Professional Scapegoats

We have a client who really doesn't listen to us. 

People in the know tell me its not just us -- its a pretty constant trend, bordering on a bizarre business plan of sorts.  They hire specialists like us to get their opinion and then have some odd sense of fear that they're being "duped" or "tricked".  This causes them to quite often make ineffective (or sometimes just plain bad) choices.  The poor results of which, they of course blame on us and people like us.  There is a management team in place, but they all just "yes" the alpha to death.

The non-sensical part (as though the rest of this makes any sense) is that our fee doesn't change any whether they take our advice or not.  Our relationship is structured so that we don't stand to gain financially from whatever decision they make.

My firm was just hired by them to do some work -- work which could completely have been avoided had they just done what we suggested the last time they hired us.  They can't see the connection, but its pretty clear to us.  It's a real mess.  And they're right back to not listening again.

I feel bad for them.  I want to just look at the apha and tell him that his lack of trust and his destructive pattern of making decisions without having a clue about what he's talking about are going to kill his chances at success.  He'd probably just think I was conning him.

Why don't I?  Unfortunately, the client is a bit of a "cash cow" for us, mostly thanks to their own mismanagement.  Personally I am growing to hate that about them, actually.

I can only imagine the reputation we'll have when we're gone and the whole thing either blows up, fizzles out, or ties itself in knots.  They'll blame everything on us, of course.  We will join chain of fools who came before us.

From my perspective, we will be fools for having exchanged our souls for cash as not much more than professional scapegoats.

From their perspective, we will be fools if the results are poor, and they will be brilliant if the results are wonderful.

Either way, its a lose-lose.