Generic consultants anyone?

I am writing this because of my experience working with consultants. I term "generic consultants" as consultants who do not have a specific skill set. They have pretty good management skills and presentation skill but that's is about all. They are "asked to be" consultants in areas where they may not have any prior experience or working knowledge. Sad to say, most consulting firms operate this way. They will put a person who is experienced in say, JDBC develoment (a techie) in a process management project (e.g. re-engineer the process of a retail line of business in the oil and gas industry). For those of you who are in this industry and think I am not making sense in this example, I apologize but these are just examples which I made up. Just examples.
The poor sod (the techie) will not have pre-requisite skills to handle this assignment but that's is just too bad for him (and the project). So what this guy needs to do is to bull shit his way through. Sometimes, the bull shit does not pull through and the client will lose confidence in this person. Generally, it will make the whole working relationship between the consulting firm and client a pretty bad.
Let's face it, not everyone has all consulting skills. A consultant is supposed to be a person who knows a lot more than the average guy on the street about a particular subject matter. That's why people "consult" these "consultants"! So why consult someone who knows less or just marginally more? The answer to this is simple, "don't hire these consultants".
Look at this another way, imagine you have a BMW and you want it serviced. Would you take your BMW to a mechanic who has experience in servicing Daewoo motorcycles (BUT who can present fantastic looking Powerpoint slides on how to service a BMW and what Garner has to say about the trend in servicing BMWs over the past decade) or a mechanic who has the real working experience and skill in servicing BMWs? I think the choice is clear.
Don't get me wrong, there are some projects where these consulting firms delivered sterling results. And that's because they got the consultants with correct skills and experience in these projects.
I don't blame the consultant. I blame the business model. Personally, I do not think firms like these can continue operating in this manner for long. Sooner or later the user community will wise up and view such generic consultants with a whole jar of salt. Consultants are specialists not generalists. Enough said.

Till my next post.

Damn it happended again

Most of us have one time or another bit our own lips by accident. A somewhat painful experience but what is more disconcerting is that after we bit ourselves, we often bite ourselves at the same spot again. As if the first incident was not painful enough, we have to bite ourselves a second time and a few more times after that. It is like subconsciously we are drawn towards pain.

Till my next, hopefully less painful post...

See drive?

Now that most PCs do not come with floppy disk drives anymore, that means A and B drive letters are obsolete. SO, why do we still use the letter C for our hard drives?

A Jedi you want to look like?

Last week, I was at the Malaysian Embassy in Singapore. I saw this Chinese man (in his late thirties to early forties, I think) sporting short and neat hairstyle waiting in the Immigration section. There wasn't anything unusual about him except that he has a neatly plaited hair. His plait of hair originated from the behind his right ear and it was thin, about 1 cm wide. It was long too - reaching his chest!

I thought it was rather unusual for someone like him to sport such a hairstyle. This man was the conservative looking and traditional sort, not someone who will plait his hair and definitely not someone who will plait his hair looking like this!





I told my sister what I saw. She said he could be using hair extensions. Hair extensions?
Why would a middle-age conservative looking guy applying for his passport use hair extensions? I don't think they were hair extensions. I think this guy was for real. A Malaysian Singapore PR Padawan, he is!

May the Force be with your hair stylist...

Another post on movies

Looks like my posts seem to be a lot on movies. Well, here's something I noticed, in "Die Another Day", James Bond used a respiratory device. This device had a mouth piece and 2 protruding cylindrical appendages attached laterally on the mouth piece and each of the appendages pointed away from each other. In Star Wars Episode I, Obi Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn used similar shaped devices when they dived underwater to visit Gunga City!

First post for the new year

I am watching Star Wars Episode 3 on cable. I know this is not exactly a new movie but just some thoughts.

Padme Amidala seems to have lost her strong character she displayed in previous episodes. Maybe because she is in love with Anakin?



R2-D2 seems to be more useful than C-3PO in episodes 4 to 6. But in Episodes 3, there is no doubt R2 is far more useful than his gold plated friend. R2-D2 defeated 2 super battle droids!


Yoda rocks with the light sabre! His separate duels with the Emperor and Count Doku were simply too good. Also It was comical to see Yoda climb up Chewbacca's arm so that Chewy could give him a piggy back ride.


Happy New Year 2007!