Consulting and Star Trek: some interesting parallels

Whenever an economy / sector / organisation has been through a period of turmoil as the consulting industry has over the last year, it’s good practice to look back at the lessons learned. How, the regulators and politicians are asking themselves, can we avoid similar meltdown in the future?

But is the consulting industry asking this? I’m not convinced. Instead, I see a tendency (and I’ve noticed this before, in the aftermath of other downturns) to heave a collective sigh of relief and return to business-as-usual.

In this respect, consultants are not dissimilar to the inhabitants of the first (original, polystyrene) series of Star Trek. Watch these carefully, as I have been doing recently in the company of my 11-year-old son, and several things strike you:

• In a dangerous situation, when everyone is alert to possible threats, no one ever looks behind them.
• They beam “people” back to the Enterprise who inevitably turn out to be either (a) an alien in a cunning disguise or (b) a human with a cunningly disguised dreadful disease / insanity. Even where they suspect the person they’re beaming back may have (a) or (b), they don’t keep an eye on them, but let them roam around the Enterprise and are then surprised when they try to hijack the ship.
• If you (finally) zap your alien-disguised-as-human, you’re left with a smouldering soft-toy. (Sometimes – in the cheap episodes – it’s either the smouldering or the soft toy.)

There are some obvious lessons for consultants here about anticipating problems, although zapping even the trickiest of clients isn’t recommended. But what really hits you is how Captain Kirk and his crew don’t learn lessons from episode to episode. They’re just as surprised by such goings on, whether they’re in the first episode or the last. Consequently, there’s no real plot or character development. In fact, there can’t be: they’re condemned to repeat the same basic stories over and over again.

I think there are three lessons the consulting industry should learn from the Great Recession if it’s to ensure that it’s not repeated. The first is about spreading your risk. The recent crisis proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that recessions depress demand for consulting sector by sector, not all at once. A consulting firm can therefore focus on a single, specialised service, but it can’t afford to focus on just one sector. Then there’s return on investment. Every downturn in consulting has triggered soul-searching about the value of consulting: the smart firms will be those that continue to focus on this throughout the upturn, so when the next crisis emerges they have an arsenal of proof at their disposal. The final lesson has to be about smart ideas. Even in the deepest trough of recession compelling ideas find an audience and the best find a budget.

The last year was tough for the consulting industry, certainly tough enough for the first lesson to have been learnt, perhaps even the second one too. But it probably wasn’t bad enough to teach the last one: that’s probably the episode we’re condemned to repeat for at least another series.

If you’re Captain Kirk you can get away without learning from experience: the rest of us can’t.