Dimensions
160 x 224 x 21mm
Once upon a time Corporate America paid a group of men and women huge fees to tell organizations what they were doing wrong and how to improve themselves. These men and women really knew next to nothing, trashed businesses and destroyed careers, and at best only wasted time, energy, and huge sums of money.
They called themselves Management Consultants. I know them well. I was one of them. Welcome to the . . . 'House Of Lies' . . .
"Oh-to be one of those two hundred consultants! To travel to Shanghai and scurry around doing-well, you weren't quite sure what, exactly, but how hard could it be?"
With corrosive insight and antic wit, Liar's Poker and Monkey Business tore down the imposing glass and bricks of Wall Street from the inside. Now in a dark and bitingly funny testament drawn from months of wandering through another absurdist wonderland, Martin Kihn swings his own ax against the gleaming citadel of commerce known as "management consulting." And it may just never recover . . .
When Martin Kihn joined a powerhouse New York consulting firm, he found that in theory, the consultants' job was simply to tell organizations what they were doing wrong and how to improve themselves in exchange for huge fees. In reality, the consultants spent precious man and woman hours prowling the corporate heights for new clients, only to offer, once they snared their quarry, little or no useful information while pontificating on topics they knew nothing about.
Welcome to the 'House Of Lies', where you'll hobnob with its princes, from the ego-drunk Rainmaker, who uses his inflated reputation to utterly confound his clients' businesses, to the humble Good Partner, who alone seems to have grasped the rare and simple secret to effective consulting. You'll witness bloody boardroom battles where low-level managers bask in fake flattery from backbiting colleagues. And you'll spend quality time with an actual client when consultants wing it on an airstream of pure panic - leaving a debris field of pink slips, self-reproducing red tape, and lost profits in their wake.
From power breakfasts heavy on the waffles and mind games to the screaming indignity of "Feedback Camp" in New Jersey, 'House Of Lies' reveals the truth about a "profession" that could threaten your job, your career, and your life . . . and even offers a solution or two if the suits start circling around your company.
So go on a "death march." Discover what they mean by a "brain dump." It's all in a day's work - just don't say you weren't warned.
