We should always bear in mind that management consultants who start out looking like bright, cheerful servants have ways of insinuating themselves into a company’s power structure, eventually reaching a point where they can be dangerous and widely feared.

Invite a consultant to an ongoing meeting, and he will typically offer to do the secretarial-type work nobody else wants to do, like writing up minutes, sending out invitations or reminders to the next meeting, scheduling the room, etc. Before long, this “helpful servant” is likely to be setting the agenda, leading the meeting, even deciding whether to actually convene the group, or just informally poll key decision makers on a given topic.

From here it is only a short step to effectively making the decisions himself—playing off the perception that he is in better touch than anyone else with all the players and what they want. Of course, this requires a certain skill and finesse at blurring distinctions between his own ideas and those of other people. But then, managing perceptions is something consultants tend to excel at.

Perhaps the essence of the problem is that we need to become more aware that when we make a decision to use management consultants, we always run a risk that they will behave like a kind of neural virus in the organization, taking over decision makers’ perceptions at ever higher levels of management, until ultimately the consultants are the ones really in charge, and the host company’s vitality is drained to fill the coffers of the consulting firm.