[CrazyCatDog]

When the going gets tough, firms call in consultants. When Bain or McKinsey arrive, they tell you to make a change. Is your firm centralized? Decentralize it! Is your firm decentralized? Centralize it. Donahoe's "master fix" and subsequent exit should give pause to industry thinking of hiring consultants to run their companies in the long-run; for as the saying goes: the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

[ChuckMcM]

Hilarious and on point, but to their credit consultants look at what you are currently doing which isn't working, and suggest you do the other thing on the theory that worst case that won't work either but at least you will have tried something new.

I generally think that it is a symptom that the management isn't able to manage the business. Not everyone has the skill set to mix a tech and commerce company into a living / breathing entity.

[mathattack]

The "higher brand" consultancies also live by their stamp of approval.

A CEO who wants to do a risky strategy will hire the biggest brand name possible to provide cover. "Nobody got fired for hiring McKinsey for advice" is similar to "Nobody got fired for buying IBM hardware". And in this case, the CEO can say, "Well, I hired the best to help me think it up" when it goes wrong.

[x0x0]

Or perhaps for some reason management needs an external blame sink for doing something they wanted to do...

[danhak]

This move has nothing to do with consultants and everything to do with activist shareholder Carl Icahn.

[foobarqux]

In this case it is more likely that the consultants were brought in to "independently" provide justification for something that had already been decided.

[trhway]

This is what they repeatedly did to collective farms mid 20th century in USSR. Nothing helped. One can only wonder why :)

[mathattack]

Wasn't the prior CEO (Meg Whitman) also Bain?

In his defense, he was there for almost 10 years, no?

[WoodenChair]

Yes the GP comment is totally off base as far as its attacking Donahoe is concerned (if that was even the intention). He's a very long time eBay exec, and Meg Whitman was nearly with eBay from the beginning. From all outward appearances Donahoe and his colleagues only made this decision after a lot of careful consideration.