Management consulting firms have systematically destroyed one company after another. Ours is just the latest. BCG has not only changed our company’s strategy they also changed our company’s values. Restructuring and becoming Fit and Lean has purged the knowledge and skill base, and forced the company to look beyond our walls for managerial talent. They advise that all company decisions should be concentrated with an elite few, aided of course by their management consultants. And what a coincidence, the management consultants techniques once deployed create a continual demand for more of the services that the consultants supply.
The days of empowered ordinary workers all daily making decisions to better the company, and a band of capable managers who actually had done the ordinary workers jobs steering the ship are GONE.
Everyone focuses on how bad CEOs are ruining Ford, but hey we had bad CEOs long ago as well. The difference was that in the distant past a bad CEO could do little harm as every cog in the wheel was empowered and did the right thing even though the CEO was not the best man for the job ( checks and balances and all that)
Ford has no longer has a capable bench, and that is how the management consulting groups want it. This gives the consultants opportunities to step into senior leadership positions at the companies they have advised.
So let’s cut Billy some slack, his forebearers had a capable engaged workforce and a deep bench protecting them. Poor Billy listened to Bain, gutted the workforce and shipped jobs off shore. When things went badly he doubled down after all the management consultants told him to, and then he double downed again, and again.
Building vehicles is no longer our core mission, we can’t return enough shareholder value doing that according to the management consultants.
Yet there go our competitors doing just that.
One thing I learned from others is that part of the management consulting services, they advise companies on actions to take when implementing recommended right-sizing and restructuring. One being to request area gonStores to cease sales for a period after the actions to “allow people time to process”. Dark souls chasing after dollars, with BoD approval.