“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
It's ironic to me that a quote about just repeating the past is actually wrongly attributed to its author. It's a common misconception that Einstein said these words - but in reality he never did (turns out it was written in a mystery novel). This quote is a good way of highlighting a fatal flaw in Consulting, the misguided thinking that turns an often repeated statement into some sort of fact.
I firmly believe that IT Consulting has lost its way. It has become a means for organisations to augment their staff headcount. I have often heard the comment from inside companies, “"our staff are too busy, we can just bring in some consultants". The rationale is that since they are ‘hiring in’ the resource, that makes it okay. Consulting becomes an ‘on-demand’ headcount that is just to ratchet up the available ‘bums on seats’ to get the work done - and that the headcount is the value.
So what is 'Consulting’ then? Consulting should be about expert advice and adding something new. It’s about the combination of skills, experience, and curiosity - a magic combination that drives innovation and invention. It is not just about repeating the past, the same diagram, ‘copy and paste’ from the vendor documentation or using a 30-year-old framework with new colours.
Consulting isn't about baking a cake using a recipe handed down through the generations. Don't misunderstand me - we need to learn from the past, its failures and what did and didn't work. But let's be clear: those successes and failures are in the past. The idea that we can just recombine ideas from the past without anything extra and be successful is ridiculous. Organisations need to adapt to survive.
To consult effectively we need to see something new, something not been done before. Take a leap of faith and leave the cookie cutter at home. The world is constantly changing, so the pressure for consultants to actually be innovators and inventors is greater than ever. With all the flux and uncertainty right now, there is no spare investment to waste on doing what the past has already done, we must do something new. That’s the real value in consulting - it’s our obligation.
At Cyma this is our contribution to the revolution. Thinking beyond what has already been done before and constantly challenging ourselves is just who we are. This constant challenge means we don’t stand still, we don’t rest on the successes in our past, we don’t just give you what’s already been done before. Be ready for something new - don't be chicken.
Join the revolution.
