Martin Kihn - House of Lies

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for Julia

When Thales was asked what was difficult, he said, To know ones self. And what was easy, To advise another.

DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Thales

Management Consultants: They waste time, cost money, demoralize and distract your best people, and dont solve problems. They are people who borrow your watch to tell you what time it is and then walk off with it.

ROBERT TOWNSEND, Up the Organization

Authors Note

House of Lies is not a lie. I only wish that it were. Management consulting is a notoriously secretive industry, for reasons both good (protecting clients) and bad (avoiding blame)and it is not without its vindictive revenge monkeys. So I have changed every name, disguised every client, and guarded sensitive information. That said, all of the people, companies, and horrors recounted in these pages are real and have been re-created to the best of my ability.

M. K.

Prologue

My Story: Your Story: Her Story: History

I will not use that pronoun again. If you have ever been in group therapy, you will know why. Own the feeling, they say, and Dont say you. Using you is a way to distance oneself from the first personfrom oneself, in fact. After you have spent two years and more in consulting, that is exactly what you want to do.

So here you are, avoiding the truth. Every word that follows is the truth, by the way, though in the manner of good truth it will seem preposterous. You hope it seems preposterous, since that is much more entertaining than the alternative.

Now, let us start with a little story. This is not a Liars Poker for consulting; this is a little story about consulting. Think of it like that.

Here is the story: It starts in a meeting.

One hundred thousand one hundred ten

You are sitting across a table from two of the more powerful peoplefor the momentin nonnetwork television.1 You know they are two of the more powerful peoplefor the momentin nonnetwork television because, well, because they told you that they were. Plus, you have worked for them for more than two years now and have become used to that phenomenon known as the show-business ego. In truth, you have developed a bit of one yourself.

Which brings you to this conversation.

One hundred fifteen eighteen

You are sitting at Twenty-ninth Street and Broadway in Manhattan, close enough to Madison Square Garden to be afraid of it. Nine floors down, past the bubbling piranha-filled fish tank, the Internet porn empire on the eighth floor complete with working first-aid station, the sad-looking family watchmaking company with its superannuated helpmeets, the absent-present doorman and his wrestling magazinesnine floors down is a store with a block-letter sign saying: NOT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. DEALERS ONLY. This store sells the worlds cheapest tuxedo shirts and gaudy pimp costumes and socks and underwear. You are not a dealer. You shop there all the time.

One of the two more powerful people on Twenty-ninth Street looks up from his calculator. (He has been tapping for a while now.)

One hundred nineteen one-twenty

This is your boss, the man who hired you. He was two years behind you at Yale, yet he is much more famous, powerful, and outgoing than you. Lets call him Nosering. His success does not really bother you, however, because he is a cable addict and a mess and has been fired from every job he has ever had. He has a kind of nasty habit of hitting on female superiors and then getting sued for harassment. And anyway, you really like him.

Next to him is his partner, Cereal Boy, so named because he appeared on a box of cereal as a kid (great smile, golden curls) and still looks as he did then.

Nosering looks up from his frantic calculations, gives a freighted nod to CB, then says, We can offer you one-twenty one-thirty if you stay.

What he appears to be saying$125,000, on average, per year, plus the same benefitswould double your current salary as head writer on the program Nosering dreamed up two years ago in a methadone stupor: the program you and your staff of four have written since the beginning: the program that more than tripled the (admittedly pathetic) ratings of its predecessor and was called beguiling by the New York Times, addictive by the New York Post, and snarky by the New Yorker. It got you personally onto the Today show, which your mother watches, and she has treated you differently ever since.

You have no intention of staying. What would thatwhat would I have to do? you ask.

Just what youre doing now

And, adds Cereal Boy in his disconcertingly boyish voice, youd have to help out with Pop Quiz.

Whats that?

Pop Quiz, says Nosering, is a show; this pilot we did, just got picked up by VH1. We have a one-season commitment from them.

Starting when?

Starting last week.

Do you have a staff? Have you hired anybody?

Were trying to hire you.

You are no math genius, but youve always been facile with numbers. So you calculate one season, which is thirteen episodes, 22 minutes each, say 260 or so minutes of original material in maybe three months something isnt working here

How big is the budget? For writers?

Dont worry about that, says Cereal, who actually never seemed to like or appreciate you. (He went to Colgate.)

What Im saying iswould I have to do this show alone?

Uh, yeah. But you can do it.

Whats the concept?

This is where Nosering really excels: the pitch. He jumps forward, feeling you slip away, knowing, in fact, you have already slipped. You slipped six months ago when you asked him to write you a recommendation for business school; you slipped when he did it. He lays out the concept with an enthusiasm for the truly mediocre that fills you with a kind of awe. His continuous torrent of hideous, unthinkable ideasa show where nuns are hooked up to lie detector machines and asked if theyre attracted to pro wrestlers, a show where a real small town is filled with hidden cameras and a fake gang of terrorists pretends to take it overis either pure genius or, perhaps, something else.

Noserings pitch doesnt really make any sense: None of them do. His point is that, somehow, it will be easier to write Pop Quiz than it is to write your current show (which you will continue running, by the way). You know something he doesnt. You know that he thinks Pop Quiz will be easier to write than your current show not because it will be easier to write than your current show, but because Nosering is like all powerful people in this industry in having very little firsthand knowledge of, and almost no respect for, writing.

You wait a moment, looking at the walls covered with eight-by-tens of pop culture icons from the 1970s and 1980s. Mr. T. Angie Dickinson. Flock of Seagulls. The Fix. Tattoo. Ed Asner. Pamela Sue Martin. They were not hung in irony. This is the late 1990s, and irony has been dead since 1991.2

Without irony, you say, What youre asking is impossible.

One hundred thirty, Marty, says Nosering, already saying good-bye. What else do you need?