“Can you believe how stupid?”

“I know. You’d think they’d see the obvious . . .”

I was in a small group of twenty-something consultants complaining about our client. I’m embarrassed to say I was in my fifties, but I was joining in. Suddenly a founding partner of the firm, seventeen years my junior, joined the group.

“Permission to not client bash?”  he said quietly.

“Oh. . . point taken,” said I sheepishly. I had delivered this message to teams before, but I had backslid into a client bitch session.

Client bashing happens much too easily in consulting, for many reasons.

The “curse of knowledge”

You are hired to help solve a problem. You use the obvious methodology, which you’ve used before, and you wonder how anyone else wouldn’t know that. That’s called the “curse of knowledge;” once you’ve learned something you forget what it was like not to know it. Clients may never have been exposed to zero based budgeting, or whatever specialized knowledge you are peddling. They may be too immersed in the day-to-day and miss what you see as obvious. That doesn’t make them stupid. They just need your help. And you know what? That’s why they hired you.

Insecurity

A senior partner explained the MBA recruiting criteria to me.

“We are looking for smart, nice people, who are just a little insecure. You have to be smart because clients have difficult problems. Clients and the team must like you, so it helps to be nice. We look for those who are a little insecure, because they work harder. This is a tough business which requires people to power up to deliver results.”

Sometimes imposter syndrome, smart people who are insecure and ‘power up’ to compensate, leads to what is perceived as arrogance. Consultants who have learned enough about a business to sound intelligent, may stop listening, or worse privately demean their clients.

Noblesse-Oblige-less-ness

Sheldon Cooper, the main character of the Chuck Laurie television comedy “The Big Bang Theory,” is a genius. We meet him as a Cal Tech theoretical physicist who went to university at twelve, and got his PhD at eighteen. He is almost completely devoid of social skills and completely obnoxious. Sheldon has been the smartest person in the room his whole life and has unmistakable disdain for lesser beings. The twelve season show milks the comedy of his much too slow humanization. There are far too many Sheldons in consulting.

Despite the smart-nice-insecure recruitment specification consulting hires too many Advance Placement, Ivy-Tech, Rich and Famous or RaF wannabees. These folks are not just imposter syndrome arrogant they are the genuine article. They really do believe they know better, do better, are better, than everyone else. Some of these folks, like Sheldon, get humanized as they age. Some do not.

I could go on, but the reasons for client bashing are less important than the effect.

Client bashing impedes service

It took me a while to understand that consulting is a helping profession, like medicine, or psychotherapy or social work. Clients have a problem, not enough revenue, too much cost, or people stuff, – you know, messy-motional-humans getting in the way of a well-engineered technical paradise. Clients ask for help solving the problem, which is a good thing, because as American psychologist Carl Rogers reminded us, “help that isn’t asked for isn’t perceived as help. It is interference.”

This brings us to the first problem. Often the boss asked for the help and the people below him didn’t. Oops. So consultants arrive ready to help people who don’t want the interference. Bash, bash, bash.

Carl Rogers also said, “it is impossible to help someone you don’t like.” He advised “find something about your client that you like.”

The converse is, when you are bashing your client, you are deeming them unworthy of your help. Why would you “serve’ someone you considered unworthy of your service? You would be unlikely to do your best work.

Bashing the client sets up an adversarial relationship. In your mind, they are less, and you must win, and get the credit, rather than helping the client to win, even if they claim to have “done it themselves.”

RIF, Rightsizing, POP

In the 1990s I did a lot of reengineering work. Reengineering was just business process improvement, but it took on a mystical ethos due to the book of that name by Michael Hammer. The firm I worked for was hired for huge projects. We’d arrive with a large team of smart, nice, insecure young people and take over a client’s organization for a year.

Sometimes these projects were run to teach the client process improvement. In those projects there was a large client team, lots of team training, and the organization was left more efficient and productive.

Sometimes the consulting team did most of the work. On those projects, I observed the project leader often promised a specific reduction in force, (15% RIF). They talked about euphemisms like “rightsizing,” or POP (people off payroll). There were no revenue growth goals; marketing processes were never looked at.

In the first kind of project client bashing was minimal. There were real improved business results, some revenue growth, some cost reduction. Downsized people were treated fairly and often redeployed elsewhere in the company. When the project was over, there was often a goodbye party where the client teams sent consultants off with thanks.

In the second kind of project, client bashing was the order of the day. There were often union actions and lawsuits. Sometimes there was virulent “resistance” and on more than one occasion violence.

Correlation is not causation. So the client bashing is probably a symptom. And who is to say where the adversarial relationship began, with the consultant, the hiring client, or both.

When you need people to change, bashing them isn’t service, and in my observation isn’t a success strategy either. If you find yourself tempted to client bash, stop, and repeat:

First, do no harm, be helpful where asked, focus on outcomes and process.

Traveling the Consulting Road: Career Wisdom for New Consultants, Candidates, and Their Mentors is the story of a consulting career where I learned these values. Click here to learn more.