1) As you know, Rob’s really not that good looking
2) Bashing consultants is a lot of fun, but generalities are always dangerous. I think Joel’s post, while perhaps making a valid point about consultants roles vis-a-vis app dev costs, may not necessarily “scale” to all technology strategy consulting projects.
3) Senior mgt often already know what they should or want to do. A “McKinsey/BCG/Bain said we should do x” provides a nice CYA
4) In my (brief) consulting career, I did see several companies with opportunities for cost cutting. Some of these were “low hanging” and the consulting firm may have provided a the necessary political cover to get them done. However, others may not have been obvious to management or senior managers may not think that such cuts are possible. Even if expensive, consultants often drive cost cuts that are multiple times their cost.
5) Joel’s post really only speaks to improving efficiency which is essentially cost cutting (doing more for the same $ or less$). The real value (and danger) of top tier consultants to me is when management needs “thought partners” (like that one Jeff?) to determine new strategic directions or needs to adapt to a changing landscape. The impact of a bunch of smart, highly structured, hard working guys in your company for a couple of months trying to figure out what the threats and opportunities to your business are, shouldn’t be underestimated. Now you, Mr. Manager, have the responsibility of determing whether and how to implement the findings and, of course, it’s your company so you actually have to execute.
6) 2/3 of your last team at SAP…… ex-consultants

The point of Consulting is to offer expertise and manpower that would otherwise take too long to hire or is only needed temporarily. There is always a need like this for business so it does have value.

P.S. I am not that good looking.

I think you are right about letting senior mgmt off the hook. The reason, IMO, is far too often that senior mgmt is looking for the magic pixie dust in the form of a powerpoint instead of the harder work required to build accountability into an organization and reduce the overall complexity. This I think is the single best strategy for increasing productivity is stripping out controls and structure, something senior mgmt is loath to do.

I’ve advocated that fortune 500 companies should have an internal group to manage consulting engagement to ensure that there is return and a strict SLA or some other way to measure impact. (http://cbdr.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_cbdr_archive.html). I spent about two years in strategy consulting and saw the model work and the model not work. Where it worked was where the companies were actively engaged, drove the consultants extremely hard and had a defined end goal set by the company, not the consultants.

And yes, strategy consultants (and former strategy consultants) are stunningly good looking as Joel said.