Definition: Consultant (n.) A professional of negotiable integrity, specializing in fixing what’s broken by breaking what’s fixed.
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Consultants aren’t always held in the highest regard. The 90% who are bad, the old joke goes, ruin it for the rest of us.
Knowing the 90%’s tricks of the trade is the canny CIO’s first line of defense. Here are seven of the most pernicious consulting misdeeds you will encounter as an IT leader.
1. Fixing anecdotes
Bad stuff happens in even the best-run IT organization. The fixing-anecdotes scam is like the Texas bull’s-eye but in reverse — the consultant finds a circle, paints a ring around it, and declares it’s wood rot that requires immediate, consultant-led attention.
Individual events can be nothing more than a random incident. They don’t deserve a CIO’s attention unless they recur, consultant overreactions notwithstanding.
2. Ignoring trade-offs
Every change entails trade-offs. When assessing an IT organization, consultants are paid to identify problems, …