When a company hires a consultant to tell them what their employees already said, that’s not a strategy. That’s money laundering for credibility.
The consultant charges $300 an hour to interview the same people who’ve been saying the same thing in the same meetings for two years. Then they put it in a deck. The deck gets presented to leadership. Leadership says “interesting insights” and “let’s align on next steps.”
The next steps are the same steps your team proposed in Q2. But now they cost $180K and came from outside, so they’re real.
The consultant isn’t hired for their expertise. They’re hired because internal credibility is bankrupt and leadership would rather pay a stranger than listen to their own people.