Here Come “The Project Police”

On a previous post on this blog and on our firm’s web site, we’ve told the story about how the term “consulting cops” came into being. Today, after quite a bit of discussion, the name was changed.

As you’ll learn by reading the story, there was always some reservation on my part as to the use of the term “consulting cops” or “consulting police.” The phrase struck me as a bit negative, implying that all consultants were less than honest and ethical. That just isn’t the case; some are. The story behind the name is a great story, but he name just wasn’t right. We’ve now fixed that.

From now on, we’ll answer to “The Project Police.” A good portion of the work we do with clients is to help them resolve troubled projects that involve external (and occasionally internal) consultants. Objectively assessing troubled projects and getting them back on track is one of our primary skills.

We’ll still address troubled projects and we’ll still carry our badges. We’ll just be operating under a new – and more descriptive – name.

The Consulting Police?

Earlier this year, I was talking to a former colleague from my days at IBM Business Consulting Services and was explaining our firm's specialty -- helping organizations that were having issues or problem of one sort or another with consultants.  I was telling her about our services, from intervening  in troubled projects -- in order to get them back on track -- to developing educational programs to transfer the skills and competencies that organizations need to successfully: identify, evaluate, select, negotiate with, engage and manage highly qualified consultants.

"Oh, I understand." she said.  "You're like one of those reformed house burglars that's gone straight and is helping home owners protect their property from other burglars."

"No," I said.  "It's not like that.  I wasn't doing anything illegal before.  We're the GOOD guys!"

"So," she exclaimed, "you're like the consulting cops?"

I laughed and dismissed the comment but thought about it over the ensuing weeks.  I didn't think it was really a fair representation of the situation or of what we did.  It's not as if consultants are the cause of ALL troubled or failed projects.  Sometimes, the consultant's client is able to seriously mess up a project all by themselves.  Most often, we find that both the consultant and the client have been behaving badly.

But clients and others liked the story -- most wanting to believe every failed project is always 100% the fault of the consultants involved.  Some of those who heard the story even asked if we carried badges.  That got us thinking.

Now we do.  We carry our business cards in small, custom made. black leather cases -- with one of the badges pictured above.  It gives us an opportunity to tell the "consulting police" story and to describe how we help our clients to 'arrest' bad consulting.

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