Degree of Difficulty

Three letters carry a lot of weight in the consulting industry, “PhD”. Those three letters make the client uncontrollably drool. Outside of a congressional inquiry, it provides the necessary trump card for anyone who dares to question the project's methods:

• Don’t like our approach? Well, the girl who designed our statistical sample has a PhD!
  
• You want to question our findings? Well, the guy who completed the quality assurance has a PhD!
  
• You’re cheating on me? Well, I’m banging a PhD!

Don’t get me wrong, PhDs do provide some value besides infidelity. They are the fossil fuel for brainstorming, they tackle and resolve the high-level approach to solutions, and they are hardly around long enough to get on your nerves. But don’t expect to be called “Doctor” unless you plan on successfully administering surgery during one of our WebEx conferences.

O.K., I don't know where the patella is.

But I can answer questions on my abstract involving the randomness of bees.

The MBAs are helpful too. They determine the business flow of the project, the timing of key deliverables, and serve as the consulting voice of the project. Then comes the work and just like Keyser Soze, poof, they’re gone.

After this MBA wins the work, my guess is that you'll never hear from him again.

After the brainstorming is done and the project plan is laid out, there is the nagging work that is left over. The endless deliverables; spreadsheets, flow diagrams, presentations, survey results, datasets, meeting minutes, on-site training, off-site training, oh my goodness please stop. The lower the degree, the larger the workload. Any guesses where I am categorized in the pecking order?

Work won. Work begin.

Bachelors Degree translates into completing all of the deliverables and receiving none of the credit. And the best of the lot take the initial instructions from those with superior degrees and run with it. The PhD’s and MBA’s become more obsolete as the project exits the incubation stage and hatches more work products than Evander Holyfield can impregnate women. They are only re-integrated at the end of the project when all the findings have been compiled, all the answers provided, and all the subordinate talent tapped out of any ambitious urges to replace them.

And who can blame them. What a great gig. I plan on reviewing some PhD online programs. But first, I have to get this deliverable out.