What does a consultant actually do?

It’s a question as old as however old management consulting is: what exactly do consultants do all day? In our first-ever “case study” Dan investigates the world of consulting with help from two New York Times reporters and a former BCG consultant.

Video by Dan Toomey and Henry Stockwell
Additional camera by Evan Frolov

Good Work is a business news channel that explores a different angle of the corporate world. Or something like that.

What does a consultant do?

[Gregorovitch]

Management consultancy is actually a very simple three stage process:

1. Find out what the client wants to hear
2. Find out how much they want to pay to hear it.
3. Double it.

[themichaelw]

It always baffled me how 22-year-olds could get hired out of college into management consulting where the whole premise of the job is that you have industry knowledge and experience to be able to guide other companies, not just recite porter's 5 forces.

[ZiggieMusic]

My dad has always said "A consultant is someone who can tell you what work needs to be done, but can't do it themselves"

[towhee]

I will never forget being 24, one year of work experience in consulting, sitting in a room with 5 highly experienced Heads of Departments, who have kids older than me, and then telling them what to do with their IT systems. It felt.. weird.

[chadpilled]

As a consultant this is quite interesting and helpful to figure out what I do

[mmsb]

Consultants are basically just influencers of the corporate world at this point

[Iamrich]

My dad is a really successful private consultant.
A lot of friends ask me what my dad does for a living, I remember asking him the question what does he do in consulting and he just said.
"Just have common sense, big corps are stupid stiff and out of touch with the basics, you just tell them the things a minimal educated person would tell them to do, it's easy." like bro...

[ShermTank]

My grandpa was a consultant at the steel mill he used to work at. He used to tell us about how all of his suggestions for improving the mill were completely ignored while he worked on the floor. Later when he was a consultant, his advice was met with "oh wow I never knew that was an issue" or "oh that's a great suggestion sir".

So in conclusion, a consultant is someone you pay to listen to so that you can ignore the people who are actually bringing value to your company.

[prospectnyc]

"Go to meetings and prepare for meetings." Accurate. We hire consultants and they just sit in meetings and create PowerPoints to show at the next meeting to show what was in the previous meeting.

[TommyLikeTom]

My ex girlfriend left me for a young consultant so this is extremely gratifying, thank you. I was a secure overachiever, which is why I'm an underpaid artist.

[TheMrartistman]

The fact that consulting is such big business is probably one of the biggest pieces of proof that most CEOs and upper management don't really know what they're doing

[MrPrince]

PLS NOTE: The BCG, Bain and Mckinsey actually form a part of the Big Three, more commonly known as MBB. The Big Four is actually a reference to Deloitte, KPMG, PwC and EY - all of which have consulting functions as well.

[moodynoob]

Their business model is:
1. Tell clients they're experts. Provide one experienced consultant for a project.
2. Have most of the work done by overworked grads. As these grads are the top of their class, they can manage to figure stuff out quickly enough.
3. Bill obscene amounts to the client for every hour worked for as long as possible. Clients essentially pay obscene amounts for college grads to apply some theories learnt in college and present it well, making it a very profitable business model 😂

[DriveupLife]

As a former management consultant, all we do is 1. Listen 2. Run some numbers 3. Recommend decision makers do certain things 4. Recommend decision makers not do certain things.

That is literally it.

[singularity]

A typical scenario:
1) CEO has idea, but it's risky.
2) CEO hires consultants to "see what they think"
3) CEO does idea anyway
4) It either works and CEO gets praise, or it fails and consultants get the blame.
Either way, CEO doesn't look bad.

[alexsteven.m]

Inflation hits people a lot harder than a crashing stock or housing market as it directly affects people's cost of living that people immediately feel the impact of. It's not surprising negative market sentiment is so high now. We really need help to survive in this Economy.

[applepieclub]

I had a business professor once, that looked like Albert Einstein.

This professor, he had a great quote about what consultants do:

“They steal your watch and tell you what time it is”

[Macarite]

This format is so good, loved the way you changed shots for every line, loved the outfit, and I acc learnt something in the process. More of exactly this please! maybe just talk about what different people's jobs actually mean, would b a sick series.

[jamesc.]

26 yo Management Consultant here. "Going to meetings and preparing for meetings" is a very good description. At best you take on some menial tasks that still have some tangible value at least. At worst, your job is simply to agree with the client, fiddle with some PowerPoint slides, and show up to meetings you definitely don't need to be at so the client doesn't feel like they're paying for nothing. Easy money for sure.

[sebaldfan]

This is great work. My grandma was a consultant in the 80s working with some bigger tech firms and still views everything in a lens of consultant-y processes, it honestly drives me insane because it really just seems like an endless vortex of buzzwords for otherwise rational and comprehensible planning/problem solving.