Management Consulting is one of those alluring businesses that is simultaneously understood and yet a mystery. Many who have worked with consultants have seen seemingly odd behaviors in the way they engage and work. Consultants also seem to have their own private lexicon and in-crowd language. Sometimes consultants seem to be helpful, enthusiastic, can’t-do-it-without-you colleagues, and other times consultants seem to be money-grubbing, box-checking, bullies. Before you seek to work with a consultant or are interested in becoming a consultant, what should you know?

If there was a conversational way to understand the consulting business model, the profile of the consultant, how consultants look at projects, and some methods for increasing the likelihood of project success before contacting the consultant, wouldn’t that help?

Inside Management Consulting explains inner workings of the consulting business not readily apparent to those who seek to hire consultants or those who are considering a career in consulting. As seen through the experience of a 30-year veteran and written with a touch of humor, consulting history, business drivers, mindsets, consumption trends, frameworks, and illustrative stories are provided for the reader to achieve a deeper meaning of how consulting works and why consultants behave in particular ways.

The book concludes with a commentary about the future of consulting in light of recent technology disruptions and the COVID pandemic.

Is this book for you?

• If you wish to peer behind the consulting curtain or just want a glimpse into the seeming quirkiness of working with or being a consultant,
• If you seek to engage a consultant but have an unspoken but real concern of knowing on one hand external help is needed, but on the other hand, relying on relative strangers with strange ways of working is risky,
• If you are considering consulting as a career journey and want to know more about the path ahead

… this book is for you.

Please understand that although I love consulting, the intention is not to defend it; but to present it. And because experience makes me fully qualified to make fun of it, hopefully you’ll find some barbs that make it a more entertaining read, with an understanding that the intent is not to bash the industry. Here’s hoping the veils to be removed will make the entire experience more valuable – or at least more understandable.

– John Norkus