Signal over noise: what consulting should actually look like.
Scroll through LinkedIn and you’ll see plenty of consulting firms promising to help leaders filter the noise, find opportunities, and deliver workable strategies.
Do you get what you expected? Sometimes yes, often no.
Here’s the blunt truth from my world:
The good ones – yeah, they can actually help. A solid consultant with experience in your space can walk in, cut through the politics, call out what’s broken, and point to fixes that leadership can act on. They don’t have to fight the daily noise, so they can see patterns the insiders miss.
The rest of them – a lot of “cut through noise” consultants are just selling new noise. They repackage old ways of doing things, slap a shiny framework on it, and charge you six figures. Instead of unlocking opportunities, they unlock billable hours.
The real test:
Do they actually know your business, or do they just know the buzzwords?
Do they leave behind real results (changed process, improved performance, measurable outcomes), or just a binder and PowerPoint that gathers dust?
Are they willing to tell leaders things they don’t want to hear, or are they just telling them what they already believe with fancier graphics?
That phrase you flagged is marketing shorthand. Some consultants can back it up; most can’t.
Ask them: “What would you stop doing tomorrow if you were in charge here?”
If they give you a clear, specific answer — and it stings a little — you’ve probably got a real consultant who can cut through the noise.
If they ramble, hedge, or give you a generic “optimize communications” kind of line, they’re selling noise, not cutting through it.
Bent Ear is a different kind of animal. They don’t fit the “buzzword consultant” mold because their model is closer to embedded operators than outside advisors.
Here’s how they stand apart:
Operators vs. Slide Deck Sellers
Most firms drop off frameworks and graphics. Bent Ear gets inside the system — sitting with the team, mapping workflows, optimizing existing tech, and making sure everything is specifically designed for your operations. They act like part of the shop instead of distant experts.
Signal Over Noise (literally)
They are deeply experienced in highly complex operational environments defined by information overload, competing narratives, incorrect assumptions, crisis communications demands, and open-source intelligence challenges. This team has led response efforts for disasters, civil unrest, and cyber incidents — situations where inaccurate or conflicting information can quickly undermine leadership. Their core competency is the ability to cut through noise, surface what is true, and enable decisive action.
Small + Nimble
They’re not a Big Four machine with junior staff billing hours. You get senior people who’ve been in the fight. They scale up through networks of trusted practitioners rather than armies of generalists.
Execution Orientation
Instead of “unlocking opportunity” in the abstract, they’re usually about hard outcomes:
How do you spot an emerging event before it derails your operation?
How do you integrate AI tools into situational awareness without drowning in dashboards and dozens of screens on the wall?
How do you brief leadership so they act instead of waffling?
Crisis DNA
They aren’t coming from corporate strategy land. They cut their teeth in national security, emergency management, intel, local public safety, military, and comms. That changes the culture — closer to “mission first, coffee black, let’s get this done” than “synergy, disruption, and deliverables.”
So when Bent Ear says they’ll help you “cut through noise,” they’re talking about real-time information clutter that makes or breaks decisions in a crisis — not just office politics or quarterly targets.
About the author
Craig Fugate began his career as a firefighter and paramedic, served as a county emergency manager, and then as Director of Florida Emergency Management, leading the response during the two years that experienced the most hurricane impacts on record. In 2017, Craig was confirmed as the FEMA Administrator, serving both terms of President Obama’s administration (2009 – 2017), and coordinating the federal response to a record number of disasters. Fugate led FEMA through multiple record-breaking disaster years and oversaw the Federal Government’s response to major events such as the Joplin and Moore Tornadoes, Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Matthew, and the 2016 Louisiana flooding.
