Ever need consultants to figure how much your consultants cost? Would you be surprised to know that the above sentence is a headline from an ad run by a consulting company? It’s probably a sign of the times that consultants of every stripe are turning the searchlight inwards, looking at how they operate in a world with no shortage of specialists. They’ve also been confronted by the uncomfortable reality that the world’s largest consulting companies have been found guilty of perpetrating corporate fraud, and worse, giving large companies bad medicine.

 In the US, reeling from the Enron scandal (where auditors and consultants worked hand in glove), the focus has shifted to other large firms like McKinsey and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) who have much to answer for. McKinsey, the blue chip consulting outfit that launched the guru phenomenon and gave rise to celebrity CEO’s (from former IBM chairman Louis Gerstner, to the notorious Enron CEO, Jeffrey Skilling), has the worst PR any consulting firm can want. Its roster of clients include the big bankrupt brands Swissair, K-mart, Enron, and the one time darling of the dotcom era, undersea cable company, Global Crossing. So it’s no surprise that the consulting profession is now earning the same barbs once reserved for used-car salesmen and lawyers. The discussion of consulting ethics is a hot topic in board rooms, the US Congress and Op-Ed pages.

 An oft-cited complaint about consultants is that they are heavy on advice, make splendid presentations, but are not there to roll up their sleeves and implement the strategies they unload on management.  I would be surprised if there’s anyone reading this column who has not been ignored by upper management only to see a highly paid consultant to come up with the same ideas. To be fair, consultants are not often allowed to work with the rank and file. Their time is so expensive (around $160 an hour!) that they often only meet top management, and see little beyond the board room. Workers on the shop floor turning out the widgets bristle at the fact that consultants have no grease under the fingernails. The popular invective about a consultant being ‘someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time’ has a familiar ring to it. In the wake of the Tom Peters type of management guru, many people got into the business of consulting by merely adjusting their clothing and adopting the right bits of management jargon. What they often advice companies is nothing that the cubicle dwellers haven’t known.

 Today a lot of that has changed. And more radical consulting changes will surely follow. Even before the Enron scandal, consultants were revamping their strategy (now there’s a word bestowed on us by consultants!), sensing an impending backlash. And it was not just management consulting companies that saw this coming.

Ad agencies and PR firms, who often fall under the ‘outside consultant’ umbrella, have been quick to fine tune their services. The ad agency-turned marketing consultant has to be a multi-disciplinary outfit. Even agency fees have been calibrated accordingly, to encourage results. Or to put it another way, their job isn’t done when the campaign runs.

The agency needs to show results just like the grunt workers at the lathe, the gal who files invoices, and the janitor who empties the waste-paper baskets at night.

Brand consultancies, as an offshoot of ad agencies, are particularly feeling the heat. One hot shop pitches itself in a deliberately anti-consultant language. “When you hire a consultant”, says Mobium, “the net result is usually a logo, a theme line, a truck load of PowerPoint printouts, a lot of incestual information and very little insight.” Strategic thinking doesn’t cut it.

You know all this strategy talk is a hot button issue when even a would-be consultant takes on an attack mode. An IBM TV commercial about consultants has a CEO showing off a consultant’s plan at an executive meeting. “You've all read this," he lectures, waving a fat bound proposal. "Top-shelf consultants. Two million bucks. Pure Strategic thinking. This could put us years ahead...” No one in the room even flinches when the CEO admits that even he is psyched. He then asks his audience (comprising a few minorities, for added effect), whether they think the strategy can be implemented. They flatly answer no. Where do you think IBM is going with this tone of voice? It has, after all, worked very closely with consultants. When the commercial ran earlier this year, it may not have made sense. But recently, IBM has been big on trying to marry strategy and implementation. Or, to strip it of consultant-speak, IBM is trying to sell its services as a start-to-finish business. But advertising rhetoric is not a strategy in itself. The final piece of the puzzle can be found in stunning news this August: IBM bought out consulting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers. It is a move that shifts IBM one more notch away from the hardware business, and smack in the midriff of the consulting profession. What does that signal to the others?

 David Maister, author of many books on professional consulting, believes that the problem with professional service firms is that they talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. For all their jargon, they seldom practice what they preach. Precisely what that suddenly relevant IBM commercial’s says. The final voice over ends with a rhetorical question: “strategies you can execute?" asks a cynical voice, "now there’s a plan!”

 The gloves have come off. The pure-play consultants must be sweating in their corner.