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Backfilling a CEO idea happens sometimes. And that's not bad per se. They still need to see if their idea holds water, and consultants have great presentation skills that the CEO can leverage trying to explain the idea to stakeholders.

But most of the time, at least the top consultancies, they will call out stupid ideas. They have their own reputation to keep and shareholders, the guys actually paying for the party, don't usually like being made fools constantly.

Or, most commonly, be hired to shed some light on a bunch of seemingly equally good ideas. Business strategy issues hardly have black or white and sometimes the recommendations fail. People in the company make sure to publicize the consultancy involvement as a cover your a strategy, but hardly share the credit when things work.

About the parent comment on principal-agent problem. He must be a management consultant for throwing a buzzword around in a discussion and dropping the mic :)




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