A Short Love-Letter For The Real Nerds

For the real designers, developers and digital marketers in the world.

A Peculiar Example

I really wonder frequently: Why do companies have breakfast, lunch and dinner prepared by supermarket directors and not by real chefs at restaurants?

Hang on for a brief moment.

The business clowns on the left, the real nerds: marketers, designers and engineers on the right.

I like to stretch this peculiar analogy a little further to bring the point across with "enough weight".

Now, what do those people do on a daily basis? From afar I assume that supermarket directors buy goods and wares - usually from all over the place, distribute them across their stores where colleagues then sell them to the supermarkets' end customers. On the other hand, restaurant chefs go out and buy food and groceries - usually on very local level themselves - tinker and combine them in incredibly tasteful ways in order to hand them out on plates to their end customers.

Please consider for a moment what the expertise of these personas really are.

What do the directors know best, food preparation aka cooking meals (A) or buying and selling cans, tetra packs and bottles (B)?

What do the restaurant chefs know best, food preparation aka cooking meals (A) or buying and selling cans, tetra packs and bottles (B)?

I strongly assume that for the former, you picked B and for the latter, you chose A. I am very positive that this is the majority choice if we would dare to ask 100 people now.

Although the sub title might have offered hints, you now may wonder what I want to imply. "Breakfast, lunch and dinner" stands for projects and endeavours in and around Digital, in general terms the Digital Transformation craze these days. The "supermarket directors" are the management consultants at the consulting and (even!) accounting firms. And of course, the "restaurant chefs" in my example above are the real nerds in the business, the designers, developers and digital marketers.

For the designers, developers and digital marketers.

The Real Question

To rephrase the initial question, why do companies like to hire for their digital projects, management consultants rather than the real nerds, designers, developers and marketers (with centuries of cumulative experience in digital)?

For a more popular and an in-all-mouths' example, take your favourite cryptocurrency. From an investor perspective (read speculator) would you rather buy coins from a team that started their world-changing project a few months ago (and which is in the most unfavourable case administered or run by mostly non-technical people) or from a team with 4-9 years of experience in the matter? I assume you definitely would pick the latter (the nerds in the prior example). But true, if you are a speculator, you may very well not bother all all. But I guess you get my point.

Would not or should not (non-digital) companies handle their most important (pet) projects in a similar fashion, ie. hire the real nerds in the business, the ones with the real deep knowledge and domain expertise: the designers, developers and digital marketers — with their centuries of cumulative experience?