There’s a common misconception in the industry that consultants are expensive. This is, of course, false.
Consultants are not expensive. Not nearly expensive enough.
You see, the goal of a consultant is to be a 10x engineer. Not in the sense of writing ten times more code, or moving ten times as many Jira tickets.
No, the real goal is to make your team feel ten times more productive simply by being around. To dramatically whoosh into a room, say something profound, yet slightly confusing, then disappear into the mist before anyone asks a follow-up question.
This kind of talent isn’t just valuable — it’s transcendent. Who else, 5 minutes into a site visit, is going to look you square in the eye and say, “All of this is stupid.”?
Consultants shouldn’t be hired to do work
Let’s be clear: consultants are not supposed to do work. That’s for employees. The whole point of hiring a consultant is that your team is too busy, too entrenched, or too misaligned to solve their own problems — or worse, they don’t even recognize their own problems.
Consultants are the Schrödinger’s cat of value delivery: they simultaneously do everything and nothing. And the second you try to observe it, the spell breaks.
Consulting should feel sacred
Every delivery from a consultant should be accompanied by a Gregorian chant and at least three ceremonial PowerPoint transitions. You shouldn’t receive a deliverable. You should witness it.
Your team should feel the need to avert their eyes.
Consultants should be trained like spies
Consultants should be trained in evasion, deception, and high-speed exits.
They should be able to:
- Disappear from meetings whilst “taking things offline” leaving behind only action items
- Maintain an aura of authority while saying absolutely nothing specific
- Use phrases like “industry best practice”, “synergies” or “strategic alignment” as smokescreens to commitments
Of course, consultants should be paid like world-class athletes. — because they are elite performers. Their contracts should require biometric checks, retina scans, and at least one ceremonial sacrifice to the business gods before engagement.
You shouldn’t be able to summon a consultant
Access should be restricted. Consultants should be impossible to contact unless you know the correct public payphone to leave the sacrificial whiteboard marker.
You don’t just email a consultant. You summon them. You schedule a consultation via messenger pigeon or whisper it into a conch shell during the new moon.
Once a consultant is engaged, their time should be tracked in 30-second increments and invoiced in carbon credits. Any cancellation within a 48-hour window resulting in a mandatory LinkedIn endorsement.
Everything should feel bespoke
Consultants shouldn’t do slide decks. They should deliver artefacts — hand-stitched, artisanal strategies embedded in mahogany cases, with a proprietary font that costs $800 per vowel.
Your team should look at their work and think: “Wow. We can never afford this again.”
Because that’s the point.
Consultants exist not to do what you can do, but to remind you of what you could be — in a vague, abstract way that cannot be implemented without another consultant.
