I've spent most of my official geek life as a consultant in one form or another. And while I'm still mystified over what constitutes "consulting skills," I have developed an appreciation for consultant jokes along the way. (My rationale: If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, at least show them that you don't take yourself all too seriously. ) To date, the best consultant joke I've heard is...
Q: How many consultants does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to hold the bulb and the other to hammer it into the faucet.
[Rim shot]
Being quite politically clueless m'self, I'm grateful to William Cohen and his How to Make it Big as a Consultant for pointing out that your immediate function as a consultant may sometimes have bupkis to do with your technical skills. Rather, you may at some point be brought in as the figurehead "expert" for a purely political battle. In the proverbial nutshell, you're being paid so that someone can go all "Neener-neener-neener" on someone else.
For the politically-unsavvy technical folks out there: File this away in your list of "occupational hazards." If you haven't heard why the ancient Greek sage Teiresias was blinded, look it up now. This is anything but a new phenomenon.
For the more politically-inclined folks: Please don't think about doing this. Sure, maybe you'll be lucky enough to draft a new or naive technical person to The Dark Side. But the odds are better that you're just tipping off the geek in question that you've become power-blind--and as such, the proverbial useful idiot for anyone who's clever enough to work you. Watch Yojimbo (or A Fistful of Dollars if subtitles annoy you...or Last Man Standing if you prefer shooting to scriptwriting), should you want further illustration of the concept.
