Further consultation required.

Ah consultants. Where would my organization be without them? Besides in the black that is.

Over the years, I've met with a virtual parade of people, all of them boasting entire alphabets after their names and possessing a driving passion for leveraging synergy, making sure we're all on the same page, drilling down, and suggesting that certain nouns and verbs can and should be "unpacked."

As in, "That's an interesting observation Bambi - let's unpack that."

In other words, I've met with a large contingent of people who make me want to chew my own ear.

My favorite new thing to do when sitting across the table from any new consultant is to tell the absolute truth, just to see what happens. This may be the clearest sign that I have simply run out of fucks to give.

I recently shared during an interview with a consultant how the five year strategy for my current department first went off the rails. The issue was staffing, and the question was why I had none.

A brief time ago there had been a plan in place to remedy this situation, and the consultant wanted to know what had happened to the plan to hire for position X. I told the absolute truth.

"There was definitely a plan in place to hire for position X. An interview panel was convened, interviews took place and a preferred candidate was chosen. The offer was to have been made over the weekend, but CEO #1 intervened before the offer could be made, and the position was awarded to somebody else. That person accepted the position, but resigned less than three months later."

Naturally, the consultant wanted to drill down and unpack.

"CEO #1 had a dream or what he considered a vision regarding another candidate, and he intervened to hire the candidate who appeared in his dream. When I expressed concern regarding this course of action to the managing director, I was told that although this may seem unusual, CEO #1 considered himself a warlock, had reached a heightened state of enlightenment, and was very, very intuitive as a result."

(This happened by the way. Seriously.)

So far, no consultant has had the Texas sized balls necessary to include the continued employment of a CEO who considers himself a warlock as a possible reason the $50 million project said warlock was responsible for never got off the ground.

To do so would be to question how in the hell that was allowed to happen, and to ask such a question would mean pissing off the asshole who signs off on their contracts. Coincidentally, the same asshole who signed off on the warlock.

(Some may say I have no pride in my company, but that's not true. We had a pants-shittingly crazy bastard wasting millions and calling himself a warlock on our payroll, long before Charlie Sheen ever lost his mind. Suck it Charlie. We're the real innovators.)

Consultants bring a unique, outside perspective. This outsider perspective allows them to spot roadblocks and potential issues so much more quickly than those of us working within the system.

After all, we were all hired because our organization is an Equal Opportunity employer, with a soft spot for the deaf and the blind.

The semi-annual re-organization of all company departments can cause a considerable amount of anxiety. It's true that not knowing who you report to or where your desk might be located from day to day can be stressful, which is why an army of new consultants are brought on board every year.

(Sadly, the consultants are all hired at different times throughout the year. I think it would be amazing if they could all gather in the same place at the same time, on one special day.)

(Instead of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, we could have the Running of the Contracted Consultants. It would be glorious, and really, really crowded. Anybody too slow to jump over fences and out of their way gets to meet with them first.)

If employees haven't learned to embrace change after their 8th re-organization in a year, then clearly they need some one-on-one time with a consultant who can produce an org-chart with clearly defined arrows.

A really good consultant offers so much more than arrows however. This type of consultant really gets on the same page with people, and drills down to the heart of the matter so that synergy can occur.

In fact, I was fully synergized just this morning.

It seems, and let's keep in mind that this is from an outsider perspective, that the external communications my department is responsible for are important. I needed a moment to take that in, as I'd never before considered communicating to have any real purpose until the outsider consultant said it out loud.

Once I was on the same page, it became time to work together to create a new org-chart with new arrows, because as it turns out, my writing is unprofessional and inappropriate for use in any external communications.

Let it be known, this was not a criticism. Writing is a skill that very few can master, and it does not come easily to everybody.

Just so we're on the same page, let's reference the latest article I uploaded to the online corporate newsletter, as I've done monthly for the last four years. The posting appeared to have a more casual tone. Yes, casual.

It's true that nobody has complained, and it may very well be true that some people say they enjoy reading that column particularly for the more casual tone, but I need to embrace change.

If there was to be an approval process in place of no less than three people for anything I write that may be published anywhere, and or read outside of the organization, and if my writing showed improvement, there might be a chance that I could apply for some professional development funding to take a non-credit course at a local college in basic writing.

Wouldn't that be nice?

It sure would be nice. The xeroxed certificate of participation I might earn from taking a non-credit basic writing course sure would look great next to my BFA and Degree in Writing I've got hanging on my wall from the University of Victoria. The UVic program only accepts 10 people a year, so clearly it can't be that sustainable.

But because I've run out of fucks to give, I didn't tell a consultant she could unpack my ass or synergize my fist through her face this morning. That would have been a clear sign I wasn't embracing change, and if we were to drill down any further I might have murdered something.

Instead of murder, maybe I'll just publish a book already. Casual, inappropriate and unprofessional would make a pretty awesome tag line.