House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time

Laugh out Loud Brilliant

Must reading for anyone in business, hoping to be in business or who used to be in business! For aspiring consultants, the dictionary alone is worth the price of the book. Let the client beware!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Hilarious! A must for B-school grads!

Marty's witty review of life after B-school for consultants is soooo true! This is a must read for b-school grads interested in consulting. It also relates to other fields occupied by many s-school grads. Laugh out loud funny!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Having been a client, it's refreshing to have someone "open

Having been a client, it's refreshing to have someone "open the kimono" on this business. This is a very breezy, smart read - which gives credence to his revelations. It would be just too difficult to write like this and not have most (all?) of it be true in some way.

Junk

Absolute junk book! Written by a charlatan who learned just enough about business to write a "book" and con some producers into turning it into a bad, bad television show. Biggest waste of money that I recall - really.

Highly Recommended!

This unusual, entertaining business book covers one man¿s experience working for an unnamed, but top-line consulting firm. Author Martin Kihn tells unvarnished stories about working with clients who mix ambiguous problems with political infighting. The consulting firms he describes come off as unbalanced organizations with barely functioning teams and aged political hierarchies. Then there are the bleak working conditions and long weeks of travel, described in ways that completely dispel the glamorous myth of the globetrotting consultant. Throughout, Kihn keeps the story moving and funny, even though he sometimes gets too caught up in his own cleverness. Now and then, he seems to restrain his real opinion and the resulting conclusion seems flimsy compared to his other material, but soon he gets back to deflating jargon and popping myths. Even though it is an additional rock being hurled in the hailstorm of consultant bashing, we recommend this funny, informative book to anyone working with consultants or considering a consulting career.

Okay, but...

Interesting read, but Kihn's sweeping generalizations of McKinsey and other big consulting firms at times sound more like bitter jealousy than true fact. Hopefully, I'll find out for myself in the next few years whether he's right or not.