Friend of mine was a consultant with one of the big accounting/management firms. If they were brutally honest with themselves, even they would admit the way consulting works is you hire them to do in-depth analysis, they prepare recommendations, you review them and sit on it awhile, then you hire another consultant to do the same thing, you find 70% of what they recommend was in the first report, then eventually you MAY implement 10% of what was suggested after a few years of deliberation.

So they were brought in for a job in one of the Arab countries. Did weeks of data gathering and analysis, and put together their presentation. Had their big meeting to give the presentation to someone with a title something kinda like "king." At the end of the presentation, he nodded, said he liked it, clapped his hands twice, and dismissed them.

The next morning as they are in the airport to go home, they are reading in the local media about all the new initiatives being implemented starting today from their report.

There are lots of bad things about completely autocratic governments, but they sure do move faster than anything we have here.