Book review: “The Big Con: How the consulting industry weakens our businesses, infantalizes our governments, and warps our economies”

Originally published on GoodReads here.

As someone who has worked in professional services for my entire career and as a consultant for much of this, I was never going to agree with all of the findings of “The Big Con: How the Consulting industry weakens our businesses, infantilizes our governments and warps our economies” by the totally brilliant Mariana Mazzucato (I would recommend every book of hers that I have read so far).

That notwithstanding, this book should be mandatory reading for anyone involved in the industry: it is incredibly well researched and provides a systematic look at both the demand and supply side challenges of the growth in consultancies and the way they can impact in particular government departments, contributing through the economic system they support — despite mostly overwhelmingly good intentions — to a hollowing out of capability in these organisations. “To steer, you have to also row” is an insightful analogy and something I strongly recognise: the most impactful programmes I have worked on, leading consulting teams in both the private and public sector have been delivered more as a “peer” with some specific insights, skills, to an individual or team with a strong capacity and desire for self-sufficiency.

It is hard to argue with the systemic challenges that Professor Mazzucato highlights and she is nuanced in her positions, differentiating between traditional policy and strategy consulting and wider professional services organisations, providing augmentation and IT services.

I only really disagree with one part of the analysis; the assertion that professional services organisations are unwilling to take on end-to-end responsibility for delivery of an outcome. Although this may well be true for strategy consultancies (and even there, examples can be found), for larger scale operational delivery programmes and outsourcing, I would argue that the desire is typically there, but the willingness or ability of the procuring institution to a. enable the consultancy to control all of the parameters that allow it to own the outcome and — perhaps more critically — b. price for the risk appropriately without losing the tender are actually the key factors driving the current problematic commercial contracting structures in government.

This is, however, a minor niggle given the overall analysis. The concluding chapters, present some thoughts on how to address these problems at a systemic level, and I have to admit I would have liked a tick more on this and a little less of the painstaking analysis, as compelling as it is; hopefully there will be a companion book — given Mazzucato’s role at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, she is perfectly position to do drive this agenda further..

Unsurprisingly, I would hope that this will see not just a strengthening of the demand-side organisations own capacity for policy innovation and scaled delivery excellence, but also a recognition that the there *are* huge pools of outstanding talent and capacity within the industry that are willing to find different approaches to delivering value and tapping into these in ways that create an alignment of both interests and outcomes between the actors in this messy and complex problem space!

This book should be mandatory reading for anyone involved in the consulting industry