Week one: discovery interviews. Week four: current state analysis. Week eight: future state design. Week twelve: implementation roadmap. Week sixteen: final presentation. Week twenty: you're exactly where you started, except now you have a 200-page PDF explaining why you're stuck. This is why even great frameworks fail without execution.
Every consulting engagement follows the same script. The partners sell the vision. The managers run the process. The analysts do the work. Everyone interviews everyone. Workshops fill calendars. Whiteboards fill with frameworks. PowerPoints multiply exponentially.
The deliverables are impressive. Current state documentation mapping every broken process in detail. Future state design showing the promised land. Gap analysis explaining the journey. Implementation roadmap with 18-month timeline. Change management plan considering every stakeholder.
Six months later, that beautiful binder sits on a shelf. Your close still takes 20 days. Your forecasts remain fiction. Your dashboards stay useless. But now you have professional documentation of your dysfunction.
Consultants are professional diagnosticians. They excel at identifying problems, analyzing root causes, and explaining systemic failures. They'll tell you exactly why your close takes 20 days, precisely how your processes fail, and specifically what needs changing.
But diagnosis isn't cure. Knowing why you're sick doesn't make you healthy. Understanding your dysfunction doesn't eliminate it. Analyzing problems doesn't solve them. Yet consultants sell diagnosis as if it were treatment.
Watch a consulting team work. They'll spend 80% of their time understanding the problem and 20% designing solutions. Then they leave, expecting you to spend 100% of your time implementing their recommendations. With the same team that created the dysfunction. Using the same systems that enable it. Following the same patterns that perpetuate it.
Consulting recommendations follow predictable patterns: implement new ERP, redesign processes, create governance structure, establish KPIs, change organizational design, upgrade talent, transform culture. All correct. All impossible with your current capability.
This is the recommendation paradox: if you could implement their recommendations, you wouldn't need consultants. The very dysfunction they're documenting prevents you from executing their solutions. They're prescribing gymnastics to patients who can't walk.
The capability to execute transformation is different from knowing what transformation looks like. Consultants provide the latter while assuming the former. They deliver blueprints to teams that can't build. They provide recipes to kitchens without ingredients.
The consulting business model depends on problems persisting. Fixed clients don't rehire consultants. Solved problems don't generate follow-on engagements. Eliminated dysfunction doesn't require quarterly reviews.
Watch the engagement extensions. Phase 1 identifies problems. Phase 2 designs solutions. Phase 3 plans implementation. Phase 4 supports change management. Phase 5 reviews progress. Phase 6 adjusts approach. The phases continue until budget exhaustion, not problem resolution.
This isn't conspiracy—it's incentive alignment. Consultants sell time, not outcomes. They're paid for activity, not results. Their success metrics are utilization and bill rates, not your operational transformation.
Nothing symbolizes consulting failure better than PowerPoint. Hundreds of slides documenting what you already know. Beautiful graphics explaining your dysfunction. Complex frameworks making simple problems seem sophisticated.
The PowerPoint problem isn't aesthetic—it's philosophical. Consultants believe documentation drives change. That awareness creates action. That frameworks fix failures. They deliver insight when you need capability, analysis when you need automation, recommendations when you need results.
Count the hours invested in those presentations. The consultant hours creating them. The client hours reviewing them. The collective hours discussing them. Now calculate the operational improvement generated. The ROI is usually negative—you spent time learning about problems instead of fixing them.
The vast desert between recommendation and reality is where consulting value dies. The roadmap says "implement new close process." But who designs it? Who builds it? Who tests it? Who trains it? Who maintains it?
Consultants assume implementation capability exists. It doesn't. If you had implementation capability, you wouldn't have hired consultants. You hired them precisely because you can't execute transformation. Then they leave you with recommendations requiring transformation capability to execute.
Real transformation requires builders, not advisors. Implementers, not analyzers. Capability creators, not recommendation writers. The model inverts traditional consulting: 20% diagnosis, 80% construction.
Instead of interviewing everyone about problems, start fixing one problem. Instead of documenting all dysfunction, eliminate some dysfunction. Instead of designing the perfect future state, build a better current state. Progress over perfection. Building over planning. Results over recommendations.
This means consultants who work in your systems, not on PowerPoint. Who build your dashboards, not describe them. Who fix your close, not explain why it's broken. Who create capability, not document its absence.
The test for consulting value is simple: did measurable operations improve? Not insights gained or awareness raised or plans created. Did the close get faster? Did visibility increase? Did manual work decrease? Did decision velocity accelerate?
If the only artifacts are documents, the engagement failed. If the only change is awareness, the money was wasted. If the only value is recommendation, the consultants were tourists, not transformers.
Real transformation leaves behind systems, not slides. Capabilities, not comments. Independence, not dependency. The consultants become unnecessary because they built something that works without them.
Most consultants can't fix your financial operations because they've never actually operated. They've analyzed operations, advised on operations, and recommended about operations. But they've never been responsible for making operations work.
They don't know the grinding reality of monthly closes. The political dynamics of process change. The technical debt of legacy systems. The human cost of transformation. They know the theory but not the practice. The framework but not the friction.
Your financial transformation doesn't need more analysis. It doesn't need better recommendations. It doesn't need impressive frameworks. It needs someone to actually fix it. To build the systems. To automate the processes. To train the people. To deliver the results.
Stop buying diagnosis when you need cure. Stop accepting recommendations when you need results. Stop paying for PowerPoints when you need progress.
Consultants can't fix this because they're not trying to fix it—they're trying to analyze it. Analysis isn't action. Recommendation isn't result. PowerPoint isn't progress.
Choose builders over advisors. Choose implementation over recommendation. Choose capability over consultation. Choose results over reports.
The best consultants make themselves unnecessary by building systems that work without them. Most make themselves indispensable by ensuring problems persist.
Choose wisely. Your transformation depends on it.