We've got one of the most absurd business models you can imagine. We compete with all the professional firms, [and] we only do it in the summer. And we kick all their butts.

We mislead ourselves when we pretend we can make someone into an effective manager by putting them through a few courses in business school.

Wherever I was in the world, at the beginning of every consulting project, one thing was certain: I would know less about the business at hand than the people I was supposed to be advising.

I would eventually leave the business in 1999 to work full-time as a writer, but during the previous decade, I would advise French businessmen on how to succeed in Germany; tell Americans what to do in Eastern Europe; show the Spanish how to become more like the Americans. I spent one particularly haunting year advising bankers in Mexico.

Whoever pays the consultant gets pretty much what they want to hear.

There were about two years when I literally paid no rent anywhere in the world. Everyone's a contact, but there's no real human interaction. That's a very wearying thing.