Peter Pre­vos, 2 July 2010.

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Har­vard Style Cita­tion
Peter Pre­vos 2010, ‘The Shaman and the Con­sult­ant’, hypotheticorp.org, web­log post, accessed 5 Feb­ru­ary 2012, <http://hypotheticorp.org/wp/management/shaman/>.

APA Style Cita­tion
Peter Pre­vos, (2010, July 2). The Shaman and the Con­sult­ant [blog post]. Retrieved from http://hypotheticorp.org/wp/management/shaman/

MLA Style Cita­tion
Peter Pre­vos. “The Shaman and the Con­sult­ant” hypotheticorp.org n.p., 2 Jul. 2010. Web. 5 Feb. 2012

Ima­gine you are an anthro­po­lo­gist, pos­ted in a remote vil­lage in Papua New Guinea to study how people man­age problems.

The village’s yam crops have been reduced dra­mat­ic­ally and the vil­lage is on the brink of fam­ine. Nobody knows what has caused the crop fail­ures — the yams just refuse to grow. One vil­lage elder says he has heard about a power­ful shaman from a vil­lage far away and pro­poses to engage her to make sure they will not go hungry.

The shaman arrives and every­body rejoices. She walks around the vil­lage, mak­ing strange noises and sniff­ing everything and dan­cing strangely. She announces to have found the cause and organ­ises a large ritual that will remove the cause of the crop failures. All vil­la­gers gather and sing and dance all night. Every­body feels great and the next day go back to work­ing the fields, know­ing that the cause for the crop fail­ures has been neut­ral­ised. The fol­low­ing crop is plen­ti­ful and the fam­ine that was nearly upon them was magic­ally aver­ted. Some years later you return to the vil­lage. Most houses are gone and people have moved away — recent crops failed and every­body went to the city to look for work.

Now ima­gine you are a man­age­ment sci­ent­ist, pos­ted in a ran­dom cor­por­a­tion to study how they solve problems. The company’s rev­enue stream has been reduced dra­mat­ic­ally and the com­pany is on the brink insolv­ency. Nobody knows what has caused the reduc­tion in rev­enue — cus­tom­ers seem to simply ignore their products. One of the exec­ut­ives says she has heard about a man­age­ment con­sult­ant from Eng­land and pro­poses to engage him to make sure they avoid insolvency.

The con­sult­ant arrives and every­body is very pos­it­ive. He goes around the organ­isa­tion, ask­ing every­body ques­tions and stud­ies piles of doc­u­ments. He announces to have found the cause of the reduced rev­enue and organ­ises motiv­a­tional ses­sions that will make things better. All employ­ees gather and share many great ideas with each other. Every­body feels elated and the next day they go back to work, know­ing that the cause for poten­tial fin­an­cial dis­aster has been neut­ral­ised. Pretty soon, cash flow is pos­it­ive again and even a small profit is made. Some years later you return to the same build­ing only to find a great “For Rent” sign on the door. The com­pany recently went bank­rupt after all.

These stor­ies are based on what hap­pens in tri­bal soci­et­ies and cor­por­a­tions around the world — only the names have been changed to pro­tect the inno­cent.^1. This is not a judge­ment about either sham­ans or man­age­ment con­sult­ants. They both per­form import­ant func­tions in their social universes.

we believe in a rational sci­entific approach

Med­ical anthro­po­lo­gists dis­tin­guish between sick­ness and dis­ease. Dis­ease is the phys­ical aspect of a prob­lem whereas sick­ness is a psy­cho­lo­gical dimen­sion.^2. Both con­sult­ants and sham­ans are pos­sible very good at heal­ing sick­ness, but are in most cases not able to heal dis­ease. Just like sci­entific medi­cine is required to heal dis­ease, a sci­entific approach is required to heal companies.

Too many man­agers believe that chan­ging lines and boxes on an organ­isa­tion chart or organ­ising motiv­a­tional team build­ing ses­sions are suf­fi­cient to solve mana­gerial prob­lems. Employ­ees are on the receiv­ing end of a mul­ti­tude of man­age­ment fads and short lived pro­jects. At Hypo­thet­icorp we believe in a rational sci­entific approach, based on data, to solv­ing the hard issues. Good qual­ity data and good qual­ity stat­ist­ical ana­lysis are the only ways to find solu­tions to hard problems.

1. Schuyt, T. N. M., & Schuijt, J. J. M. (1998). Rituals and rules: about magic in con­sultancy. Journal of Organ­iz­a­tional Change Man­age­ment, 11(5), 399–406. [↩]
2. Miller Van Blerkom, L. (1995). Clown Doc­tors: Shaman heal­ers of West­ern medi­cine. Med­ical Anthro­po­logy Quarterly, 9(4), 462–475. [↩]