Is the menial paper work really that bad?

I saw some posts on here complaining about the amount of "paper work" that gets done in consulting. Is it really that bad or are people just not used to it. I figure its the same as you go up in any org.

Also, have there been any significant changes in the industry in the past 5 years? I couldn't really fine anything in my research.

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Can you clarify what you mean? I'm not familiar with complaints about a lot of paperwork. I don't think most types of consulting has very much paperwork at all (insofar as you define paperwork as filling in forms and the like)

What does happen a lot is the analyses or pages you create don't end up being used in the final deliverables or are shelved in an appendix, but I wouldn't really think of that as paperwork as much as potentially wasted effort (depending on what was being worked on -- sometimes making all of those appendix pages is critical to getting to a good understanding of the situation even if they're not presented directly)

 

Banking was much worse than consulting in terms of process-oriented busy work.

What does never get better in consulting is the CYA via endless slide production.

The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd.
 

CYA as in cover your ass?

Produce endless slides in case there's a direction you need to follow that wasn't planned for or to day I told you so if needed?

 

Yup.  It's pretty frustrating/embarrassing when a client just had a bad internal politics meeting and then asks about topic X, and turns out you don't have any material (ie. a slide or two) on it.  In consulting, if there isn't a slide on it, it's as if no work was done. 

The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd.
 

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