Business gurus, pundits and thought leaders lead a comfortable life saying things that aren’t true and never saying out loud what they absolutely know is true. They know that “best practices” are mostly irrelevant to the blood sport of “business.” They know that meritocracies are mostly fictional and most employees really don’t like their job, their boss or their companies, and while politicians rant about fake news, companies “lie” all the time about their products, services and numbers, as they easily absorb the tiny fines they receive for misbehaving. Incredibly, research suggests that employees believe that more than 75% of all bosses are “toxic”!
In order to succeed, you have to shed most of what you believe about how business actually works, what your company wants you to believe about loyalty, and traditional career strategies you may have consciously or unconsciously adopted to succeed. What else? Most of what you believe about the relationship between performance and compensation is wrong, and the career momentum you probably feel is fake. Instead, success is about reinvention and career pivots, not long, slow straight lines. You will die-in-place if you follow paths defined by HR, executive coaches, self-help books, organizational hierarchies, traditional mentors or career planners. No, this is about rethinking the way business actually works and how this affects your career. Thinking the right ways about business is essential. Let’s look at just three.
Consultants
How many times have you been disappointed by your organizational and strategic consultants? Even the consultants know their services are less than impactful – but love the second homes their fees buy. How embarrassing – and risky – is outsourcing the “brains” of your company! Why is a stranger’s insights better than yours? You presumably have a talented team that solves lots of problems. (If you don’t, you have a larger problem that no one can solve.) But way too often someone decides that solutions need something more than the ones your team develops, and, well, you know, the ones that just won’t “sell” the way outside ones – with the right imprimatur – sell, which is why I guess God made McKinsey, BCG, Bain, EY-Parthenon, Kearney and Strategy& (among others).
Lots of companies have been on the wrong side of outside organizational and strategic advice – and paid dearly. Not to mention the scandals that have plagued these consultancies over the years. But we still hire them looking past the scandals in favor of cache. So long as the scandal-versus-cache ratios stay favorable, I guess we’re good.
There’s also the cost. Consultants cost a small fortune to engage. They’re also often engaged because they provide air cover to internal decision-makers: they’re blamable when the advice craters. Let’s not forget that companies spend over $1T a year on management consulting. Is all this advice really necessary?
Consulting About Consulting
The first step is to define “brains” versus “brawn” in detail, and make sure the brains stay home. Do you really want to pay someone tons of money to tell you how to think? Make sure you own as much of the substance as you can. Exploit strategic consultancies for what they bring to the table – optics and some brawn – but never completely default to their domain expertise, especially when they tell you what you already know. Internal consultants – your brains – should be supplemented by outside brawn, which is the best use of other kinds of consultants.
The strengths of internal consultants revolve around knowledge of company processes, products and services. What’s the relative benefit of the knowledge of a company’s processes, products and services compared with distant objectivity? Do external consultants have a lock on objectivity and specialty knowledge? (No.) Should employees contribute more – or less – to a company’s strategy? (More.) And what about digital transformation, which is perhaps the most important ongoing work a company can launch? Who should run this? Can we really say that external consultants know more about the strategy, tactics and operations of their clients than the clients themselves? External consultants will reflexively say “yes, of course we do!” But they don’t. They never did. Redraw the line. Use cost as the chalk. Sell internal credibility. Fire the consultants.
AI
As I’ve often argued, AI is coming for you, your company and your industry. Machine learning and generative AI will obliterate knowledge workers and there will be lots of happy people when it happens. If you don’t admit that your career, company and industry are all at major risk, you will somehow, incredibly be surprised when your job is outsourced to a custom GPT. So dig deep into the biggest career threat in a generation. If you live in a company where “AI” is just an assistant, you’re already losing the game. AI is destined to become a full partner and in many areas your boss.
AI for Fun & Profit
You should understand how AI works and its potential to reimagine whole industries. Unless you’re close to retirement, you have no choice. You better understand what large language models (LLMs) are, how GPTs work, how to prompt and how to leverage the most powerful technology in a generation. If you understand more than most at your company – and trust me, that’s not hard to do – you can monetize that knowledge into an AI leadership position that will significantly increase your compensation. The problem is that even though you’re now an AI guru, your company may discount your contributions because you’re already there. Perhaps the best way to monetize AI knowledge and experience is to leave your company for a ton more money than they’re paying you now. Go to a competitor all dressed up as your company’s AI guru. They will welcome you with open arms and lots more compensation than you’ll get at home.
Cybersecurity
I’ve asked this before. Remember SolarWinds? All you probably remember – now that I jogged your memory – is that it’s linked to some kind of cyberattack, but you can’t explain exactly what happened, what was hacked or what happened after the attack. It was only a couple of years ago, right? Or was it more recent? Maybe longer? Do you know what actually happened? Were the Russians involved? What did they do? Was Microsoft involved? What did they do? Do you know if the US government still uses SolarWinds software?
All everyone talks about is how the number of cyberattacks is increasing and that companies need to spend more and more money on cybersecurity. Yes, the number and severity of cyberattacks is increasing – nothing new here – but is more money the answer?
Look what happens when a company is breached. While the company’s reputation suffers somewhat – because breaches are so commonplace – impact to their reputation is minimal and short-lived. The auditors then arrive to inspect everything and declare that the company did its best (or not) to prevent the breach. Sometimes there’s a fine, even a large one, but often there’s not, but the fines are generally a tiny percentage of annual revenue – and then the insurance company writes a check.
Cybersecurity Passes
If you know that your company will likely have to pay a fine of less than 1% of your revenue for a major breach, and that your customers will return and the price of your stock will recover, how much should you really care? If you also know no matter how much you spend you’re still vulnerable to attack, how much should you spend? Is just the right amount of underspending an acknowledgement that this is an unsolvable problem with manageable consequences? Of course it is! If you do what you must to satisfy the auditors, the Board, the executive team and the insurance company, but swim upstream when everyone calls for massive new spending, you should convince the team – with data – that enough is enough. This knowledge can save your company a ton of money and make everyone less nervous about breaches. You should quantify the savings – and brand yourself a cost management guru. Let PR worry about the messaging for a week or two.
There’s More
There’s a ton of misinformation and disinformation out there about business processes, models and strategies. Some of the areas we believe we understand, we really don’t. Some examples? Here are eleven more:
- Teams don’t work, but individual contributors with money do
- The calculous of compensation: where more is easy
- Leaders are often incompetent, dishonest and mean – so queue up
- Digital transformation always fails, so fake it like everyone else
- Your people are expendable, so why are they’re still here?
- Social media and disinformation are permanent facts of life, so use them
- Enterprise software is a trap you cannot escape, so enjoy it
- Innovation is a myth, so look outside for stimulants
- Strategies are just pretty tactics — despite what you’re told
- Personalities and networks rule – work it
- Leadership is rigged, so rig it back …
Now What?
Look around very carefully. What do you see? Step back and “see” business for what it is – not what you’re told it is. There are circles, layers and distractions everywhere. At the end of the day, perhaps the best skill is shapeshifting.
