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Title: Dangerous Company: The Consulting Powerhouses and the Businesses They Save and Ruin by James O'Shea, Charles Madigan ISBN: 0-8129-2634-X Publisher: Crown Business Pub. Date: 01 August, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50

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Average Customer Rating: 3.56 (18 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: About time someone spoke up...
Comment: I found the book to be quite interesting regarding some of the key consulting giants in the industry. In some instances, however, it can be viewed as deserved. The authors took what they probably felt were issues which would create controversy and feedback (good or bad) and ran with it for awhile satisfying the reading palate of many a consultant and consulting client alike. Yes... there were issues raised that needed to be raised and some red flag areas addressed in the consulting industry that definetly needed to be stated. It's an industry run by a few big boys that need to be shaken and spanked a little... guess they just got a bit too big for their silk pants. Thank you James O'Shea and Charles Madigan for opening the eyes of many readers and quenching the thirst for what many people are interested in knowing much more about regarding these consulting superpowers. I understand these firms do a lot of good, too... it's not all bad news, but I didn't realize they could goof on such a massive scale either! As a senior level manager, my colleagues and I now know which firms we will or will not be signing with. I have not only recommended the book to my associates, but I have given a number of copies away as gifts, as well. We need more like this!!!

Rating: 3
Summary: Journalistical style report on management consulting practic
Comment: case study of several companies that used management consultants and where some didn't benefit from them and where others did. Those that did, judiciously used the consultant services and those that didn't most likely didn't have a clue on what they were getting. My criticism to the book is the style, and somewhat, the content. The style is that of journalistic bantering, often using cliches as metaphors, like "it would shake the company like an earthquake would shake California", or "face forces as strong as forces of Nature". The content, too, is sometimes weak, where the text is filled with quotes from people, but actual statements are not backed up with researched quantitative data. Nonetheless, it was enjoyable reading. Too bad there were no illustrations, like of those supermarket floor plans that the consultants designed for some huge billing cost.

Rating: 5
Summary: A Damaging Exposure of Management Consulting's Dark Side?
Comment: James O'Shea and Charles Madigan have written an exceptionally informative text. Not only is it packed with well researched material, it is very exciting to read as well.

This book contains material that should be regarded as essential reading for all serious-minded professional managers. It is the ultimate thinking manager's book, filled with compelling case evidence of managerial indecision (and how to avoid it). It is arguably the best business book to be published between 1980 and 2000.

Most negative reviews of this book suggest that it is either unbalanced, biased, or too superficial in its coverage of the management consultancy industry. Such claims should be accepted with caution, predominantly because they appear to be written by the very consultants whose feathers the book has obviously ruffled.

Ultimately this book shouldn't be taken as a modern-day Spanish Inquisition targeting consultants and their methods (although it is, in parts, a damaging exposure of management consulting's darker side). Instead, Dangerous Company's most salient message is really directed towards inept managers (at all organisational levels) who seek to mask their own ineptitude by relying on expert advice that they are often incapable of comprehending. Chapter 2 on "Figgie International" is the best example of this. This chapter can be read as a stand-alone case-analysis of strategic confusion, and is perhaps the book's most revealing segment.

The book's underlying message (and this is obviously being missed by those who all too readily criticise the text) is that highly paid senior executives who readily abrogate their managerial responsibilities by blindly placing faith in the advice of external experts, are the "real dangers" to their companies. O'Shea & Madigan make this clear in the final pages of their book, where they provide a checklist of 10 rules to follow when engaging management consultants. Rule 5 is "never give up control".

The concluding lines of "Dangerous Company" are perhaps the most revealing of all: "Good advice depends upon the shrewdness of the (person) who seeks it." In the final analysis, the authors are not suggesting that managers shouldn't use consultants, they're merely suggesting that managers seek advice wisely rather than blindly.