It seems hardly sporting to join the scrum that’s piling on top of the Portland Development Commission. First came the news of the no-bid contracts given by PDC to Nathaniel Clevenger, a good friend of and consultant to the agency’s board chairman. Then came word that the agency hired a bankruptcy-prone consultant named Anthony Harris to advise one of its top staff, Wyman Winston, on how to manage more effectively.
Today’s Whimperer reports that another staffer, Tracy Smith, asked Mr. Harris — while he was on the PDC payroll as a consultant — to intercede for her with PDC to push through a substantial increase in her salary, from about $65,000 to about $90,000. A commenter on Professor Bogdanski’s blog surmises that Ms. Smith at PDC is the same Tracy Smith who runs a management consulting company called Inhance.
On the assumption that PDC’s Tracy Smith is also Inhance’s Tracy Smith, it seems from perusing Inhance’s website that Ms. Smith possesses all of the skills that PDC was looking to Mr. Harris to teach to Mr. Winston. Why, then, with talent on its staff waiting to be called upon, did the agency look outside for someone to help Mr. Winston do his job?
I’m reminded, in a typically Laquedemented way, of something John T. Molloy wrote in one of his Dress for Success books. He was a wardrobe consultant in New York when the owner of a clothing store in Connecticut asked him for advice. He gave the merchant some advice and charged him $150. A few weeks later he saw the merchant, who had gone back to wearing what Mr. Molloy called "high-fashion horse blankets," and asked the fellow why he hadn’t taken his advice. The merchant answered, "I had this other consultant who told me to keep on wearing what I had been wearing, and he charged $500 instead of $150, so I figured his advice must be better than yours." Mr. Molloy wrote that he told the merchant that the merchant was quite right, returned to his office, and promptly raised his own rates. Perhaps if I charged more, the PDC would hire me, too.