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.