Time-Destroying Machine

The business of consulting is about burning hours.  Consultants make money by destroying time.  The more time we destroy, the more money we make.

We evolve complex machines that ever more efficiently destroy time.  These machines are called methodology.  Through the methods, best practices, and standards that we create, we are able to justify activities which can destroy the most amount of time possible.

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt are used to justify the investment in these large, complex, time-destroying machines.  By suggesting that the machine will help one avoid failure, we ameliorate the fear of loss in an environment where failure = death.  We don’t want to be wrong so we point to the output of our time-destroying machines: studies, specifications, matrices, lists, protocols, evaluations, presentations.  By having all of these work products all point in the same direction, we can be certain that our direction is true.  We create a map of where we think we should walk and then we say that map is a true representation of where we are going.  Our topography springs from the maps we have created, perfectly aligning, and there is no longer doubt.

We are comforted and more time is destroyed; consultant enriched.  But, none of this has anything to do with creating change.

Creating change requires no time.  Change happens in the very moment that a new synapse appears between two neurons.  Can that be measured?  Is that matter or energy?  This ambiguity sits outside of time; another model of consulting.  A model where our focus is on stimulating discovery, awakening creativity, and doing anything needed to cause those synapses to grow.

This is what it means to create change; the only desired outcome of the consultant’s work.

It doesn’t happen by destroying time but by sitting outside of time. How, we must ask ourselves, can we stimulate new synapses to grow?  Cultivate that.  Result achieved.