Viper Down the Shirt Front

This post isn't going to win me any friends among my fellow MBA's (about 3/4 of whom became consultants after graduation) but here goes nothing.

Former business consultant and author Matthew Stewart has written a new book entitled The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting it Wrong.

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Philip Delves Broughton reviews Stewart's book.

From Broughton's review:

Three years ago, Matthew Stewart published a provocative article in The Atlantic magazine blasting modern management theory and education. His advice to anyone considering an MBA was “don’t go to business school, study philosophy.”The secrets of business, he said, were to be found in history, literature and the classic ruminations on life and existence, not in the half-baked ramblings of business academics, consultants and “gurus.” In “The Management Myth,” he expands the Atlantic article into a devastating bombardment of managerial thinking and the profession of management consulting. As a former management consultant, Mr. Stewart lived long enough in the belly of the beast to know its nature.

Mr. Stewart quotes Bruce Henderson, the founder of the Boston Consulting Group, who describes consulting as “the most improbable business on earth” and who goes on to ask: “Can you think of anything less improbable [sic] than taking the world’s most successful firms, leaders in their businesses, and hiring people just fresh out of school and telling them how to run their businesses, and they are willing to pay millions of dollars for their advice?”

Reading the review of this book reminded me of one of my favorite Charlie Munger quotes: "I'd rather throw a viper down my shirt front than hire a compensation consultant."

I read this review while having breakfast with my father this morning. My father, the CEO of a public company, could barely contain his enthusiasm about buying us both a copy of this book.

For years now my father has been railing against management consultants, and I think this is going to be the book that he sends to his 100 closets business friends (some probably consultants).