Professional Secondary School
On one of my sleep deprived morning journeys to the wasteland, I noticed a secondary school student attempting to balance his text book on one knee and his exercise book on the other. I can only assume that he was attempting to complete some homework that had been set by a teacher. The young student, seemingly decided he did not wish to be held captive by the shackles of GCSE studies. The scene was all too familiar as memories of bus journeys to school copying Mark Wilkins' homework came flooding back.
Not only did that incident cause me to reminisce about my youthful days, it also got me thinking about consulting. There are many parallels between consulting projects and school kids rushing to complete their homework on the way to school the day it's due or even the night before it's due.
- School kids expend alot of energy in completing the work in order to avoid punishment. The work may have been set a few weeks in advance, yet they leave it 'til the last minute to begin work in earnest.
The length of a consulting project can vary, and it would make sense to attempt to evenly distribute the workload of the project team in order to avoid working 24+ hours when the deadline is approaching. In all my (relatively few) years in consulting, taking into account the (almost) 20 projects I've worked on, my schedule has never been managed as described. There is always a mad rush to sign off the project (thus avoiding penalty fees) and a hedonistic congratulatory party afterwards. I suppose without the mad push, managers would feel less of a need to splash out on the party. With the drinks bill running into the thousands, I'll try not to complain the next time I'm working at 4.30am to get a document complete in 3.5 hours.
- School kids will try at all costs to copy the homework instead of completing using their own brainpower.
In approximately 90% of the projects I've worked on, I've always heard the engagement manager say "find out if [company xyz] have done something similar. If so, find out all you can to plagiarise". I've even heard the following mentioned "plagiarism is the way forward in this company. If you can't plagiarise it, you're not looking hard enough. We'll leave new stuff to the research guys from IT". I guess university did not prepare me for the professional world, where we are penalised for discovering efficient methods to complete a task (plagiarism). However, you can argue that universities exist to promote learning. To that I'll say; try explaining to a partner that you think the project should take twice as long, costing more, just so that you don't copy another firm, who copied a different firm, who probably copied someone else etc. At best you'll get laughed at. At worst (depending on the sanity of the partner), you may be hung drawn and quartered.
- Kids get an undeserved feeling of satisfaction when submitting a piece of substandard work 10 minutes before it's due.
Ditto for consulting, see comments about the hedonistic party above. The firm knows it's substandard, yet promises are made (and broken) that the next project will have better management. HA!
