The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes Our Governments, and Warps Our Economies Hardcover – March 7, 2023

It is easy to get caught with the growth of the bubonic advisory/consulting industry - overlooking its history, its opportunistic evolution, and its ubiquitous spread worldwide. These two authors have critiqued all this with diligent research, factual documentation, vignettes of practices - good and awful - and links to the overall economic ecosystem. This book will alert and humble all of us in this industry as well as those aspiring to become advisors in the public sector and consultants in the business sectors. I have learned (and unlearned) from this easy-to-read compendium and am observant of what to watch out for (and not do what so many do out there) and so that my consultancy and I can be alert and bring a better reputation to the consulting industry. This book should not only be read by the hundreds of thousands of consultants but also the millions of clients - administrators, chief executives, public officers, and "vendor approvers" - who hire and pay huge sums to consultants. This book also warns organizations to revisit the glorious past practices of talent and organization development and creating new leaders to take charge of their destinies and not be deprived of these sacrosanct principle for top teams ("deciders"). Clients and consultants can have a great mutual relationship when each does its specific role, never relenting to outsourcing thinking. (I reiterate my celebrated quote: "Never Outsource Thinking - or you will elude creativity and evade managing.).In the past couple of years, several researches have "woken us up" to the goings-on in our environs and well apparent and someone(s) had to show us the elephant in the room! (One such work is "The Man Who Broke Capitalism" that shares what the last four decades in the U.S. were like).Looking forward with new learning and sincere passions!

Pros: Good ideas and many examples of the problematic dynamics between governments and big consulting firms. Cons: It got a bit repetitive in the middle, and was light on ideas for implementing change.

This book lays out the insidious effect of consultant facilitators who push the privatization and cost cutting mantras despite the fact that they are proven no starters. When the debacle inevitably happens, everyone loses, taxpayers, public service employees, perhaps even politicians. Consultants though, go on their merry way, flogging the dead cat of their expertise to the gullible, and the corrupt.

I don't know what to make of this book. While on one hand, the authors are right about the failures and cons of some consulting contracts performed by private companies, it is disturbing that they are also offering consulting services under the disguise of educational/academic research and services. Maybe we will apply the adage "it takes one to know one", and leave the use of the name to the reader.

Marianna exposes the consulting industry ways of working today that is mostly unknown to many and the impacts it has on the very institutions and organisations it consults. All over the world governments and companies have grown reliant on consulting firms that its robbed them of their own internal thinking capacity and internal competencies (e.g digitisation, process improvements etc). It's taken away the ability to fail and learn and take accountability over their own work. Ppl become lazy and look for externals to blame shifting risk and ownership. A good read to understand how consulting industry weakens businesses, infantilizes governments and warps our economies. Well done Marianna.

Insightful examination of a critical social and political phenomenon with broad recommendations for reform. Reads like an academic paper or civil service report — dry, humorless, lacking pith — but shines a light on the impact of the consultancy industry on government and business with a fair degree of clarity. Includes an extensive bibliography.

As someone who specializes in owner representation on major capital projects, it refreshing to read a book that exposes a truth about prime contractors and consultants. Truth is their allegiance lies with there shareholders and it’s up to owners, especially in the public sector, to establish effective policies to protect and represent their own interests and level the playing field. Healthy commerce should result in more win-win outcomes instead value extraction via the big con. I highly recommend this book to any executive considering outsourcing a major capital project a third-party contractor. It’s a cautionary tale…

Having seen some of the practices first hand, it is great to see a more comprehensive description of real world occurrences.