have to be designed for thumbtypers and consumers of Instagram and Snap apps, not old-school frameworks from who knows where.
- The time and cost to work through a full Bow Tie Methods may increase risk for the company. Here’s how that works. The leadership of a company or country changes direction. Mixer from Microsoft. Hey, kill that dog. A Google API? No reason to provide that any more. A tweet from the White House changes the social media influencer landscape. As these here-and-now events blaze on digital devices, the time for the Bow Tie and the time for dealing with here-and-now is out of joint.
Net net: Traditional consulting methods, regardless of the fancy graphics and with-it explanations seem to be like exhibits in the British Museum. Who knew the Elgin marbles were sitting in a dark room?
Stephen E Arnold, August 15, 2020
When Humor and Management Theory Collide: Craziness, Maybe Worse
July 29, 2020
Two write ups made it from our news system into my “must read” file.
The first is by the Big Dog Scott Galloway. An esteemed educator, Mr. Galloway provides punditry and overtalking on the New York Magazine Pivot show. His essay “Fire & Fawning” is fascinating. The charts, the data, and the wordsmithing are noteworthy.
From DarkCyber’s point of view, Mr. Galloway is providing advice to a group of high-technology movers and shakers who are awash in lawyers, advisers, and on-the-payroll wizards.
We noted this comment:
Big tech has won before the hearing starts. Agreeing to let all four testify concurrently inhibits the committee’s ability to go deep on any one issue, and will leave the American public with a sentiment instead of a viewpoint on big tech, much less any conclusions (such as, that the Obama DOJ was asleep at the switch, and Instagram and Whatsapp should be divested). The Covid-inspired remote format dramatically lessens the likelihood of an unscripted moment that reveals something the American public didn’t previously know. Fabric softener for tough questioning is the deep pockets that keep members in power.
If the hearings are “over,” why are an additional 2,200 words required? Answer: The write up is for the elected officials who will be conducting the session. However, elected officials have lawyers, advisers, and “interns” to prepare, review, and make sense of the million plus documents available to the group doing the asking.
The key difference is the billionaire status of those responding, and the billionaire access to wizards.
Granted, political hearings are unlikely to “win” or achieve very much. Maybe some of the interns will get jobs working for the billionaires and get a chance to earn the coveted “wizard” status.
And the data in the write up? Statistical information can be shaped, discredited, and shown to be orthogonal to other data. The art is nice, however.
Net net: The write up plays to a particular audience yet maintains the overtalking tone ill-suited for a podcast and for a “business” essay designed to tell people what to do.
The second essay is “Advice for Jeff Bezos on testifying before Congress from me, the totally real Bill Gates.” The focus is narrowed to Mr. Bezos by a Silicon Valley “real” news outfit. The tone is familiar; for example, “Jeff, buddy.” The intent shares some DNA with Mr. Galloway’s overtalking. Specifically, this Silicon Valley “real” news essay reminded me something called “satirical commentary.” One of the required classes I had to endure 50 plus years ago forced me to read mocking essays and figure out what some guy who lived in Twickenham did to earn the name “the wicked wasp.” This Silicon Valley “real” news outfit’s effort struck me as tone deaf and — I need a neologism I think — snotical. Snotical is a combination of snotty and cynical. The sting? Yes, where is thy sting?
Net net: The write is likely to be ignored by Mr. Bezos’ legions of lawyer, advisers, and quite bright worker bee drone humanoids.
Stepping back from the two essays, three observations I wish to offer are:
- Public advice is Monday morning quarterbacking and about as useful
- Those far from the fray demonstrate their lack of understanding of hearing processes
- New Age hippy dippy management analyses are little more than TikTok videos in prose.
Stephen E Arnold, July 29, 2020
You Know Times Are Hard When a Blue Chip Firm Stoops to SEO
July 27, 2020
Many years ago I worked at Booz, Allen & Hamilton. After I set up my own consulting firm, I did projects for other outfits which I thought operated in a blue-chip or high-quality mode.
If you read DarkCyber, you may have seen my articles making fun of some consulting firms’ analyses; for example, the outfits producing Gartner-type subjective comparisons enterprise vendors.
I have also been quite clear over the years about search engine optimization. The manipulation of a Web page feeds sales of online advertising and erodes what minimal objective relevance ranking methods remain in use. From my point of view, SEO is a scam. If you want traffic, buy advertising.
Why take time to write again about questionable consulting operations and SEO?
I received this email a day or two ago, and I have informed the sender that I would publish the email, his name, his contact information, and his employer before this item runs in my blog. Now the spam email. Please, note the chatty tone:
We noticed that you featured Boston Consulting Group in four of your articles (Gartner Magic Quadrant in the News: Netscout Matter, Radicati Group: Yet Another Quadrant, Search Engine Optimization: Chasing Semantic Search & Search Companies: Innovative or Not?) and wanted to say thanks so much for the mentions!
We were hoping you could add a link to our homepage [https://www.bcg.com/] in those articles so your readers can easily find the site. Please let me know if you have any questions or if I should direct this email to someone else. Thanks again for your help in advance.
Sincerely,
Connor Hayes
Connor Hayes Hayes.Connor@bcg.com
Global Search Senior Coordinator
T + 1 617 850 3941
Boston, USA
Allow me some observations, and I will offer some comments for Connor Hayes and other SEO “experts”:
1. Connor, and spare me your slathering of Dollar Store taco sauce. I am not into familiarity or hippy dippy “I want a link” pitches.
2. Boston Consulting Group, let’s be classy. SEO spam is something that I associate with outfits less well positioned to sell high-end professional services work.
I asked myself, “Was Connor Hayes influenced by Homer on “The Simpsons”?
I asked myself, “Has BCG lost its sense of professionalism?”
I do recall learning from my father who worked for an entrepreneur R. G. LeTourneau that General Eisenhower and later president of the United States was not impressed that Bruce Henderson, founder of BCG “borrowed” the four square matrix analytic tool. When I heard this anecdote, I suppose the state was set for today’s BCG to embrace search engine optimization. Both the four square star-dog thing and SEO illustrates a similar thought process: Do what needs to be done to become a modern day winner.
I segment the world of professional services consulting into some simple chunks. At the bottom are newly unemployed managers, unemployable college graduates with degrees in home economics, art history, or some similar expertise, and people who just cannot stick with a legitimate company. Many of these individuals become SEO experts.
Then there are mid-tier consulting firms. These firms capture government contracts, find a niche and generate information and knowledge products, and pontificate on LinkedIn about their organizations’ mastery of knowledge-value in today’s world.
The third group is the top of the professional services pyramid. My perception was that the big leagues attracted the best and the brightest. Examples of these top-tier operations included Arthur D. Little, Bain (formed by unhappy professionals at Boston Consulting Group), BCG itself and its four square star dog thing, Booz, Allen & Hamilton, McKinsey & Company, SRI, and a handful of others.
The names I assign each level are:
- Pigeons, the flocks of consultancies pecking for anything that will sustain them
- Azure-chip consultants, the myriad of good enough firms that pontificate on everything from Amazon AWS to Zulu refugee buying preferences in South Africa
- Blue-chip consultants, the Big Leagues of professional consulting and advisory services.
Some observations are warranted, at least to my way of thinking:
- Blue-chip consulting firms once marketed via word of mouth, repeat business, and sponsoring awards like the original McKinsey payoff for the “best” Harvard Business Review article. Sorry, BCG, McKinsey aced you out there. SEO is definitely a winner for some like Twitch or YouTube luminaries. (Why not retain Dr. Disrespect to build an audience for BCG’s services? He is available for promotional work at this time I believe?)
- The economic downturn appears to require scraping the dregs from the wine barrel for sales leads. Yes, SEO, the better way. Forget the white papers, the speeches, and the thought leadership. It is apparently short cut time.
- The larger issue is that desperation marketing seems to be okay for a once-prestigious firm’s management team. The use of Connor Hayes-type intellects to get me to point to a formerly respected consulting firm is either the sign of a Ted Kaczynski-type thought process or stupid.
Net Net: The fact that BCG appears to endorse and desire SEO backlinks is more evidence of a decline within the ranks of top-tier consulting firms’ marketing and PR methods.
PS.
Connor Hayes, as you progress in your SEO career, why not get ManyVids or TikTok influencers to promote BCG? Let me know when you become a partner, please.
Stephen E Arnold, July 27, 2020
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