The Bluffer’s Guide to Consultancy

The essence of consultancy is simply stated, and you should never fail to bear it in mind. You are there to do the dirty work. It is therefore essential you never make the elementary mistake of supposing for a single moment that any of your careful recommendations will necessarily be put into effect. To believe that is to misunderstand the true nature of the consultancy business. Being a consultant means being an expert in a field which you have yourself invented, namely that of telling people who have been doing a job for years that you know how to do that job better. A bluffer is somebody who pretends to do all this, which comes to very much the same thing in the end.