Four Sources of Mismanagement at Boutique Consulting Firms

Desperate to leave her mark of “leadership”, the newly appointed (16 July 2012) Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer, has drastically revamped working practices at Yahoo.

One of the measures is that she’s ended all work-from-home schemes, and demanded that every Yahoo employee or contractor must work from the Yahoo office during set working hours. Her justification is that working from home is neither professional nor effective.

Well. It seems that in the name of effectiveness, Marissa is moving Yahoo back to the 20th century when managers didn’t really distinguish between manual labour and knowledge work, and everyone was treated as a manual labourer.

She may hope to make Yahoo more effective (improved performance), but I’m fairly certain all she will achieve is a more efficient (improved busy-ness) Yahoo. And this is just one of the four mistakes managers at consulting firms make regarding the working practices of their associates.

Slowly but surely it penetrates managers’ minds that knowledge workers require different management methods from manual labourers. And this is what we discuss this month's heart-flutteringly bombastic episode of Commando Consulting, entitled, “Four Sources of Mismanagement at Boutique Consulting Firms“.

Enjoy.