Management is so unknowledgeable about the business that they constantly hire outside consultants to tell them what to do. We've seen every one you can name. Bain, McKenzie, Monitor, PWC, and others. They even had an initiative one year on "Innovation." And of course, Crispin Davis hired an outside consulting firm and paid them millions of dollars to run an "innovation" program. Be innovative, or else!!! In that program, of the ideas that "won," and were therefore funded, none ever came to anything. The one I was most aware of was quietly killed after about two years, having achieved absolutely none of its objectives and having cost a ton of money. OF COURSE all this was funded by cutting programs for normal everyday business. True innovation, either by ongoing improvement, or leapfrog ideas, is smothered, because management doesn't trust people with ideas. They only trust people with MBAs from a specific handful of business schools and then only if they have had work experience with-- you guessed it, those consulting firms.
The senior management of Reed Elsevier Group doesn't know enough about the companies in the group to be able to assess the decision-making and leadership of the management teams for the divisions.
