Author: Leon

The Freakonomics podcast is great–I listen to it in bed with my Logitech Squeezebox Radio before falling asleep.  The most recent episode has Stephen Dubner talking to Robin Hason, one of the authors of the Overcoming Bias blog.

It’s about consulting: I Consult, Therefore I Am. There’s some useful (if cynical) advice, such as fifty percent of the job is nodding your head at whatever’s being said, thirty percent of it is just sort of looking good, and the other twenty percent is raising an objection but then if you meet resistance, then dropping it.

Overcoming Bias : Freakonomics On Consulting

Me in January on Too Much Consulting?:

…

The CEO often understands what needs to be done, but does not have the resources to fight this blocking coalition. But if a prestigious outside consulting firm weighs in, that can turn the status tide.

Freakonomics Radio interviewed me about it a bit later, and they’ve just put up a podcast they say was “inspired in part” by my post. In addition to me, they talk to Keith Yost, a former consultant:

Fellow consultants and associates … [said] fifty percent of the job is nodding your head at whatever’s being said, thirty percent of it is just sort of looking good, and the other twenty percent is raising an objection but then if you meet resistance, then dropping it.