People used to ask me when I was a roving international consulting expert, 'so, what does good look like?' And for a while I'd say something like, 'well, no one is perfect, but some people do bits of things better than others'.
After a while I realised that all of my experience was actually based on people who did things terribly, so rather than know what good looks like, I was more an expert in what truly awful is. 'Leading practice' was the term consultants liked to use to cover up the fact that it wasn't a reality and that no one really followed it.
Eventually, later in my career, I just came clean and in response to the question 'what does good look like?' I'd say, to be honest, no one hires a consultant if they're good at the problem trying to be solved. I've only really seen terrible, and the bad news is that you're doing the same as them.
Honest as it was, it tended not to get the sale.
Now cost reduction on the other hand, that is always popular - and here's Strategy Man to explain why.
Eventually you end up with a model in your mind of what good should look like - but I guess there's a reason why no one does it. It's a model. Divorced from reality.
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