"I am not into the guru-fication that is rampant in the industry. Consulting is flooded with people proclaiming themselves as the answer to your problems - all you have to do is stroke them a big check, do what they say, and all will be well. The result is far different from the promise; most 'borrow your watch to tell you what time it is'. If you haven't fallen into this trap - great - keep it up. If you have, enough said. In working both for and with most of the major names in the consulting industry over the last 30 years, I have come away with 2 principle lessons:
First, most consultants are solutions looking for problems - they have already written your prescription before the meeting. Imagine if your doctor tried to do that with you?! I believe it is called 'malpractice', yet in the consulting industry it seems to be 'common practice". One quote from a major player summed it up for me when he said - it is easier to find a new audience than come up with new stuff!
The second lesson was that consultants never looked under their own hood, so to speak. Almost without exception, they were poster children for the story of the 'cobbler's kids having no shoes'. These individuals and their organizations were good at giving advice, but terrible at following it in their own business. If you're in the business of giving business advice, you should be following it in your own business. We call this 'eating your own dog food' yet most of the big consultants out there never did.
Because of this experience, we created AKLabs in 2008 to be a working laboratory with business owners and executives to access the massive amounts of knowledge available about business performance; to find creative and cost effective solutions. This pursuit has led my industry friends to call us the unconsultants, a label I wear proudly.
Unlike the many 'canned' and standardized offers out there, we are never a solution trying to find a problem. Everything we do is customized to the specific client's needs, and everything that we preach, we practice ourselves."
