[mdorazio]

In addition to what direfungasaur said about helping cut through political issues in a company, bringing in outside analysis can help for a couple of additional reasons. One is that individuals employees can be wrong. A change that engineers have been asking for might seem ok, but in actuality would destroy margins or otherwise be detrimental to the company as a whole if you look at broader information that might not be available to the engineers. Another reason is that if a company gets to the point where it's even considering bringing in outside help, it likely has a large number of issues that need to be prioritized. The one that a few employees have been making noise about might already be well-acknowledged, but is way down the list of Big Problems.

That's the "good case" anyway. In actuality, management consultants (the kind you're referring to) are usually brought in so someone can cover their ass and say "look, the smart, expensive people said we should do X!" regardless of whether or not X was a difficult solution to figure out.

[tonyarkles]

> A change that engineers have been asking for might seem ok, but in actuality would destroy margins or otherwise be detrimental to the company as a whole if you look at broader information that might not be available to the engineers

As someone who has been on both sides of this, the best advice I have for a manager in that situation is "if you say no, tell them why." As someone in a senior engineering role, to me, it's my responsibility to understand the forces at play with the product I'm developing, so that I can do my job. I accepted a long time ago that engineering is not just about being technically excellent, but also understanding how the product fits into the business. If the answer to engineering recommendations is just a flat "no", then that probably means that there's information that is keeping me from doing my job to my full capacity; I don't just throw out ideas without thinking about them, I take all of the facts that I have and come up with cost-effective solutions.

[hectormalot]

As a management consultant myself, another thing that clients tell me is that the ability to bring the message across in a way management understands and can act upon is typically valued.

I’ve of course heard the “you’re saying the same as what the engineers have been saying for years” at various points, and management might not always listen well enough to engineers, but I think people underestimate the importance of synthesizing their messages to get management to act