I strongly disagree. Nobody hires somebody to tell them what to do, ever. "Consulting" is always ultimately a euphemism for just contracting or freelancing. It's a figment of the imagination of McKinseyites and other people in suits who don't like to think of themselves as excel monkeys or powerpoint monkeys in the same vain as there are code monkeys.
> Nobody hires somebody to tell them what to do, ever.
Uh, that's literally what my clients hire me to do. I don't do any of the work for them - I analyze the current situation, and give them a checklist of what to do in order to solve their problems. I don't do the work.
I think that is literally what you think your clients hire you to do.
I've seen things that look like this on the surface play out numerous times, and at a deeper level it always turns out that what's going on is something different.
Example. SURFACE: Startup CEO hires consultants to tell him the next product line for his company. WHAT'S HAPPENING: CEO sends consultants off to do surveys, competitive intelligence, spreadsheets with made-up numbers, literature reviews, etc etc to build a case for what the next product should be. Also provides the slightest of hints that product X is something they should be looking into amongst other things (just a suggestion of course). Whenever consultants make recommendations that advance the agenda of company getting into product line X, recommendations are followed. For all other recommendations, CEO sends consultants off to do more surveys, more competitive intelligence, more spreadsheets with made-up numbers. BENEATH THE SURFACE: CEO woke up one morning, having decided to do product X. Needs to make it look like something other than his sheer whim. Hires some excel-monkeys to create a trail of documents, meetings, scribbles on whiteboards etc. Decided to outsource the excel-monkey work because he didn't want to distract his actual employees from doing the work that actually needs to get done to keep the company going.
Other example. SURFACE: Network incident response division in major international telco corporation hires consultants to determine the prioritization function for network incidents. WHAT'S HAPPENING: The network is rotting away. Every day, more incidents get created than the company has resources to address. There's a hiring, spending, and capex freeze, so there is no way to get the resources that are needed. On regular intervals, mid-level managers get shouted at by top-level bosses about why on earth they didn't give priority to fixing that one network incident that resulted in Tom Cruise being without a signal when golfing last weekend that resulted in a lot of press attention and ultimately even an enquiry from the regulator. Whenever that happens, mid-level managers change the prioritization function, to try to appease top-level managers. They have already done this 3 times this year. Then they have a great idea: Let's hire some consultants to determine the prioritization function. BENEATH THE SURFACE: They know that the whole endeavor is futile and doomed to failure. No matter how they prioritize incidents, the network will keep getting worse, and angry tweets from Tom Cruise about the shitty network will become an inevitable element of the brand. The outside consultants were hired as scapegoats. Next time the mid-level managers get shouted at by top-level bosses, instead of saying "Sorry, but we will really really get it right next time" they can say "I am just as shocked as you are! I told you we shouldn't have hired those moron consultants! But us mid-level managers, we will still be getting our bonuses this year, right? Because, ever since these consultants have been here, we ourselves, didn't screw up. Not even once!".
...I hope you see where I'm going with this.
Actual opportunities to make actual meaningful decisions are the rarest of things in business. You chance into one only rarely in your carreer. And when you have one, you don't ever give it away. No one does that.
To add to your first example... New product fails miserably in the market. CEO blames consultants for the failure, retains his job and gets his next bonus as scheduled. Rinse, repeat.
