By Jack Sweeney
The name John L. Burns is not one commonly associated with the rise of IBM Corp. Nonetheless, Thomas Watson, Jr. — the man credited with propelling IBM into the computing age — felt compelled to mention Burns in his 1990 autobiography, a text penned some 35 years after the two men had worked together.
Throwing one last elbow, the then 76-year-old Watson spelled out how, back in the mid-1950s, Burns — a senior partner at Booz Allen Hamilton — had accepted his invitation to help IBM's management team craft one of the company's most expansive reorganizations to date, only to become president of RCA, an "aspiring" IBM rival, a short time later.
Clearly, one could surmise that Watson intended to settle a score when he revealed what appeared to be something more than coincidental timing as far as the sudden upward trajectory of Burns' career. Given that consultant bashing has long been a favorite sport of CEOs, Watson's musings would hardly appear noteworthy, except for the fact that the company he's credited with having brought into the age of computing no longer fancies itself a computer maker as much as it does a consultancy.
It's doubtful that Watson and the consultant he skewered would have predicted such a development. IBM's multipronged client relationships may have led some to imagine the company becoming an IT-friendly telco or a financing behemoth.
No matter. Consulting services is where IBM has placed its bets. And unlike any consulting concern before it, IBM is poised to bring change to the consulting profession in both sweeping and complex ways, the most profound being the exposure it brings to its new line of work.
One of the great untold stories of the last century was the critical role consultants played in America's post–World War II economic expansion. But that role has been all but obscured by a willingness on the part of consultants to yield the spotlight to their client leaders. More often than not, consultants and the management insights they sold seldom entered the public's purview — unless, of course, a CEO believed that his consultant was worthy of a comeuppance,
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