Consulting F*cking Sucks

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: a consultant and a liar walk into a bar. The bartender says, “hello, sir. what’ll it be?”

Let’s not mince words; folks don’t trust consultants. Maybe some of the rancor is misdirected, but plenty of it is for good reason.

Disclaimer: I’ve been called a consultant. BUILDSTR will sometimes get labeled a consultancy. We reject the label though; we build things for a living.

I Screwed Up

Almost fifteen years ago when I was on the customer side of the industry, I stood outside a beautiful, glass-walled boardroom in a cold sweat. I had chosen wrong. My choice was basically rock or hard place, but alas, I was the guy who chose wrong. There was no time left to do anything but face the music.

What could I have done differently? I had done my due diligence and talked to every different type of engineering partner I could find. With personal referrals and household brands alike, in meeting after meeting I was either patronizingly sold some 70-slide “digital transformation” framework or indifferently asked how many bodies I needed.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t really know how to answer the partners’ questions. I didn’t really know how to evaluate the efficacy of these “frameworks” except for equating a GIGANTIC price tag with high value. What should the help look like? No idea. How do I critically and objectively evaluate what’s in front of me? No idea. Is the framework I’m being sold overkill, underkill, or just right for my situation? No idea.

Timeline burned. Money spent. Investors pissed. Customers underwhelmed. All because, when presented with the status quo options, I chose one and spent the next several months having constant resource attrition, zero productive communication, and near-constant change order requests for more money. At each attempt to reset, I was treated to a theatrical performance that I can only describe as: managers of managers informing me that my lack of understanding of my own requirements made this all my fault.  

After getting my ass handed to me in that meeting, the realization hit me like a freight train: if I was THIS lost, other people probably were too. I vowed right then and there that I would learn what great engineering looked like, so I could at least make my own determinations and (for better or worse) control my own destiny. 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but it would be the start of a long journey into un-fucking consulting.

What are the options?

Somewhat paradoxically, even businesses that are the most mature and sophisticated builders leverage outside help. Most BUILDSTR customers are startups and software companies with builder DNA, and we see these situations daily:

• Customer doesn’t have time to do XYZ, because their teams’ hands are too full right now.

• Customer jumped right into developing core features and it’s time to circle back to foundational things like network architecture, security groups, etc. (think AWS Landing Zone items)

• Customer can’t always have every possible skillset in-house.

• Customer runs into an unforeseen situation like service deprecation (e.g. Amazon QLDB goes away early next year).

If you’re that customer recognizing the need for outside help, you’ve got options, but you might not like them:

• You can reach out to Management Consulting, who build PowerPoints for a living. Very smart people put very smart ideas into those PowerPoints about where you should be heading, but these are not builders who can actually do the work for and with you.
  
  

• You can engage Big Tech Consulting and be sold the same framework that is rinsed and repeated across customers of all sizes, types, situations, and industries. The DNA of these orgs is: whatever the customer will need expert help with, have very smart and senior people come up with The Framework™️ that can be sold and delivered by the masses. This is partially why big tech consulting practices cohabitate with big tax consulting machines; the framework approach is not unique to tech, software, or engineering. Even worse, once you start down this path, it all starts to look like the Hotel California. Once you’ve sunk time and money into the direction of The Framework™️, you’ll be married to design decisions that were never about your specific needs.
  
  

• You can pursue the legacy of IT Outsourcing and participate in a race to the bottom. These firms offer the lowest possible hourly cost in exchange for high turnover and low quality. You still have to manage everyone’s work, and (begrudgingly) swapping out individual resources is the most engagement you should expect from leadership. Once you’re down this road, you’re committed by way of cost expectation. Once the organizational and cultural expectation of dirt-cheap engineering labor takes hold, any other option will look crazy expensive and imprudent.

All three of these paths that constitute the status quo are traps. All three of these paths are characterized by over-promising, under-delivering, death by change order, and burned-out customers. Each of these three paths incrementally developed in a world where customers had very little alternative. The customers I talk to every day do not like any of those three options.

Get to the point – is there an answer?  

Rejecting the status quo and creating a clean-sheet, purpose-built approach for new circumstances is how many great stories begin. When the great Charlie Beckwith, legendary Army Ranger, saw the world changing faster than massive fighting forces were adapting, he famously decried the need for a small, autonomous force of “not only teachers, but doers”. It took another decade or so, but eventually Charlie was tapped to create his team. The teachers and doers mentality became a defining characteristic of modern special forces, and that team, which became Delta Force, is still one of the most effective (and secretive) organizations around.

A purpose-built engineering firm to answer the call would be characterized by a few things:

Self-sufficiency vs. Hotel California

If your engineering partner is not interested in helping you achieve and sustain self-sufficiency, fire their asses. The status quo paths aim to keep you dependent; the anti-consulting path is channeling Charlie to teach the customer to fish, leave them better trained and better armed, and believe that a dollar lost freeing a customer from Hotel California becomes two dollars gained in trust.

Builder DNA vs. ‘Strategist’ DNA

Your engineering partner should have the organizational and cultural DNA of builders. Builders bring hard-fought learnings from real-life experience, understand how to engineer to the situation and not The Framework™️, and have the dexterity to adapt and roll with punches as things on the ground change and evolve. Companies with “strategist” DNA, on the other hand, traffic in the theoretical; these are folks that can somehow start telling you where you should be without knowing you or your goals, constraints, context, budget, and team members.

Working backwards from the customer vs. Working forward from the framework

Big Consulting develops The Framework™️ and pushes it everywhere; when you’re holding a hammer, all the world looks like a nail. Anti-consulting starts at what the customer is trying to achieve and all the various realities they face on that journey, and works backward to solutions, patterns, tools, services, etc. that are right for the situation. Anti-consulting is characterized by intentional and methodical pragmatism.

Not For Everyone

Executing on those three ideas is hard, and it’s not for everyone. It takes a re-write of the traditional consulting business model. It’s a pervasive and holistic difference, affecting every part of the business. Doing only a few of these things differently is window dressing at best; it has to be the culture and the business model.

This is what we have built and are continuing to evolve at BUILDSTR: “consulting for people who f*cking hate consulting”. If you have an anti-consulting partner, keep them close. If you don’t, join the party.