It may not be quite as white-shoe a management consulting firm as Bain, BCG, or McKinsey, but Monitor is right up there in terms of pedigree and prestige. Monitor was founded in the early 1980’s by a group of Harvard Business School related thinkers and doers, most notably Professor Michael Porter – certainly one of the primo management gurus the world has ever known. I’m guessing that everyone who’s even glanced at the GMAT practice-test books on the shelf of Borders, let alone ended up taking the GMAT, let alone actually gotten an MBA, has heard of Porter. (I’m quite sure I have at least one of his books gathering dust on a shelf somewhere.)
Monitor works with the world’s leading corporations, governments, and social sector organization as their integrated resource for growth.
Well, I’m not quite sure what “integrated resource for growth” means, but I get from the first part that they don’t just work with Fortune/Global 500’s to further their takeover-the-world strategies, but with governments, too. Don’t know whether the word “leading” is intended as a modifier for “government.” Makes me kind of wonder what constitutes a “leading government,” beyond the obvious USA! USA! After all, even the government of Burundi is the leading government in Burundi. And the same goes for the relationship between Liechtenstein’s government and Liechtenstein (and all the little Liecthtensteiners).
But whether Libya’s considered a “leading government” or just a “government”, Monitor’s in the news these days, much to their chagrin, for its work as an “integrated resource for growth” for Libya between 2006 and 2008.
Monitor’s not backing down from its “main effort [which] was designed to help Khadafy’s dictatorship bring about change.” (Source for information on Monitor and its work with Libya: Boston Globe.)
And they’re cool with the role they played bringing household word (at least in some households) intellectuals to hang out with Moammar. As one of the household world (at least in some households) responded when asked:
“I’m sure Khadafy thought having intellectuals like [Francis] Fukuyama and Joe Nye and [Anthony] Giddens and myself there was a way of proving to the world that he wasn’t stupid,’’ said [Benjamin] Barber... “What he gained was some glamour from interaction with the West, but what we gained was protection for people who were pushing for reforms.’’
(Khadafy apparently can’t get enough of that Western glamour, by the way. His family’s been entertained by a whole posse of glamour-pusses, if not exactly of the intellectual glamour-ati variety - Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, and Nelly Furtado.)
But Monitor is somewhat apologetic about a couple of murkier roles it played.
Yesterday, Monitor Group acknowledged in a statement that its paid work included helping Khadafy’s son Saif with his doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics.
The firm said that assistance and the book proposal were mistakes.
Helping Daddy’s boy with his dissertation is one thing – Saif is supposedly a “good” Khadafy, i.e., one who’s somewhat benevolently disposed towards the West and is not likely to, say, blow up a commercial flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. And I’m quite sure that, odious as it might be, this isn’t the first time that someone with a lot of money has paid someone with a lot of brainpower to help polish their offspring’s academic star. After all, Saif had more important things to do – like go to Mariah Carey concerts.
Then there’s “the proposal,” which is quite something else. “The proposal” was for a book to puff up Khadafy – for which Monitor was hoping to make $2M plus expenses.
“The book will allow the reader to hear Khadafy elaborate in his own words, and in conversation with renowned international experts,’’ the proposal states. It said that Barber would “clarify several questions from previous conversations with Khadafy’’ while [Anthony] Giddens [London School of Economics] “will visit to deepen understanding of the merits and problems of direct democracy vs. representative democracy.’’
Barber, who is described in Monitor memos as a “subcontractor,’’ said he refused to work on the book, which was later abandoned by Monitor.
Elaborate on what questions aside, am I the only one thinking: and we think that ghosted, self-serving, history-warping presidential memoirs are useless and well-deserving of every minute they languish on the remainder table?
Of course, I do wonder what Khadafy’s got to say about direct democracy, of the in-the-streets variety, these days.
I guess this is what vanity press is for. And when you’ve got all that oil money burning a hole in your pocket, not to mention in your country, you can take the full print run and gift all your “friends”, including all the visiting intellectuals who lent their aura of glamour to Khadafy. You can put it in the bedside tables in all the bedrooms in the palace. You can give them out at Nelly Furtado concerts.
Anyway, it’s certainly shameful that Monitor had anything to do with a proposal to help elevate Khadafy’s stature by writing a book for him. Let him write his own damned book, or get one of his toadying minions to do it for him. Bet old Moammar knows how to enforce publish or perish.
But, no, that wouldn’t have had the legitimacy conferred on it that a book that included conversations with respected intellectuals would have.
How would you like to have been the junior consultant, the summer intern, the writer in marketing who usually does the web-site copy, and get asked to work on this one?
After all, Monitor only hires really smart people, no?
All Monitor people are problem solvers, who care deeply about their clients, and who want things to happen…Our people join Monitor because they want to help organizations grow, because they want to have an impact on the world, and because they value the unique skills and insights they will develop from the diverse career paths available in our firm.
So if you’re an employee – maybe relatively junior, maybe relatively new – how do you express your feelings about working on a book about Khadafy, a client that you may not, in truth, care deeply for? Do you push back – Like, isn’t he a mad man or something? or Didn’t Khadafy have something to do with Lockerbie?
Or do you just do what you’re asked to do: another day at the office, deferring to the judgment of those who are more senior, have snazzier vitae, who run the place
And how and where do those with the snazzier vitae draw the line? Hey, we’re trying to bring about reform here, guys. or It’s not like we’re ghosting Mein Kampf for Hitler – we’re using real intellectuals here.
I sure would have liked to have been privy to the meeting when someone decided that working on this book was a big, bad idea. Maybe, just maybe, there are times when it isn’t all about the Benjamins…
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