Dave Ihnat wrote:
Consultants don't mind having more billable hours... And they probably
prefer that the companies paying them have no in-house expertise.
Please be careful generalizing. I'm a consultant, and my goal is to
always do things as quickly and cost-effectively as possible, AND to
have clients develop self-sufficiency. Essentially, my purpose is to
put myself out of work at any given client.
Sorry, I suppose that is possible.
This isn't silly, nor is it facetious. For one thing, no matter how
often I try to get people to become self-sufficient, it usually doesn't
happen. Either they don't listen to me (too often), or less often,
they DO develop in-house skills and staff, but I still have skills that
are useful in other areas.
What I've seen happen is that the consultant builds a solution that
matches his own skill set or uses the products he happens to sell and
then tries to fit the company infrastructure around it instead of the
other way around. As the infrastructure needed to evolve the fit
usually reached a breaking point with various amounts of pain along the
way. From the consultant's point of view, he solved the problem he was
given, so it's not really a matter of ethics, just complex and changing
situations.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
