Consulting Voodoo
The gift of storytelling
When I was a kid, I thought my older brother had a super power. I was impressed by (and nearly drawn to) the energy he would put into speaking about his ideas. His stories would flow like a river. Just like in a fairytale. He could be convincing. He is a storyteller. People like him can tell you stories that you know are removed from reality but somehow would feel compelled to love what you are hearing. It is as if they live in their own world.
Do you know that the original ending of Snow White has been altered? It was two graphic for children. It was closer to the reality of the writers but was not fit for children nor for Disney’s business. Same goes for Cinderella or for the Sleeping Beauty. That’s right: the number one rule of storytelling is the story adapts to the audience, not to the facts.
These people are not liars, most of the time. They have discovered the secret to speak to people’s emotions. It is a gift!
The left brain curse
One the other side, you have analytical people: the party poopers. They are easy to unmask: whatever the generally accepted narrative, they will come up with a fact that will contradict or make you doubt it. They do not tell stories but rather spew a set of facts and the analysis that goes with them. Do not expect a smooth story from them. You will get all the nuances and different axes of analysis of an event even if they are hard to swallow.
You tell them a story that you have spent time crafting, and all that matters to them is fact-checking and redoing an analysis. You give them a set of fact with a gap in it, and they will tell you they are unable to draw a definitive conclusion (i.e., tell you a beautiful story from those facts, a thing that is easy to storytellers). They will at best lose you in conjectures and caveats and half insurances when you need full commitment.
The consulting job
Now you, the reader, might be thinking to yourself: “How does that relate to the consulting industry, especially storytelling?”
In strategy consulting, most of the time, the final delivery is a powerpoint presentation or “deck” for the insiders. To build a deck, a consultant starts with a storyline, a set of sentences that put together in the right order, relates the insights found during the analyses. Each sentence will be a title to a slide. The body of the slide will display the supporting facts (i.e., all data points proving that the insight is valid). Secondarily, you can find notes and details in the foot of the slide. Consultants spend hours crafting titles and choosing boxes and colours on slides. They invent frameworks and other concepts in the hope to make the information digestible to the reader.
The rational behind delivering complex findings as stories is that the lessons learned from the study will stick with the client easily. Delivering the content in a plain text format like a scientific research paper is sure to repulse even the bravest managers: they do not have time to read long papers. Added to that, the human brain is more at ease with a story than with a long text full of alien concepts, numbers, jargons and formulas. None wants that.
I feel uncomfortable when in a movie a character leans too heavily on analyses. The first movie versions of Sherlock Holmes were just like that: analyses after analyses until the culprit is found. Boring! Have your watched the recent ones with Robert Downey Jr.? They are all about a story. Less murder map more fights and deductions on the fly. I paid to watch a story that rhymes perfectly. I don’t want a storyline with something out of tune. But in the business world, we are in the real world. Facts rarely generate themselves in coordinated way to fit a coherent narrative. The universe does not go like: “Hey, this company’s project is executing so well; let us avoid that something countercurrent happens.”
Storytellers have well understood this concept. They exploit it cleverly. Managers want stories? Here they are! On a consulting project, a storyteller will religiously listen to what the paying manager has to say. An outsider will be surprised by how much these managers share (frequently in an unstructured way but that is not an issue). The goal is to understand the core message the manager wants to convince his ComEx with. Consultants will then proceed to craft a story that flows well with the half-confessed desires of the manager. They will find all supporting evidence to seal the argument. Opposing evidence will be downplayed or ignored so as to not weaken the narrative. And voilà! You have a solid, shiny fact based deck to present. But, Is it so?
In the opposite scenario, analysts will also listen to the manager. Their main purpose will be to gather data points. They will proceed to gather other documents, data bases throughout the company to confront facts. All facts will be considered: those going along the manager’s narrative and those contradicting it. They will then, in long problem solving sessions, try to decipher all the information to infer insights. If they encounter an information gap, they signal a caveat. Those insights will then form a storyline. This is a long process compared to that of a storyteller and there is a big risk: The final findings might be a complete opposite of the client’s vision.
So, on the surface, the advantage goes to the storyteller. There is another aspect that favours him. Storytellers are masters at “dressing” a story. Sadly, the quality of a consulting project is judged by the appearance of the deck: the flow of ideas, the beauty of the slides. The insights also count (but sometimes, to a lesser degree than it should). Outsiders will be surprised at the glow in the paying manager’s eyes when they see a “beautiful, well crafted slide.”
Wrapping this up
On paper, consulting has a compelling value proposition for all stakeholders:
- The client gets top-notch analyses and recommendations from high IQ, savvy, dedicated experts;
- The consulting firm collects hefty fees;
- The consultants get a sizeable retribution plus the recognition for their brilliance. They go through many more business situations than people in the corporate would. Plus, exit opportunities; don’t forget the exit.
But just like for storytelling, in real life, not all stories pan out as they are told. The outcome is nuanced.
For example a friend of mine was on a project for a company trying to revamp its IT department. The lead of the project was a storyteller. Through the analysis and interviews, it came to him that the CPO and the CTO where not on so good terms. Both tried to downplay this state of facts to not weaken their positions. At the beginning of the project, the general of the deck was clear: everything is fine; your transformation project is going to rock! So the final deck just told that story, stressing the recent reshuffle in the process and the successful integration of new qualified hires. Fast forward 4 months into the transformation project: Clashes between the CPO and CTO threatened the whole project.
If the consulting project were headed by an analyst, things would be different. The consultants would have inquired so that one of the contenders spills the beans about his relationship with his counterpart. Had the consultant probed a little bit on this hunch, maybe (and I can’t stress that enough, maybe) more evidence to back that assertion (that the managers do not get along) would have been found. These findings could help take actions to reconcile their views. The consulting team would have needed the conviction (from the facts) to point the misalignment of views between the managers to their managing team and finally saved resources and energy on the transformation project. Alas!
How does that work out?
Storytellers doing their craft:
- The method is quick: a good storyteller can tell you a very compelling story from a limited set of factoids.
- Confirmation bias: the client ends up hearing just what he has always thought was true. “Aha! see, even those brilliant consultants just said what I have been saying all along at the ComEx meetings. I was right. I am right. We should now do as I said.”
- Safe: for the consulting firm because they are repeating, with more finesse, what their paying client told them. They are not saying anything that is out of tune and would displease him. And bonus: It is now backed by facts! … But not that safe. To reach these conclusions, some facts have been disregarded.
On the other side, the analysis is:
- Time consuming: because it requires data be available the facts and check if they are true.
- Methodical: optionally assign them weights in other words this fact is more significant than this other one or I take on myself to dismiss this factoid for X reason. Of course it is not a bias-free process! Work them through a framework to uncover insights: I personally like a plain and simple logic tree or a fact-inference table.
- Must find common ground with storytelling: build a story from there. Sometimes, facts will contradict one another. That’s the beauty of being fact oriented: It can be confusing. At the end of the process, you typically find yourself with a messy story (that none besides the team that made the previous analysis would easily assimilate). That is when you need the gift of storytelling. Not to hide things but to smoothen the storyline. Storytellers can help by telling the story compellingly while maintaining factual integrity.
- Costly: it takes lot of time (and sweat) to train a good analyst, and you need many of them on a team. While, only one good storyteller on the team can work wonders.
