Entropy

the bread and butter of every consultant's business is undoing entropy

It is not hard to see entropy at work.  With the passage of time, great works of art blur and crumble, the original intent fading unless skillful restorers do their work.  Drive down a suburban street and it is easy to spot the untended home.  Weeds grow in the garden, paint peels from a door.  Similarly, one can sense a business firm that has not been carefully managed.  Its product line grows less focused; prices are set low to please the sales department, and shipping schedules are too long, please only the factory.  Profits are taken home as bonuses to executives whose only accomplishment is outdoing the executive next door in internal competition over the bounty of luck and history. 

Entropy is a great boon to management and strategy consultants.  Despite all the high-level concepts consultants advertise, the bread and butter of every consultant's business is undoing entropy--cleaning up the debris and weeds that grow in every organizational garden.

ACTION POINT: Clean up the debris and weeds of  your organization.