New Episode of Jack & Suzy Welch's Show at Domino's Pizza #IEB
I just finished watching the latest episode of Jack and Suzy Welch's new reality show called It's Everybody's Business. This episode is focused on helping Domino's Pizza brainstorm ideas to grow their business.
One of the things I like about this show is that it gives an inside look at how true consulting should take place. Jack and Suzy do a great job framing the issues and helping the team clarify their direction. As the old joke goes, "a consultant is someone who asks you if they can borrow your watch and then tells you what time it is." But that's not always a bad thing. If a consultant can be the catalyst to help a company clarify their priorities and take action on the things they already know, they're worth much more than the high fees they charge.
I'm a consultant now but early in my career I had an experience that made me hate consultants initially, but appreciate them in the end. I was a business unit IT project manager in the call center organization of a Fortune 500 direct marketer and manufacturer of personal computers. We were growing rapidly (from $800M to $8.8B in top line growth in the 6 years I was with them) and need our call centers to keep up with the growth. Our team was responsible for the processes and technology needed to make this happen. The challenge was that management wasn't listening to our ideas on what needed to happen. Then they brought one of the top 5 consulting firms in to help us define what we should be doing to plan ahead for this rapid growth. This firm brought in a bunch of rookies straight out of college and had them interview all of our key players in the call center IT group. Then they proceeded to package up our ideas (the same ideas we had previously been trying to sell management on) and present them to our management team. Of course, the proposal was approved once it had the firm's stamp of approval.
Looking back at this experience, it became clear to me that the consulting firm served an important purpose. We couldn't sell our ideas on our own. What the consulting firm did was add a "credible" outside opinion to the decision process and helped us frame the issues and clarify our direction. Ultimately, this helped us get the approval we needed to do what needed to be done in order for the company to continue it's rapid growth. That was worth every penny the company paid the consulting firm.
So watch the episode and then take a look at your own organization and ask yourself if there is clarity on the priorities and if you're getting traction on achieving those priorities. If not, perhaps you should hire a consultant to help jump start the process.
