From "Inception" to "Implementation": Training How to Tell Truth to Power

 Yeah...what if Leonardo DiCaprio and Christopher Nolan took on managment consulting?

That's the subtitle of Gideon Lewis-Kraus's hilarious post on The New Yorker magazine's Web site this week, under the title "Implementation." (https://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/goingson/2010/07/christopher-nolan-implementation.html)

Read it now - you will Laugh Out Loud! But the send-up would be even funnier if it weren't for the shock of recognition it provokes in us managment consultants and trainers. The parody centers around the stereotype of consultants as people who expertly analyze the client organization and then...tell the clients exactly what they want to hear, regardless of the benefit to the company.

It's easy, it's quick, it's profitable - and it gives management consultants a bad name. It's harder work to tell the client what's really going on, what really needs to be done, and how to do it - but that's what we should be doing. Being frank with the client puts your longer-term relationship at risk, however, so it takes nerve, confidence in your purpose, and as the great management consultant David Cohen notes, sometimes you are left with no choice but to fire the client.

I imagine that would happen when it becomes clear that you're up against a dysfunctional organization that really only wanted to have their preconceived postions recited back to them and has no intention of implementing your recommendations. At that point, you no longer want your name associated with the project.

If telling truth to power can be hard for external consultants, how much harder is it for internal consultants to be that firm - and for internal management trainers who perceive that there will be no management support for holding accountable the participants in expensive management and leadership programs: no follow-up, not even a level two evaluation. So the trainer's job becomes even more difficult as institutional cynicism sets in and development programs are seen as "flavor of the day."

In that case, you end up reinforcing a bureaucratic mentality, where the only objective is to outlast fickle management: those jerks will be gone tomorrow, while the savvy employee keeps her head down, agrees to everything, and endures. As far as the company workforce is concerned, the new company motto is "I will survive!"

Meanwhile, the trainer's morale and sense of worth are also eroded. Programs that teach skills the participants know will not even be countenanced on the job, much less followed up on, are worse that no training at all. At best you get sympathy from your participants, at worst you're seen as a mouthpiece.

So maybe there ought to be training for the consultants and trainers themselves - especially if they're operating on the inside - in how to speak truth to power while mimimizing the personal risk. We have whole "influencing" courses for our managers now, after all, and learning how to "manage up" has been fashionable for a long time. Let's make it part of our own professional development - in fact, march up to that office right now and ask to be sent on that course!

Unless you don't want to be that direct, of course.

Hey, just ask yourself: what would Leonardo DiCaprio do?