The Tao of unbiased consultation

The dictionary definition of 'unbiased' is unprejudiced. In today's business world someone consulting someone without a catch is a paradox. Why?

When you google the words 'unbiased consultation', you get approximately 360.000 hits from a wide variety of companies telling that they are less biased that the zealous neighbor company, who of course tell just the same thing. If there would not be an issue with being biased, why there would be so many websites advertising that they are the unbiased ones? The problem is that there's money involved.

As we all well know, money is the root of all evil and causes people and companies alike to behave oddly in order to try to make more money. I can't actually tell when the change happened, from "consultation for the good of customer" to "keeping the customer in the house as long as possible by making ourselves invaluable" but I bet it was somewhere between the IT bubble starting to grow and it's bursting. When there's a new, massive industry emerging with a small amount of people knowing anything gives consulting a nice incentive to maximize profits in the short run, and what the hell - "let's make ourselves so important to them that we'll have nice profits also in the long run!"

So, at first it was all about making money but then more consulting companies started to emerge, merge and spread like a vile disease on every corner of the planet. This naturally creates competition and the customers started actually to realize that they were being milked, causing more schism towards the consulting industry. There are several reasons for people not to like consultants, the biggest reason is that most consultants do not have enough knowledge and experience in the topic they should teach others, I will not even mention the lack of fresh ideas, creativity or even common sense.

When the consulting companies started to feel the wind at the top, they made the consultants sales people (What drives sales people? That's right, money!) by giving them quotas, cutting their salary to a small base with a possible bonus and making them responsible for new client acquisition. Now this would all be nice and dandy IF the consultants were sales process consultants or business developement consultants, but we're speaking of people specialized in coding, databases and other not-so-flamboyant specialities. Ask yourselves that would these people rather a.) Pick up the phone and start cold-calling new clients or b.) Make the most difficult and problematic database front-end only gods and this guy know how to use - just to make sure this guy doesn't have to think of changing jobs in the next few years?

I thought you would agree. Talk about unbiased consultants.

So, when I had a seminar in E-Commerce and IT Project management in my MBA program, I brought out the idea of true unbiased consultation.

"Provide a solution for the customer, with the customer as if this is the last thing you would do in your life - so that anybody could pick up from your tracks and continue the work."

This utopistic idea requires a lot from the consultant: Comprehensive and coherent documentation to make sure the customer and the next guy understand what was the situation, what was planned to be changed and what was changed. A true consultant should make sure that the changes make the effect they were planned to. One important thing related to importance of the consultation is the consultant realizing his/her own skills and limitations - and most importantly understanding that the possible customer might not actually need the service.

A true, unbiased consultant maintains the position as consultant by providing a good and beneficial service to the customer.

What happened to getting there?

Have you noticed that in the world today, traveling does not seem to be going to place a to place b anymore. This is usually also the reason men don't like jogging, since what's the point to run from one place back to the same in an hour later. Maybe it's due to all those road trip movies, which always seem to have the notion "It's not getting there, it's the journey" behind their respective story. Travel agents seem to have watched their movies well and probably bought the screenplays to make sure they have all pieces of their puzzles.

I need to travel a lot and it seems that flying is the only travel method where the main point is in relocating between places - although the reason to this might be that there's no room to do anything else - even in first class. Airbus is bringing out a model that might bring a change to this, having a top floor including a gym and a bar and whatnot. Boats and ferries are the worst, since these floating restaurants are right there on the nerve.

There must be some kind of pirate gene in homo sapiens since the rocking of a boat under their feet seem to introduce a new behavioral mode of drinking, looking for booty (arr) and unnecessary fighting. Weekends are the worst, since people don't need to wake up in the morning and casual travelers like myself are a rarity. This is why there's a need for cruise ships and they are widely used, but the same effects have been in other ways of transport since someone invented that people should pay for entertainment.

Cheap flight companies have thought of this whole traveling thing, just offering cheap flights from place a to b. The problem is that they can't make enough money by just flying so they fly from close to place a to some town near place b from where you need to take a bus that leaves in the middle of the night packed full of angry passengers who are too used to having bingo nights and karaoke. There is always a lot of discussion of comfort when a new cheap airliner is coming to the market. "How will we live an hour flight without food? How will I stand two hours without seeing a movie?"

The horror.

I just want to travel to get where I want to go, enjoy to travel, not the extras relating to it.