Yes, how can you forget the groovy video game character? I used to love this game, this post however is not a video game review. This is a follow up on the “big business consultant” post. Recently, I have met supposedly “one big consultant” who really resembles the super hero earthworm Jim…seriously, he looks like him! Isn’t that amazing…except he is no super hero. What amazed me the most about this one is his arrogant character. He likes to look down on people and tries to convince them that they are worthless. This is a very old school tactic that apparently works for this consultant.
Then, what do you do? You hire this consultant who knows everything, he will change the world for you, and will get you everything you need: financial performance, brand power, double digit growth and so forth.
This consultant is so good and you are so bad that you are in desperate need of him. Well, not according to Peter Drucker who is very much known as “father of management”. In his book, The Effective Executive, Drucker says
“The books on manager development, for instance envisage truly a ‘man of all seasons’ in their picture of ” the managers of tomorrow” a senior executive we are told, should have extraordinary abilities as an analyst and as a decision maker. He should be good at working with people and understanding organizations and power relations, he should be good at mathematics, have an artistic insight and creative imagination. What seems to be wanted is universal genius, and universal genius has always been scarce in supply. The experience of the human race indicates that the only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetent. We will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who are at best excel in one of these abilities. And then they are more likely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others. We will have to learn to build organizations in such a manner that any man who has strength in one important area is capable of putting it to work. But we cannot expect to get the executive performance we need by raising standards, for abilities, let alone by hoping for the universally gifted man. We will have to increase the range of human beings through the tools they have to work with rather than through a sudden quantum jump in human ability.”
According to Drucker, our super hero consultant does not exist. Funny enough that business schools and big consultants use a lot of Peter Drucker quotes, yet fail to deliver and share the full spectrum of knowledge he provides.
So, let me tell you something, earthworm Jim only exits in the video game, and not in the real world. The “big business consultant” is not “Groovy” at all.