Success Quote by Arnold H. Glasow

Glasow’s line lands like a well-aimed invoice: it frames the consultant not as a savior but as a near-savior, expertly pricing their value just shy of net benefit. The joke isn’t that consultants are useless; it’s that they’re calibrated. “Almost enough” is the blade. It implies a professional class that can genuinely identify waste, inefficiency, or risk but also knows how to monetize that discovery so the client feels relief without quite feeling rich.

The subtext is a quiet skepticism about corporate decision-making. If a company needs to pay an outsider to “save” it, the organization is already admitting internal blind spots - managerial ego, bureaucracy, politics, or simple inertia. Consultants become the sanctioned truth-tellers, the people you hire to say what employees can’t without consequences. Glasow hints at the darker symmetry: the consultant’s incentive isn’t purely to maximize the client’s gains; it’s to maximize gains up to the point where the client still perceives the hire as rational.

Context matters: this is mid-century business humor from a businessman, not a Marxist critique. It’s an insider’s wink about fee structures, ROI theater, and the performance of expertise. The line works because it compresses an entire uneasy relationship - dependence mixed with resentment - into a single economic punchline. You’re grateful, but you’re also doing the math.