Known fondly by management consultants as an “SME” — or less fondly as a Morlock—a subject matter expert is one of those benighted people without whom the organisation would not function, who are nonetheless poorly paid, forced to live in a dungeon below ground, being routinely beaten by the inhabitants of the sedimentary layers of middle management and, if any management consultants engaged by middle management have anything to do with it, are shortly be made redundant. Thereafter, an unexpected generational change in the business environment will wreak havoc on the organisation, as squadrons of hastily-engaged contractors having no institutional knowledge, scant subject matter expertise and an abject lack of common sense, will attempt, by operation of the hive mind, to adjust the organisation’s direction of travel towards its new direction, with disastrous results. Think ocean liners and icebergs.
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There is an argument that middle management is little more than a game of chicken to see how many subject matter experts you can fire without the organisation actually imploding on itself.
Subject Matter Experts cannot safely be replaced by contractors, much less consultants from PWC, however much your dogma commends you to wish it were so.
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