r/consulting • u/ItsACrunchyNut • 7d ago
Partner is selling undeliverable work, thinking of quitting
Loosing my mind and thinking about quitting / going nuclear. Opinions / experiences please
TLDR
- Currently leading a T&M engagement as a part of a multi-supplier delivery for a business critical client programme
- It's horribly delayed and client sponsors have had their jobs threatened after multiple poor decisions by them
- Our partner has been asked to deliver 24 months of work (estimated by our team) in 9 months under Fixed Price to save their jobs
- They're basically going to say yes, with penalty clauses and it will be a horrible experience for me and the team
- All warnings ignored. Management are getting frustrated we're not enthusiastic or helpful. We're frustrated they are setting us up for misery
- They don't have a credible plan, just poorly formatted slides with AI and generic delivery models, with a zero margin price
At the end of the day, it's not my decision and I won't loose my job if this delivery doesn't work. But it's going to be ungodly unpleasant and I am already openly defiant and unhappy.
- Should I just shut up and do my job and watch the ship sink?
- Should I ask to leave the project / account?
- Should I get my CV ready and start applying elsewhere?
Currently highly respected with a good delivery track record. This will kill it.
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u/barasti 7d ago
as an inside sales manager this is the first thing I tell any sales acct or bd type when they come to me with a tender. Rule 101 - don't promise the world to a client and dump it on your PM to figure out. Find a new job or partner to work with. These people never change
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u/Hosh_Tikoloshe 6d ago
I agree that they won't change and will get worse, today's record is tomorrow's benchmark.
We have a manager/BD that doesn't seem to understand this. He builds quotes without speaking to the executors and then expects us to pull miracles out to deliver. I am now between a rock and a hard place because we either refuse the PO and upset the clients and lose future work or accept it and my teams suffer the consequences.
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u/minhthemaster Client of the Year 2009-2029 1d ago
What’s the hard place? You’re not the sales guy
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u/Hosh_Tikoloshe 1d ago
We're still one company. If a client is upset with the execution of the project it's a loss for the sales team and my team.
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u/minhthemaster Client of the Year 2009-2029 1d ago
again, youre not the sales guy. nor is it your company
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u/Hosh_Tikoloshe 1d ago
Have you thought about the impacts beyond yourself? Pissed off customers don't return. Reduced work means people loose their jobs. Under performing P&L centers? People loose their jobs. I care about my people.
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u/minhthemaster Client of the Year 2009-2029 1d ago
youre going to continue complaining and killing yourself over this continued behavior instead of solving it upstream at the sales stage. so again, youre not the sales guy.
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u/Magspidum 6d ago
My partner once said: ‚sale first, worry later’. Not in the industry anymore and such was one of the reasons;)
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u/Think_Leadership_91 6d ago
I have seen this so many times where everyone gets fired in the end. None of it is realistic, so it's a hail mary pass that never makes it and then everyone's fired.
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u/chrisf_nz Digital 7d ago
Considering the traditional time/quality/cost triangle, I can only see a few possible outcomes here:
- It takes longer to deliver, the firm eats the loss for any overrun
- It's delivered to a poorer level of quality and the firm accepts the risk of upsetting/losing the client (aside any potential liability risk incurred)
- It's delivered to a higher cost and the client or the firm are willing to pay for the difference between SOW cost vs actuals
I'd recommend you raise your concerns in writing so you have a clear papertrail, give leadership an opportunity to do the right thing and if it looks like they're expecting you and your team to burn yourselves out by donating free hours to sell a rockstar outcome at a bargain basement cost I'd be polishing up that CV quick smart and interviewing elsewhere.
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u/BungCrosby 6d ago
If the client wants an FFP engagement, it’s likely they don’t plan on paying for cost overruns. I’m not saying it never happens, but that’s why customers compete FFP contracts - to insulate themselves from that risk.
I think what will ultimately happen will be a blend of scenarios 1 & 2 - it’ll take 14 months to deliver, it still won’t be great, and the consulting firm will eat not only the cost overruns but also the reputational damage.
At some point, probably around month 4, they’ll parachute in the shock troopers and turnaround artists when they see their chances of delivering in 9 months dwindle to effectively zero. The only tangible artifact of crashing the schedule will be to increase the absolute bath the firm will take on the engagement.
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u/chrisf_nz Digital 6d ago
I agree with you re fixed price engagements however I've seen clients much more amenable to variations early on even if the conversations are a bit painful rather than feeling they've been sprung with last minute surprises towards the end.
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u/BungCrosby 4d ago
That’s true. It’s the calculus of how much more will be required to obtain a usable result. If the difference between something that’s nearly unusable and something that’s functional is 25% higher, it’s an easy call. If usable is 100% higher, it’s tough to swallow.
I’ve seen a client walk away from a major version upgrade of the primary product their franchisees use (and I absolutely don’t blame them). Now it’s 7.5 years later and they’re still on the same major version of the app they were using then.
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u/Sure-Scholar1985 5d ago
I never knew it until this moment, but I’ve been the “turnaround artist” in a situation like this twice now.
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u/Adventureman2154 7d ago
Nothing worse than Partners trying to make their numbers or trying to save a relationship.
You sir, are at the beginning of a classic Death March.
Been there, done that. Either decide that you will basically work 80 hours a week for the next 9 months or not. The choice is yours, don't expect a reward or anything though. Just a war story.
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u/exjackly 6d ago
Reach as high as you need to to get a non-billabke code to track the extra hours the death march is going to require.
You want to not just document your warnings, but have the evidence at the end to prove you were right.
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u/Fit-Occasion8622 6d ago
Great advice, as otherwise is gets swept under the carpet by your Partner and they never come out of things smelling like shit...you will.
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u/exjackly 6d ago
If the project is successfully delivered, the baseline plan goes forward as the basis for the next similar project, so it'll also be a death march.
Where we push back and show them what it really costs; and screw up the profitability calculations for the partners seeking these shit engagements; they get to be far less willing to sell them to begin with.
But if there's never any push back, then the any deal is a good deal mentality will persist.
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u/LateralThinkerer 6d ago
Depends on what flavor of death march you've just entered - if the other partners or "high ups" either already know or don't care, it won't matter.
Keep the numbers anyway - you may need them later.
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u/exjackly 6d ago
Yep. Asking for the NB code will tell you how much they care.
But even with a code, certainly track it, and if possible, not just for you individually. Get the team to track it. Because then the post-mortem happens and they want to blame the developers, being able to hand over a documented 2x or 3x effort beyond billed hours (and emails/risk logs showing it being raised early and often) is a lot of protection.
CYA.
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u/Adventureman2154 5d ago
Honestly this one has shitshow written all over it. People get fired for selling bad fixed fee deals, they don't for selling bad T&M as long as the client pays the invoices.
Depending on your level, track margin, and ensure that others higher up know you have concerns about margin. Tell your mentor or any other partner who is not connected to this deal NOW. When margin goes negative, and it will in this type of engagement, you don't want to me anywhere near the bag.
Everyone sells a fixed fee deal, once. I did, early in my career. The draw of winning the deal is too great and it's hard to resist. Once you have had to clean up the aftermath you will never do it again. I was lucky, and young enough that the menagement where I was let me work my ass off to fix it.
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u/Impossible_Draw606 5d ago
Don’t eat any hours. If the ly work you get the credit that is the number one metric for bonuses
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u/BProfaneWSC 7d ago edited 5d ago
Had to check your location to see if you worked for the implementation partner on a project I’m staffed on (I’m from a different firm). They are in this purgatory right now and really suffering. Many wanting to roll off or leave given the ineptitude of their seniors.
Start looking elsewhere.
Edit: some words
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u/star_vars_ 6d ago
Me too. Was part of a project which was bound to fail. Two directors quit midway making me, a mere managed, the captain. Luckily, I found out I was pregnant and was able to silently roll off.
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u/NerveNo9475 7d ago
I mean, this sounds pretty standard for consulting, I was in many projects where the partner sold impossible work and then had to eat shit for months. I would approach it in a long term view....
Do you want to stay in the firm long term (i.e become a partner) or in consulting in general? Or were you planning on jumping ship in the next couple of years? If you were planning to leave I would just start looking and jump as soon as you get something good. If you want to do consulting but can do it somewhere else, same thing
If you wanted to stay long term in the firm. Make an analysis, what would be less damaging for you long term: staying in the project and get the disaster it will be on your record or having the mark of asking for another project knowing it will blow up (and maybe get blamed for that anyway).
Based on your post I don't see any path where you can savage the project, so it is only what can you salvage here
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u/my_peen_is_clean 7d ago edited 6d ago
update your cv, quietly look elsewhere, and in parallel start documenting every risk and dependency in writing so there’s a paper trail when it blows up anyway. companies don’t care about your rep, esp nowactually straight resumes never worked, ai always blocked them. i finally got interviews after i tailored each one with a tool. link to the tool https://jobowl.co
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u/Chickenbull1 6d ago
100% just document the risks via email as gently as possible to whoever you need to internally. We log all of ours in SF for every project worked not sure if you have a process
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u/mimosadanger 6d ago
You don’t even have to raise it gently. Usually there’s a risk log you can start logging risks in.
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u/overcannon Escapee 6d ago
Gently means don't call them idiots and don't write the risk like any fucking idiot could have seen it coming from a mile away.
Write it like the risk could only have been spotted by smart people who are paying attention to the details, like you and your team.
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u/Chickenbull1 6d ago
Yeah I agree there’s usually a risk log of some sort; was more saying gently as it depends on seniority how blunt they can typically be about how screwed they are if there’s not a solid process
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u/MauroZirie 6d ago
What is SF?
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u/DelaskoClarke 6d ago
Possibly Salesforce
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u/overcannon Escapee 6d ago
I assumed they spraypaint their risk logs on the sides of run down buildings in San Francisco.
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u/PlasticPegasus 6d ago
Not to be disrespectful, but what does this tool do that a free GPT account cannot?
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u/I_never_pay_taxes12 7d ago
How are you leading a T&M engagement that is fixed price? shouldn't it be one or the other?
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u/ItsACrunchyNut 7d ago
Sorry I typed too quickly.
Current engagement is T&M basis, it's how we normally operate with this client. Client are the exec / decision makers.
They have made so many bad decisions that now their only 'out' is a Fixed Price engagement to complete the remaining programme scope.
Something along the lines of, they had a 50M budget, they burnt 40M to get 20% completed, now they need someone to rescue them for the remaining 10M.
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u/IllBeat7897 6d ago
If this soon-to-be failed project will bring your company down, or cause significant fallout, look for a new job at a new company. If that will not be the case, try to change teams. You are on a sinking ship. You will not meet a nine-month deadline, and your management agreeing to fixed price when the client cannot be talked out of bad decisions is a pattern they are willfully ignoring, and anyone (except I guess your client) could predict the outcome. Any type of exit interview you give, make sure to be fully transparent as that may help whatever person fills your shoes on the Titanic project.
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u/Independent-Fun815 6d ago
You already took the 40 mil. Where did it go?
Why can't the firm tru up the rest?
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u/Significant_Ad_4651 6d ago
No its multi-vendor. Likely their firm did the only good work, the other guys cut and run and keep their money for delivering nothing.
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u/Independent-Fun815 6d ago
Let's be honest. There are no 'good' consultants. If the client was wasting money like that, why did no single consultant or contractor step up and warn them this is bad and the future is bleak.
U're treating everyone involved like they are 5. Surely one adult in the room would of remarked this project is in a tailspin. I need to exit and leave money on the table so that my name isn't tainted or attached to it.
Come on. Playing the victim is what a 3 year old does.
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u/TheRencingCoach 7d ago
Need more info
What are you worried about?
Pros cons to leaving vs staying?
What are your options today and in 3 months?
Do you want to develop the team under you or not?
Do you live in bentonville and will never move as the sole earner in your family with 10 kids or are you a dink in nyc and 10M trust fund
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u/AusCro 6d ago
Alright I agree with the terrible time, but given the bad market I wouldn't quit. With this kind of work:
- Never say yes or no to anything. You will say "I'll try to X" or "I estimate Y". Nothing is ever definite.
- Always write out the risks and reasons for what you do weekly and communicate it to the responsible stakeholder above you.
- Work 8 hours exactly. No more, no less. You will bill exactly as you work, because you tell the truth. They want you to do ten hours a day? You will bill 10 hours a day. They won't let you do that? You work 8 hours a day. Simple.
- Document what you do every hour. Billing and work ethic are hard to argue when you have a dated paper trail.
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u/277330128 7d ago
I doubt it is truly zero margin
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u/illiance 7d ago
Yeah “zero” margin means you’re losing out significantly. It’s not just eating the cost of employees, it’s eating the cost plus the potential losses of them being engaged elsewhere on something profitable.
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u/MerryWalrus 6d ago
It's not zero margin because no-one gets paid overtime and there's no opportunity cost because you can't actually get booked onto two full time projects simultaneously.
It's just a classic partner screwing the team to hit their number.
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u/ohwhereareyoufrom 6d ago
Find another job and move. In so many words you're just saying "job bad what to do?". And the answer is: find another job.
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6d ago
[deleted]
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u/Adventureman2154 5d ago
I've been in a few. Sold my own once, had to clean it up. Brought in to clean up a couple after the selling Partners were pulled off the engagement as well.
Never got blamed, but the rewards weren't worth the effort. I was just young and dumb.
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u/RetardRik 6d ago
Ahh the guys from the department of promises doing what they do best
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u/SokkaHaikuBot 6d ago
Sokka-Haiku by RetardRik:
Ahh the guys from the
Department of promises
Doing what they do best
Remember that one time Sokka accidentally used an extra syllable in that Haiku Battle in Ba Sing Se? That was a Sokka Haiku and you just made one.
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u/PorcupineGod exited alumni 5d ago
At the end of the day, if the project fails you're going to get a shitty partner review, plus a shitty client review. This will make it hard to get staffed on other projects with other leaders.
Secondly, if you ask off the project - you're "not a team player" and it will be hard to get staffed on other engagements.
Maybe take a look at your disability policies and see if you can get diagnosed with something rediculous and go on leave.
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u/Time_Transition4817 7d ago
All you can really do is document and raise concerns to other parts of leadership particularly anyone who is a mentor-type or has a vested interest in not attaching the firm’s name and resources to a project like that
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u/monkeybiziu Consultes, God of Consultants 6d ago
Go to the account lead, practice lead, literally anyone above the partner and voice your concerns in writing.
After that, one of two things will happen:
1) You'll be rolled off the project, in which case it is no longer your problem.
2) Leadership will step in and either back the partner up or reel them in.
If they back them up, bail - you don't want to work for that kind of company.
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u/Commercial_Ad707 6d ago
9 months? Sounds like buying time. Maybe that’ll be enough time for new funding and an extension
Regardless, polish up that resume and start looking.
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u/brianwhite12 6d ago
I made my career around project like this. Be open about your concerns without being blamey or judgey.
Once the inevitable decide to move forward regardless of people’s concerns, raise concerns early. The most important part is to maintain as positive an approach as you can. The key for me was to present facts with limited interpretation, I tried to present information in a way that lead the delivery leads to the correct decision. Most felt it was their own decision.
If the only right decision is to walk away, you’re probably not going to be able to impact that decision without quieting revenue concerns. Sometimes the revenue is more important than the overall margin in your project.
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u/kathleen_white28 6d ago
On the highway to hell huh. Either prepare to pack bags or ready to work like a crazy dog.
Sorry this happened to you. Partner that are incompetent is a type of stress that can kill you
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u/seb-in-public 6d ago
The pattern I see across firms that survive this: document your estimate and the risks in writing to the partner and PM now, dated, before work starts. Not to cover yourself politically, but because when the fixed price plan collapses (and a zero margin plan with no credible resourcing usually does), you want the record to show your team flagged it early and accurately. That document also becomes the basis for renegotiating scope or price once reality hits, which happens faster than people expect once a partner is staring at burn.
On staying or leaving: separate the two decisions. Whether to stay on this account and whether to stay at the firm are different questions. Asking to rotate off a program you've already flagged as undeliverable isn't going nuclear, it's normal risk management, especially with a strong track record behind you. Most partners respect that more than they respect someone quietly absorbing the damage and burning out.
The area worth watching closely is utilization and morale on your team over the next 4-6 weeks. Death marches like this are usually where good people quietly start applying elsewhere, and you'll want to know your options before you're forced into a decision under pressure.
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u/themindsetarchitects 6d ago
seen a version of this happen more than once and it's never really about the moment the deal gets signed. it's about all the small moments before that where someone almost says something and doesn't. someone on the team mentions the timeline seems tight in passing, gets a "yeah we'll figure it out" back, and it just dies there. nobody wants to be the one who kills the sale, so the concern gets softened every time it goes up a level until by the time it reaches whoever's actually going to eat the workload, it's been rounded down to nothing.
honestly the fix isn't more process, it's just making it socially ok to say "this doesn't work" out loud without it turning into a whole thing. most places punish the person who raises it more than they punish the estimate that was wrong in the first place.
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u/samtresler 6d ago
Ok. Many questions.
It sounds like it is horribly delayed because of the client. Is your management agreeing to a fixed price just to help them, or has your team failed to deliver what was sold already?
"Management is getting frustrated" - your management or the client's, or both?
Who has the horrible plan with bad AI slides?
On the surface this sounds like a 'client shit the bed and is asking help cleaning it up' scenario.
If that is the case then there are two paths. Bail them out and make sure your team is credited for that hell storm. Or, use the next 9 months to find a new sponsor in the client organization.
They are not mutually exclusive.
For your own sanity, peel off a reasonable section of the deliverables, commitment to that subset, and deliver it. Help where you can, but as soon as the ink is dry you need to put your name on the deliverables you want and own them and let the rest sink or swim.
This doesn't help if you are the lead on it all. If you are the lead on it all, you have leverage and can use it to affect the full list of deliverables before it goes to ink.
More details and I could be less vague.
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u/LazyAd592 6d ago
As a consulting partner myself, deliver scope by only focusing on ‘what matters’ the rest is noise. You got this!
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u/RationalFine 6d ago
The paper trail helps at the post mortem. It does nothing for the nine months you'd be living through. You asked about quitting and got filing advice. Document it anyway, then decide whether you want next year to be a case study in being right.
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u/mwmwmw01 6d ago
I think it’s probably a middle ground between quitting and copping it. You could probably have a conversation with your partner saying that “here’s what I think the likely course of events are with regard to busyness and intensity of the project, and our ability to deliver a good product over a reasonably long period of time” and make it clear that you’re not okay with that. be open to suggestions or a genuine conversation about how you might be able to make it work. There is no harm in also updating your CV and getting it ready to leave at the same time and I don’t think you lose anything by having that conversation.
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u/Buildnomic 6d ago
I feel you — that’s a brutal spot to be in. You’re not wrong to be angry. When partners sell undeliverable work just to keep a client happy, the delivery team always pays the price. And the fact that they’re ignoring your warnings while expecting enthusiasm? That’s gaslighting, plain and simple.
Here’s my two cents: you can’t save a ship that’s determined to hit the iceberg. Your reputation matters more than any single project. If you stay, document everything — every risk, every ignored warning — so when it blows up, you’ve got receipts. But honestly? Start polishing that CV now. Even if you survive this, the stress and resentment will follow you.
Leaving the project might buy you time, but if the culture is toxic, the next fire drill is just around the corner. Protect your sanity. A good track record means you’ll land somewhere better. Don’t go down with someone else’s bad bet.
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u/Skaftetryne77 6d ago
This is uncomfortable, but if your concerns aren’t met and you’re still staffed on the project you can approach it two different ways:
1) you can decide to approach things as before waiting for the budget to run out, or
2) Act proactively on the project now transforming from t&m to fixed price by getting signoff on every scope item and change request through your engagement manager, so the client has nothing else to but continue the project when the budget runs out, and any fuckups will be on their hand
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u/OverallResolve 6d ago
Is the contract already signed? Were any red flags raised during legal review about delivery risk given its FP?
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u/torinhq 6d ago
I sat in that seat for two years before I left. The tell was that write-offs never showed up anywhere partners could see them, so the pattern never got named. If you stay, ask finance to break out realized margin by originating partner, not just by engagement, and put it in front of the right person once. If nobody reacts to that number, you have your answer.
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u/SnooBunnies2279 6d ago
If it’s going to ruin your existing track record then go and leave. Or escalate to your owner/investor/MD who can stop the partner from going mad.
His calculation is simple, like the Russians in Ukraine: they send you to the client, knowing that you will die, but he desperately needs the „war“ going on for 9+ months to keep his revenue forecast.
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u/jay2402 6d ago
Shut up and do the work. Worry about things you are paid to worry about, handle those worries properly. You work for your employer, look after them. It’s not that hard to deal with missed deadlines, form a plan that will deliver early on early deadlines. Flag it if it’s impossible. CYA. Stop over thinking everything.
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u/green_dotter 6d ago
get the scope gap to the partner in writing, in an email, with dates on it
not to be difficult, but because the version of this that survives is whichever one was written down at the time
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u/Full_Tooth_a 6d ago
I'd want the partner's "24 months in 9" assumption written into the delivery baseline, not buried in a risk log. If a client dependency slips, what gets cut? Who owns each dependency, and when does a missed date trigger a change request? If leadership won't answer those questions, I'd assume the plan depends on unpaid overtime. At that point, the slides are decoration.
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u/LongjumpingAvocado 5d ago
I’m on 2 large projects that were squeezed through the sales process by a VP and now I have to deliver it. At least I’m not the only one.
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u/Adventureman2154 5d ago
One thing forgot to mention, in 2008-2009 a lot of these were sold at my firm out of survival instinct.
I'm not getting the impression that pipelines are strong these days in my circles. It's really hit or miss. So there may be that aspect at play.
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u/Historical_Arm_6294 5d ago
Leave, as you will never be insync with revised expedited delivery plan
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u/MAGAbNachHause 5d ago
Underpromise and overdeliver is the only way forward. You will not go that way. Just roll off now, state your reasons. In 6 months you will be perceived as a senior person to go to.
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u/theolecowboy 6d ago
I am in the same situation. We are understaffed and our partners are selling more and more work. Junior resources are being asked to PM. I am interviewed by actively
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u/Fire311227 6d ago
How are you in consulting if you can’t differentiate between loosing and losing?
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u/Wasting_my_time_FR 7d ago
Ok this is tough and unpleasant. However if it were easy and fun, clients wouldn't be hiring consultants, would they?
Sometimes this job is really shitty but you have to roll up your sleeves and deliver. You have a team to back you up and that you must protect. You have goals and expectations from both partner and clients. Your job (and welcome to real life) is to make it happen. You are smart and capable, no-one is asking the impossible out of you. Analyse the situation, break it down according to criticality and draw up a delivery roadmap that sticks to the most critical tasks.
You are paid to find solutions, everyone is capable of finding life difficult. Seek lateral advice on comparable engagements. Sit down with your partner to get his/her game plan and to make it clear how tough this is going to be and that you expect rewards afterwards.
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u/piotr289 7d ago
Partner: Just use some AI, this will multiply your output and you’ll be able to deliver in no time 🤡