哈佛商业评论：你所不知道的咨询业内幕

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Inside Consulting’s Black Box

by Daniel McGinn 丹尼尔·麦克金，《哈佛商业评论》英文版资深编辑。

 

来源： 《哈佛商业评论》 www.hbrchina.org/

 

导言：咨询公司为何令美国顶尖毕业生趋之若鹜，却只被当作职场中转站？通过一部Showtime频道连续剧和一本最新的麦肯锡公司简史，我们可以了解到咨询公司的内幕，从而对其工作结果的可信度与可行性得以一窥。

 

What do you want to be when you grow up? That’s a question posed to young people from their earliest days in school. By the time they finish college, many top U.S. students answer, “A consultant.” At Harvard, according to its student newspaper, the Crimson, 16% of those in the undergraduate class of 2013 who had accepted job offers by graduation were bound for the consulting industry—putting it ahead of finance (15%) and technology (13%) as the most popular career choice. If you work for a consultancy’s client, you may soon see some fresh faces camping out in a conference room just down the hall.

 

长大后想做什么？许多年轻人在入学时都面临过这个问题。等到迈出校门时， 不少顶尖大学的毕业生回答说，想成为“咨询顾问”。根据哈佛大学校报Crimson所做的调查，16％的应届本科毕业生进入了咨询业，该比例超过了金融业的15％和科技业的13％，标志着咨询顾问已经成为最受追捧的职业。如果你与咨询公司有合作关系，你将很快会看到一些稚嫩的面孔在会议室里通宵忙碌。

 

What, exactly, will they be doing in there? It’s a reasonable question. McKinsey, Bain, and BCG billed a combined $10 billion in 2011, but compared with that of most industries, their work remains cloaked in mystery. Consultants are forbidden from talking about clients, and because the most elite firms are structured as privately held partnerships, financial filings and analyst insights are rare.

 

那么，咨询顾问究竟在做什么？这个问题困扰着许多人。麦肯锡、贝恩以及波士顿咨询公司在2011年开出了总计十亿美元的账单。但是相比大多数行业，它们的工作内容始终笼罩在迷雾中。咨询顾问不允许和他人谈论自己的客户；此外，由于大多数顶级咨询公司采取私营合伙制模式，公众很难触及财务报表与分析师的见解。

 

Clients have little incentive to credit consultants for successes (why not take the credit themselves?) or to blame them when things go badly (who wants to admit to paying for and taking lousy advice?). Most outsiders know that consultants travel constantly and seem overly dependent on PowerPoint. But beneath those stereotypes, what really awaits all the Ivy Leaguers who’ve enlisted?

 

从客户的角度来看，他们没有理由把功劳归于咨询公司（还不如全部归功于自己），也不会在事情搞砸时公开谴责它们（谁会乐意承认自己花大价钱买下了不中用的咨询服务呢？）。大多数局外人知道咨询顾问经常出差，并且过度依赖PowerPoint。但是，撇开这些刻板印象，究竟是什么在等待着那些选择这份工作的常青藤毕业生？

 

If you believe Showtime’s House of Lies, they will need not only a big brain but also a hardworking liver and an unflagging libido. The series, which will launch its third season early in 2014, is loosely based on a 2005 memoir by Martin Kihn, a former TV writer who joined Booz Allen Hamilton just as the dot-com boom turned into the 2001 recession.

 

如果你对Showtime频道的连续剧《谎言屋》（House of Lies）的剧情信以为真，那么你就会认为咨询顾问不仅需要精明的头脑，还要有强健的肝脏以及难以满足的性欲。这部美剧的第三季即将在2014年播出，它在一定程度上以马丁·基恩（Martin Kihn）2005年创作的回忆录为蓝本。马丁曾是一名电视剧写手，在2001年互联网泡沫破灭时加入了博思艾伦咨询公司（Booz Allen Hamilton）。

 

It’s tiresome to complain that movies and TV shows aren’t as good as the books on which they’re based, and it’s not always true: Walter Kirn’s novel Up in the Air, about a road-warrior management consultant, is a great read, but the movie version (with George Clooney) is even better.

 

人们已经听腻了原著比改编影视片更好的论调，况且它也不总是正确的。沃尔特·科恩（Walter Kirn）的小说《在云端》讲述了一个飞来飞去的管理咨询顾问的故事。书固然是好书，乔治·克鲁尼主演的电影却更好看。

 

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for House of Lies. In the show’s first few episodes, the writers seem genuinely interested in offering a window into consulting—the way The Sopranos, Mad Men, and House of Cards deliver insights about the workings of mobsters, ad agencies, and congressional pols.

 

遗憾的是，《谎言屋》并非这样的一部作品。和《黑道家族》、《广告狂人》以及《纸牌屋》这些美剧，对犯罪团伙、广告代理商以及国会政客分别进行过的描绘一样，在《谎言屋》前几集中，编剧力图如实地刻画咨询业。

 

Much of the pilot takes place in a bank boardroom, where the lead character (played by Don Cheadle) can freeze the action and hold up signs that offer cynical annotations of the consultants’ playbook. But shortly thereafter House of Lies drops the stop-action device, and its scenes shift from boardrooms and offices to barrooms and bedrooms, as the characters’ discussions of strategy and rebranding are largely replaced by boozing and R-rated couplings. Judging from recent episodes, the upcoming season will most likely devote as much airtime to actual consulting as The Office did to the business of selling paper.

 

试播集主要以银行董事会的会议室为场景，在这里男主角（由唐·奇德尔（Don Cheadle）饰演）可以将画面定格，举起写有注释的大牌子，讽刺了咨询顾问博得客户信任的花招。可是几集过后，男主角就放弃了自己的定格超能力，场景也从董事会议室和办公室转移到了酒吧和卧室，咨询团队对战略和重塑品牌的讨论被大量的醉酒和儿童不宜的场景所替代。根据最近几集判断，最新一季《谎言屋》花在咨询业上的笔墨或许跟《办公室》（The Office）里用在纸制品贩卖上的篇幅一样少得可怜（《办公室》记录了一个纸制品公司职员的日常生活）。

 

The book, however, is wry and entertaining. Kihn describes how consultants struggle to understand the political subtext that drives their engagements. (Often their real mission is to help executive vice president A quash a project suggested by executive vice president B.)

 

其实，《谎言屋》的原著引人入胜又讽刺性十足。在基恩的描绘中，咨询顾问们需要努力理解公司政治的潜台词，因为这暗含了他们被雇佣的真正原因（通常情况下，他们的主要任务是帮助一位VP搞砸另一位VP的项目）。

 

The most engaging section describes a one-week stint at a midwestern tire company. The consultants, crammed three to a cubicle, parse mysterious spreadsheets, trying to understand why the company is running factories full tilt even as unsold tires crowd nearby hallways. Mostly the team just repackages wisdom gleaned from an employee one cubicle over. Kihn’s description of both the workaday grind and the nebulousness of the mission should be required reading for anyone who packs a wheelie suitcase every Sunday night.

 

最有趣的一个情节讲述了一个为期一周的项目，客户是一家位于美国中西部的轮胎公司。尽管走廊里堆满了卖不出去的轮胎，工厂仍然开足马力生产，这是顾问们试图破解的疑点。三位咨询顾问挤在一个办公隔间内，努力分析公司神秘的电子表格，试图找出答案。讽刺的是，他们最后把从隔壁职员那里搜刮来的信息重新包装，作为研究成果上报公司。基恩笔下的咨询工作是一份动机不纯的苦差事，那些整日奔波的咨询顾问都应该读一读。

 

The Firm, by Duff McDonald, won’t be optioned for a cable show, but this comprehensive history of McKinsey offers a sense of how the industry’s most elite firm has shaped the ideas that drive business. The tale begins in the 1920s, when the company’s namesake founder, an accounting professor, worked to formalize the practice of management. Later generations of McKinseyites invented the UPC bar code, told AT&T that wireless telephony would never take off, and (infamously) helped create Enron’s business model.

 

达夫·麦克唐纳（Duff McDonald）所著的《公司》（The Firm）或许不是改编成电视剧本的最佳选择，但这部麦肯锡的简史揭示了这家业界翘楚如何重塑咨询业。故事可追溯到20世纪20年代，当时，一位姓麦肯锡的会计学教授，也就是公司的创始人，致力于使管理实践变得专业化。而后几代的麦肯锡人发明了UPC条形码，预测了AT&T公司无线电话产业的局限性，当然也有帮助安然公司确定公司架构的不光彩行为。

 

Consulting has long inspired some degree of the-emperor-has-no-clothes skepticism. One of the most thorough debunkings came from the journalists Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait, of the Economist, in The Witch Doctors (1996), described by its publisher as “an explosive critique of management theory and its legions of evangelists and followers.” (Wooldridge published a revised version, titled Masters of Management, in 2011.)

 

某种程度上，咨询业的兴盛激发了“皇帝的新装”式的怀疑论。两位《经济学人》的记者阿德里安·伍尔德里奇（Adrian Wooldridge）与约翰·米科尔斯威特（John Micklethwait）曾详尽地揭秘了这个行业。他们1996年合著的《巫医》（The Witch Doctors）一书被出版商形容为“对管理理论及其信徒进行彻头彻尾的批判”。

 

And Matthew Stewart, who earned a doctorate in philosophy before falling into consulting, combined memoir and exposé in The Management Myth (2009). He drolly critiqued management theorists such as Frederick Taylor and Tom Peters in chapters alternating with the preposterous story of his own unlikely rise as a consultant. “Trying to help someone twice your age grapple with a problem that you just read about on the flight over can be quite challenging,” he wrote.

 

马修·斯图尔特（Matthew Stewart）是哲学博士，后来进入咨询业。他在2009年出版的《管理神话》（Management Myth）一书中把自己的回忆录与行业揭秘相结合。他诙谐地批评了弗雷德里克·泰勒（Frederick Taylor）和汤姆·彼得斯（Tom Peters）之类的管理学理论家，其间还穿插了自己误打误撞进咨询业的荒诞经历。“想想看，你要帮助一个年龄比你大一倍的人解决问题，然而你能做的准备工作仅仅是在飞机上阅读材料。这想必是一件挺有挑战性的事。”他这样写道。

 

McDonald’s examination of McKinsey is mild by comparison. He describes how business intelligence accounts for much of the value of consultants—after working inside one client and learning how it does something well, they can charge another client for lessons in this “best practice.”

 

相比之下，麦克唐纳对麦肯锡的质疑则温和许多。他认为，咨询顾问创造的大部分价值来源于商业智能。换言之，当他们了解了一家企业是如何把一件事做好之后，就转而向另一个客户收取咨询费，教授他们“行业的最佳实践”。

 

McDonald details how national governments (including those of the United States and Great Britain) have deployed taxpayer dollars to become steady McKinsey clients—a revelation that may gain attention in the wake of the recent uproar over Booz Allen’s work for the National Security Administration.

 

麦克唐纳还探究了前麦肯锡总经理顾磊杰（Rajat Gupta）涉嫌内幕交易一案。这一丑闻最终导致顾磊杰被判入狱。从性质上看，头号咨询顾问因为泄露董事会机密而被判刑，应当与快餐店工作人员往炸薯条里吐痰的视频一样砸招牌。但对麦肯锡来说，顾磊杰的丑闻似乎并未对公司产生负面影响。

 

在阅读了麦克唐纳300多页的赘述后，我还是不完全清楚麦肯锡人如何进行日常工作，但我同意麦克唐纳的核心论点：“许多优秀的公司愿意花钱请咨询公司的事实就证明了咨询顾问确实增加了公司的价值（不管他们是如何做到的）。存在即合理。”

 

咨询公司的现状或许会随着时间的推移而改变。在大部分公司中，宏伟的战略性变革已经没有当年那么炙手可热，麦肯锡这类的精英咨询公司也时常需要同不那么顶尖的公司竞争，争夺分析与系统实施的项目合同。

 

一旦客户习惯使用大数据分析，它们可能就会停止外包管理咨询这项工作。当然，这些长期的顾虑并不会影响到毕业生的就业选择。他们大多把咨询类工作看作是职业生涯的中转站，而非终点站。