Efficiency consultant "experts" advise firing the wrong employee cost the company their biggest account: 'Business went from $200k to zero'

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Jun 12, 2024 10:00 AM EDT

A surprising amount of experts and analysts get hired to improve the efficiency of businesses that they know nothing about, putting more effort into marketing themselves and trying to ensure corporate clients than into ensuring their analysis offers any actual value—or that their statistics hold any actual significance. At the end of the day, all they care about is that they're able to give the client some result, a result that the manager who hired them is going to take at face value since they don't understand it anyway. Besides these managers probably couldn't care less, they've got budgets to spend and reports to write and even if it's all just a big sham, they're covering all their bases—besides it's probably their friend's or cousin's "business improvement consultancy" they're hiring anyways. 

The worst case scenario for you, the low-level employee, is that your name or position comes up in one of these bogus reports, pointing at—no, scapegoating—you as the problem. IF this happens you might find yourself on the chopping block and not ever know why, even if you were actually one of the organization's most productive workers, just not according to the numbers they were looking at.

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  • 01
    "Business went from $200k to zero..."
    via Kenny Eliason
  • 02
    Efficiency experts fire wrong guy About 20 years ago I worked for an electrical parts supply house. We sold material to industrial companies around South East Michigan. Ford motor Company was our largest customer. They spent about $200,000 per month. with us. Business was good.
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 03
    The company hired some new young management. These guys came in and we're going to make the place as efficient as possible, and cut off some dead weight. Well, they made some changes. They laid off 4 people that they said were unneeded. For some reason unknown to them, the Ford business went from $200k to zero.
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 04
    So the new management called an emergency meeting to try to figure out the Ford problem. They asked the group why the Ford business was down. Someone raised their hand and told them that the reason we haven't seen any purchase orders from Ford was because they laid off the guy who used to sell to Ford.
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 05
    Here is the back story: Ken, an older gentleman who had the relationship with Ford, didn't know the computer system well at all. So he would bring Ford purchase orders into the building every day, and hand them off for someone else to input them into the system. So when you looked at computer reports, it looked like Ken was not productive at all. While in reality, Ken was THE most productive person there. Ken was the first person these young bucks laid off.
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 06
    Ken and I were friends, and neither one of us could figure out why they let him go. The day of the layoff, Ken went home and made 1 phone call to a competitor. Turns out that you can get hired real quick if you do 2.5 million a year with Ford.
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 07
    The new company gave him a company vehicle and commission, two things he didn't have at the old job. Overall Kens pay went up about $35k per year. After the meeting to figure out why Ford was no longer buying, they immediately called Ken and admitted their mistake and begged him to return. Ken said "nah".
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 08
    hsh1976 Similar story where I work. They had one guy that did pest control. From insects to snakes and raccoons, he took care of it all. Except he didn't use the computerized work order system. People called him, he took care of the problem. Higher ups looked at the reports and determined the pest control guy didn't do anything so they got rid of him. His was paid roughly $35,000\year. They now pay over $70,000\year to dozens of different companies to do half of the work he did.
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 09
    tandyman8360 Oh, I remember a good one. My old company likes to re-organize every few years. The mail room guy, we'll call him Bill, ended up being re- shuffled into corporate and reported to an HR manager. That manager (who was later terminated for messing with time cards) got annoyed with the way Bill worked and had him transferred to Facilities WITHOUT INCREASING THEIR BUDGET.
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 10
    The VP for Facilities tried to figure out what Bill did, but eventually told he would have to lay someone off. So, instead of the 3 Facilities guys who made more, they terminated Bill. First, mail had to be delivered to the front entrance, where the receptionist sorted it and put it into file folders. Each department then had to go up front and get their mail. Next, the copy center (also run by Bill) had to print their own manuals. This is where I came in. I
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 11
    spent about a year either printing manuals or writing standard work so production could make them to send to Finished Goods. Eventually, we gave up and bought the manuals made by a third party. Also, the head of facilities and an admin. assistant had to take care of the outgoing mail and invoices. At least 4 people took over his job, not counting the times he went to the post office to send out invoices sooner or picked up cake or lunches for the company. The cost of
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 12
    printing manuals alone was at least. double his salary, but no one bothered to actually put what Bill did into dollars. Luckily, Bill got a job soon after, making more and only doing mail.
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 13
    Unikorns4Ever And... this is why you must take your time before taking such a decision. YOLOSwag42069Nice If they need to hire an outside company to tell them who they don't need, they have no right to exist as a business.
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 14
    IratuSuzanno Young bucks always think they can impress the owners by firing people to cut costs, especially the older people who might know more about the business then them.
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 15
    ShantiBrandon "Don't tear down a fence until you know why it was put up." Young bucks tend to be tear-down happy and tend to really up. things In business school some of the best advice I got was when working at a new company keep the unsolicited advice to yourself for at least the first six to eight months. I can't tell you the number of times a new young hire expresses their desire to radically change things well before they even truly understand the operations. Like during their first week on
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 16
    AllThatsFitToFlam My experience with a bonafide "efficiency expert" wasn't as drastic, but the flavor was exactly the same. The guy was on site for 48 hours, got paid $50k and screwed everything up. A person with those skill sets could make far more money if they got into something that required mandatory incompetence, like politics.
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 17
    Magnus_40 This is what happens when you base decision only on the balance sheet. I interviewed for a company in a large modern office block in the city. Great transport links, lots of places to eat and no end of places for after work. When I got the job it had moved to a drab old office in an industrial estate. The efficiency consultants moved in to find ways to save money and the office in the city was the big expense so they gave up the lease. The problem was that they only looked
    via u/jeep-olllllo
  • 18
    at the expense and did not look at the fact that we sub let over half of the building creating a profit. The move to the crappy industrial estate actually created a deficit and we had to raise our hourly rate to compensate.
    via u/jeep-olllllo

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