On integrity

When McKinsey Comes To Town is a thumping indictment of the world’s leading management consultancy. Chapter after chapter the jaw-dropping case studies pile up. Each illustrates that the damage that the worst kind of cash-at-all-costs corporate behaviour can leave in its wake.

My purpose here is not to attack or defend McKinsey: they can fight their own battles. But anyone who has worked as a consultant will know what I mean when I say that books like When McKinsey Comes To Town aren’t solely a problem for that firm. They’re a problem for us all.

In politics, negative stories stick when they confirm pre-existing perceptions of the subject. (In the UK, for example, Partygate broke through partly because it reinforced an existing impression of Boris Johnson as a dilettante with no regard for rules.) So it is in business: attacks land when they conform to received wisdom about the behaviour of a company or industry.

Books like this one reinforce a widespread perception of the consulting industry as a hive of cynical, self-serving behaviour. This perception shows up in the clichés: phrases like ‘they’ll borrow your watch to tell you the time’. It shows up in the stories that we all hear from clients who feel burned by consultants. And it shows up in the resulting lack of trust that anyone selling consultancy must overcome. 

As I stated in my last post, I’d like to be able to say “I’m a consultant” without feeling that my next word should be “…but”.

The pull toward corporate wrongdoing is not only about the pursuit of profit, although that is a factor. It is to do with how human beings survive in organisations — and, indeed, the world. A complex combination of social and financial incentives informs workplace behaviour. Most people have bosses and/or shareholders to please, teams to lead or manage, targets to exceed, and so on. 

I have long argued that the internal dynamics of most organisations are best understood as a sort of white collar X-Factor. Be seen to align your actions to these incentives in the right way, you will keep your job. You might even move up the hierarchy. Be seen to misread or fail to deliver against these incentives, and you might be out on your ear.

Such behaviour has its roots in neurology. Human beings are hardwired to avoid rejection by their social group. This is because, back in the days of the caveman, you would not survive in a cold, hostile and impersonal world without your tribe. Unfortunately our limbic brains haven’t yet caught up to the present day, where expulsion can be problematic but is rarely fatal. In a work context, this manifests in the fact that most people juggle two jobs. The first is their actual job. The second is the job of managing other people’s perceptions of how well they are doing their job.

When you strip it back, integrity is about doing the right thing. This suggests an obvious question: what is the ‘right’ thing? 

There’s a simple answer. The right thing is the course of action that you believe will lead to the highest form of good — regardless of its implications for you. 

For consultants, then, the most integrous course of action might be one that does not serve our short-term commercial needs or aspirations. It might involve giving unpopular advice, walking away from a project, or resigning a client, if doing so is what will lead to the highest form of good.

Some examples of integrity in action:

• Turning down a new business opportunity because you believe others are better placed to help
• Apologising for mistakes that you have made as opposed to hiding them or attempting to pass the buck
• Recommending a course of action on a project that reduces reliance on your services
• Resigning a client when the client asks you to engage in unethical behaviour

Because life is not simple, the most integrous course of action might not always be obvious. In time, your choice might even not turn out to have been the best course of action in terms of end result achieved. But integrity is a question of intent, not outcome. It mandates that you do the best you can to create the highest form of good with the knowledge and insight that you have available to you at the time.

Independent consultants are also hardwired to avoid the pain of rejection. Indeed, for us, the direct link between business and personal prosperity can make it a grim prospect to bear. This can render integrity a difficult value to uphold.

What do you do when cash is tight and a client whose corporate conduct offends you offers you a contract? When a lucrative second project needs a few facts massaging to get over the line? When telling the truth to a client might result in your getting fired?

Anyone who doesn’t feel the pain of such dilemmas is amoral, deluded or a saint. And, scale aside, such challenges are in essence no different to the ones that have faced McKinsey. When McKinsey Comes To Town suggests that the firm often chose the wrong path. That is to say, a path which — to put it mildly — did not lead to the highest form of good.

But here is where you, the independent consultant, beat McKinsey. While that firm has scale and prominence, you have a structural advantage that it does not.

You work for yourself.

This means that you have something that the employed trade off for the (fictional) security blanket of salaried work: agency. You have a far greater level of choice about what you do, how, when and why you do it, and who you do it with. Those choices will not always be easy, but they do exist.

Let me be clear: I am not saying that employees of, say, McKinsey don’t have agency: they do. They decide to work at McKinsey. But in making that decision they make a trade. They reduce their ability to decide what sort of work they will engage in (although by all accounts many try and exert influence from within). Ultimately, they become players in the corporate X-Factor game. The incentives that I described earlier can then work their dark magic. Hey presto: enjoy the book.

As an independent consultant or consultancy, you have your own difficult financial and social incentives to mitigate. But with conviction and commitment it is possible to do so. You have already proven that you can push against the flow. After all, you started a business.

There is competitive advantage in adopting integrity as a core value. If human beings are hardwired to avoid being cast out of the tribe, we are also programmed to be loyal to those who have got our backs. Clients may not always thank you for your honest advice, but over time they will respect you for it. Reducing reliance on your services could make a project sponsor more likely to hire you back. Challenging unethical behaviour might lose you business but inspire your team to new heights of performance.

Independent consultancies that act with integrity enjoy better client relationships, more fulfilling work and stronger reputations than those who don’t. We also stand apart in an industry that has too often been a byword for appalling, self-serving behaviour. While I don’t like what it says about our industry, there is something worthwhile about feeling able to use the word “…but” straight after “I’m a consultant”.

Beyond all that, there is also the not-insignificant matter of what the mirror has to say. We don’t talk about the concept of ‘soul’ in business, and we should. We all sell our time and skills at work. But we each need to decide whether our souls are also for sale. If you decide to act without integrity, you are accepting that you can live with the resulting damage. 

I’ve needed to contemplate this fact myself throughout the course of my working life. Being far from perfect, I have made many mistakes — and sometimes still do. But I am determined to commit to the path of higher integrity. It is an undertaking that is both challenging and not challenging at all: I have seen how unappealing the alternative is, whatever short term gains it might promise. As any psychologist or philosopher will tell you, no-one gets away with anything in the end.

What to take from this article

Integrity is a hard fought but unparalleled source of long-term competitive advantage.

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