When I walked away from my corporate cage fifteen years ago and stepped into the uncertain sunlight of independence, I briefly flirted with the idea of becoming a consultant. You know the type: the hired gun, the emergency locksmith for corporate incompetence, the person you call when your in-house talent can’t wrestle its way out of the paper bag it designed for itself. It was a charming fantasy, and I even did a handful of consulting gigs—but only for mid-scale companies where the owner actually owned the place, meaning he had both skin in the game and an interest in keeping the office-politics parasites at bay.
In the beginning, I wondered why the big players never came knocking. What was wrong with me? Too blunt? Too practical? Too annoyingly focused on solving actual problems? Eventually a friend spelled it out with the delicacy of a dropped anvil: big companies aren’t run by owners. They’re run by managers—career courtiers whose primary mission is to survive the political ecosystem, not improve the business.
And these managers don’t hire consultants to fix anything. They hire them as human shields, political battering rams, or, if we’re being honest, as laundering devices for bad ideas. They need someone with a glossy brand to sanctify their schemes: “The Big Name says we should do X.” It’s a ritual of absolution, except the priests bill by the hour.Consulting firms know this. They’re built for it. Their business model doesn’t revolve around operational excellence; it revolves around feeding the court politics machine. They don’t resolve problems—they manufacture consensus. Or rather, the illusion of it. Professional liars with premium logos. And executives lap it up like it’s holy water.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/11/12/consultant-class-belatedly-recognizes-energy-realities/