Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 9, 1993 TAG: 9305100282
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CLAYTON BRADDOCK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BASHING lobbyists and consultants is all the rage these days - in Virginia, the District of Columbia, Texas and throughout the land. Sounds like a rumble.
Ross Perot has been having a field day on the topic for months. During the '92 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton spoke out about it some, although of late he may be making some attitude adjustments. Congress is taking a wait-and-see (mostly wait) position, but war may break out any day now.
It's time for the cavalry to show up at the top of the hill - to help the consultants, many of whom are just hard-working folks who need help. (I don't know any lobbyists.)
Scars from the public-relations wars apparently spurred an invitation to this consultant to sit on a panel to enlighten a student seminar on the topic not too long ago.
What's to enlighten? Few people, including dictionary editors, really know what consultants do. Random House says it means someone "who consults with another." Probably another consultant. Fall back 10 yards and punt.
Elsewhere, consulting means "views exchanged." That means your quarterback just threw into the heart of the secondary or your team fumbled the ball. Time out.
A top-of-the-line Roanoke public-relations president helped get things on the right track.
"When the client calls, we have to be ready to drop everything and go," he told me. "If we don't work, we don't eat." My kind of consultant. This guy's one of a special high-quality breed. The other kind - hard-working and struggling - are everywhere.
Here's a nontraditional definition: somebody who owns a battered and aging briefcase containing a day-old newspaper and a peanut-butter sandwich - on white bread. This person probably has enough money in his pocket or her purse to buy two cups of coffee and a bus ride home. The bus ride is probably because the consultmobile (a faded gray clunker) is still in the shop after three days of scary diagnostics.
The garden-variety consultant is a person who works for somebody else - fee only and without company benefits. Yet, each must live within the boundaries of the client's bureaucracy.
All of the consultant's expertise is in years of experience, a beat-up typewriter, a few reference books in the home office, which is a small desk in the bedroom. The rest of the office is in the nearest library.
The other kind - not my Roanoke source but the kind that keeps Perot all bent out of shape - is only awaiting promotion to godhead or at least archangel. This exalted person probably drives an expensive car, has a sizable investment portfolio and takes himself very seriously.
Many consultants who make a lot of money are smart enough to have nailed down a high-paying day job. Consulting buys a new suit, a sixpack of mail-order Western steaks a few times a year and an occasional trip to Nassau.
The ones with the expensive foreign cars like to write paperback books about consulting, and always keep a few copies on the day-job desk.
The true-blue American consultant is as true blue as the blue-collar worker because they both work hard. The only difference is that the consultant wears a suit and is awarded no raises, cost of living or otherwise. He may get fee increases by smiling a lot and doing a good job at least 89.3 per cent of the time.
The ordinary garden-variety consultant is a fun-loving, free-floating individual who likes to work and meets all deadlines, doesn't care all that much about money but loves the current spouse, little children, cats, shaggy dogs, shaggy dog stories and country music. Well, country music is optional.
Primary qualities in this kind of consultant are a sincere love of peanut butter, smiling (even without a reason), whistling in empty hallways, long work days, and being right at least 89.3 per cent of the client's billable time.
Other skills required of the consultant are thinking (particularly while on the feet), writing and speaking - all three on demand, with little advance notice. Above all, the ordinary consultant must be able to persuade the client that he can do a better job than any other consultant within a 50-mile radius of the client's office.
Oh, and it helps if there aren't any other consultants who smile as well inside the consultant's particular beltway.
Clayton Braddock , who was co-founder of a small public-relations consulting firm in Memphis, Tenn., is now an assistant professor of journalism at Radford University.
by CNB