A brief history of management consultants - humor - Steven R. Covey

Washington Monthly, March, 1998 by Gregg Easterbrook

Covey: Mr. President, hugs build synergy. You should have energy-flow contact with this woman once a day!

Clinton: You mean, cut back?

Covey: We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. [Actual Steven Covey quote.]

Monica: So if I'm subpoenaed I should just say it was a spiritual experience?

Covey: A brilliant young lady! Mr. President, I advise empowering your bonds by giving her heartfelt gifts. Everyone will realize your link was spiritual.

News Item: Innovation Network, a management training firm, has begun offering week-long "convergences" at a Santa Barbara resort hotel. The cost is $1,595 per person for the sessions alone: Travel, room, and meals are additional. Attendees are coached by "facilitators" and offered such courses as "Learning to Listen Through Drumming" and "Metaphorical Speaking." Special events include outdoor barbecues, riding and windsurfing, and Sparkle Day. According to Forbes magazine, some 72 percent of large U.S. corporations send managers to retreats such as this. Innovation Network clients include the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Patent and Trademark Office.

Scene: A resort hotel in California, May 1944. Windsurfers frolic along a beach; buses shuttle in and out for winery tours; corporate managers relax by an Olympic-sized pool, leering at young women in swimsuits. Generals Omar Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower, and Matthew Ridgway enter, escorted by trainers of the Innovation Network.

Ridgway: This is horseshit. We have an invasion to plan.

Male Facilitator: You are resisting. I sense negative energy. It's very dark side.

Ridgway: Dark side! Young man you have no idea what the real dark side --

Eisenhower: Matt, the president feels it is necessary that we be exposed to the principles of metaphorical management before we launch D-Day.

Female Facilitator: What interesting khaki caps, are they from The Gap? You'll fit right in, today is Hat Day. [Actual Innovation Network event. On Hat Day, group members "wear each other's hats," building trust or at least exchanging head lice.]

Bradley: Let's get this over with.

Male Facilitator: Life training is not something one "gets over with." It is not a goal or a destination. It is a process! It cannot be measured in restrictive, eurocentric linear terms like "accomplishment" or "product."

Eisenhower: Tell us what you can fast, we've got to get back to London.

Female Facilitator: We can't "tell" you anything. We can only draw out the wisdom you already possess.

Male Facilitator: That's why we're going to send you on a simulation.

Ridgway: Now we're getting somewhere -- war games.

Female Facilitator: Oh no, nothing so dark side. The five of us are going to hike up into the Santa Ynez Mountains, carrying only organic provisions of course. There we will be confronted with a simulated crisis. Your responses will teach teamwork, empathy, and co-awareness. Then we'll all come back for Sparkle Day and tequila tasting by the pool!