The Teflon Consultants

[From the Archive: Originally posted at Amplify.com Aug 17, 2010]

I was reminded whilst writing this tweet of a disappointing discovery I made when recruiting consultants for several projects at Familiar, the software and consulting business I used to own and run in the late ’90s.

As the business grew, we had a need for some folks to help out on a couple of development improvement projects, in a consulting/coaching capacity.

When it got to meeting the potentials for a chat (always so much better than an interview, imo), I of course mentioned our “value-for-money guarantee“:

“Whenever we invoice you, just pay as much as you think our work has been worth to you”.

This is a guarantee we gave to all our clients – and continue to give, btw.

To a man (and woman), the potentials, as soon as they heard this (why had they not already read it on our website, one could reasonably wonder), looked aghast.

Not one of them could conceive of standing behind their advice in the face of such a (brutally effective) feedback mechanism. Perhaps needless to say, I did not offer any of them a position.