Exactly! Good consultants are subject matter experts in process/project management. I guess this is what MBAs and PhD consultants are really good at: they have a big toolkit of industry best practices because their employers advise so many (often market-leading) companies in any given industry and they are good at doing in-depth research to apply these best practices to the specific requirements of their client. Not being a subject matter expert can sometimes be quite helpful when assessing a project/process as you have more room for free associative thought than a SME.

Oh, McKinsey and others are also experts in downsizing operations (i.e. letting people go) under the umbrella of efficiency improvements. When a new CEO comes in, they know that their compensation is tied to the share price of the company. Often one of the first things they do is to call in McKinsey to assess the efficiency of the company and then cut/outsource a few thousand jobs together with implementing some process improvements. Cutting expenses is easier and faster than delivering real value through innovation! Also, McKinsey - the experts - recommended this! At the next financial earnings call, the CEO can talk about how they increased their profit margins, investors like that the CEO is already delivering results so quickly, the stock price goes up, the CEO receives his bonus.

It's similar to what Bain Capital and other Private Equity investors do: they are not subject matter experts in a specific industry, but they are subject matter experts in capital extraction. I think this form of abstractive capitalism has done a lot of damage to many great companies, but as long as the system rewards this behaviour, there will be a lot of demand for consulting companies and private equity investors...maybe we should go back to the philosophy of old Greece, where the pursuit of knowledge was valued and the pursuit of wealth was openly derided (but use robots instead of slaves for day-to-day labor).

In the words of Plato (in his lat work, Laws): "My dear Clinias, small is the class of men—rare by nature and trained, too, with a superlative training — who, when they fall into diverse needs and lusts, are able to stand out firmly for moderation, and who, when they have the power of taking much wealth, are sober, and choose what is of due measure rather than what is large. The disposition of the mass of mankind is exactly the opposite of this; when they desire, they desire without limit, and when they can make moderate gains, they prefer to gain insatiably; and it is because of this that all the classes concerned with retail trade, commerce, and inn-keeping are disparaged and subjected to violent abuse."