(June 30) – “Call the Consultant Debunking Unit (CDU ) Ishmael,” writes Jill Rosenfield in this month’s Fast Company. “This month, after more than four years of harpooning metaphors, analogies, and business books that have led consultants astray, the CDU goes after the big one, the leviathan of all consulting metaphors, the Great White Whale of metaphors and quotes that consultants have long sailed around spouting, like Ahabs bound to the back of their own Moby Dick. It is, of course, the famous saying attributed not to the Great White Whale but to the Great One, Wayne Gretzky: ‘Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it is.’

“Who has used this quote? Better to ask who hasn’t used it! Warren Bennis, founding chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, uses an incarnation of the quote in the Peter F. Drucker Foundation’s quarterly journal, “Leader to Leader”: “As hockey great Wayne Gretzky explains, ‘It ain’t where the puck is, it’s where the puck will be.’ ”

“But that’s just the tip of the ice rink. Consultants have skated to Gretzky’s quote at breakneck speeds.

“Schooled, perhaps, by this flotilla of consultants, the nation’s CEOs have latched onto Gretzky’s quote as well. U S West president, chairman, and CEO Solomon Trujillo said it to USA Today. Former chairman and CEO of Monsanto Company Richard Mahoney said it to Washington University’s Center for the Study of American Business. And FedEx founder Fred Smith said it to InternetWeek.

“The problem, of course, is figuring out how to debunk Wayne Gretzky, the most famous hockey player in history, the man who holds every meaningful NHL goal-scoring record yet whose greatest talent was setting up other players to score. How to debunk the man who set 61 NHL scoring records, led the NHL in scoring 10 times, and was the league MVP 9 times? If Wayne Gretzky said, ‘Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it is,’ who is the CDU to argue?

“There was nowhere else to start but with the Great One himself. Unfortunately, Gretzky refused to skate to where the CDU wanted the puck to be going.