Success Quote by Jesse James Garrett

Garrett’s line performs a neat corporate two-step: it refuses the absolutism of “roles” while quietly preserving the economic logic of “projects.” In other words, he dodges the provocation that consultants are a superior class of worker, then reintroduces them as the superior tool for certain jobs. It’s tact dressed up as epistemic humility.

The key move is semantic. “Roles” implies identity, hierarchy, and threat: if consultants “fill” roles better, employees hear replacement, status loss, a hollowed-out organization. “Projects,” by contrast, is transactional and time-bounded. Projects can be “handled” without implying anyone is being permanently displaced. The language gives managers permission to buy expertise without admitting they’ve failed to cultivate it internally.

The subtext is a familiar workplace compromise: consultants are most defensible when the organization wants speed, specialization, or political cover. A consultant can be the outside referee who says the uncomfortable thing, the rapid-response team for a one-off migration, the borrowed credibility that helps a leader push a decision through. Garrett’s careful “not sure you can say definitively” also signals awareness of the backlash against consultant dependence: bloated slide decks, generic frameworks, the suspicion that “strategy” is what you hire when you don’t want to decide.

Contextually, it reads like a practitioner trying to keep the conversation practical rather than ideological. He’s not arguing for consultants as a default staffing model; he’s arguing for them as a situational lever. The statement works because it reassures two audiences at once: executives get justification, staff get a promise that their jobs aren’t being reclassified as temporary.