There are hundreds of varieties of Consultants these days. We can find Consultants to take care of our diets, our physical well being, our mental well being, and pretty much anything you can imagine when it comes to business.

The story below might just indicate that we take ourselves a little too seriously sometimes.

A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand new Beemer advanced out of the dust clouds towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses, and a Zegna tie, leaned out his window and asked the shepherd, “If I can tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?”

The shepherd looked at the man, then looked at his peacefully grazing flock, and calmly answered, “Sure.”

The yuppie parked his car, whipped out his IBM ThinkPad, connected it to a cell phone, and surfed to a NASA page on the Internet. He called up a GPS satellite navigation system, scanned the area, and then opened both a database, and an Excel spreadsheet with complex macro formulas. He then sent an email on his Blackberry, and after a few minutes he received a response. Finally, he prints out a 160-page report on his hi-tech miniaturized printer in the car, then turns to the shepherd and says, “You have exactly 1623 sheep.”

“That is correct, take one of the sheep” said the shepherd. He then watches the young man select one of the animals and bundle it into his car. Then the shepherd says, “ If I can tell you exactly what you do for a living, will you give me back my beast?”

“O.K., why not?” answered the man.

“Clearly you’re a consultant” sad the shepherd. “That’s correct,” says the yuppie, “but how did you guess that?”

“No guessing required,” answered the shepherd. “You turned up here, although nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked, and you don’t know a thing about my business. Now give me back my dog.” 

The lesson seems to be to keep my Consulting assignment to the things I know about. I think I’m safe because sheep scare me. If you think that bunny caused a lot of damage in the Holy Grail, imagine what a sheep could do.