Aussie consulting podcast goes viral after snake drops in

The Australian consulting sector has received further worldwide attention – and not this time because of PwC. Rather, a recent podcast filmed by The Strategy Group featured a rather unorthodox guest.

Chronically understaffed despite a recent round of job cuts, Australia’s largest accounting and consulting firms are constantly looking to fill their ranks with overseas talent.

KPMG for example has been proposing a 265,000 increase in the skilled migrant intake over the next five years to address post-pandemic labour shortages and boost economic productivity, with the government since promising to speed up applications for specialist foreign workers.

The job of international recruiters however just got that little bit harder, with one consulting podcast from New South Wales gaining worldwide attention for entirely non-strategic reasons, when a chunky carpet python dropped from the rafters during a filmed interview.

Caught on camera by Sydney-based innovation and experience consultancy The Strategy Group, the video has since clocked up more than a quarter of a million views on TikTok.

Before its brief ‘unravelling’, Strategy Group senior manager David Berigny and colleague Alycia Wolf had been conducting the interview on the subject of environmental data with agri-climate specialist and serial entrepreneur Andrew Ward of Regen Farmers Mutual, presumably from the safety of their Bondi Junction office. Ward was meanwhile zooming in from a country veranda on the NSW Central Coast, back-grounded by some trees and the roof overhead.

Yet, mid-way through Ward’s self-described rant on the “thin curtain of green-washing” of resource-industry funded carbon-brokers, a decidedly not thin, brownish-green python figuratively peaked out from behind the curtains, unfurling from the rafters behind Ward’s back to the particular shock of Wolf.

In true Aussie fashion, Ward shrugged off the encounter with barely a glance over his shoulder, describing the interloper as the resident ‘rodent control officer’.

“I don’t have a name for it, because snakes can’t hear you anyway,” Ward added, before launching straight back into the discussion, with one viewer of the ‘Only in Australia’ footage later asking if they eat huntsman spiders, and another stating he’d be long gone even if its venom was made of ice-cream.

For the record, for any consultants considering a move downunder, diamond pythons are non-venomous, but could easily swallow a pet chihuahua.

Adding to the bulging overseas eyeballs, the incident was followed by the recent interruption of a Brisbane International tennis qualifier featuring former world number 3 Dominic Thiem, due to the on-court arrival of a brown snake, which are most certainly venomous and not dissimilar in appearance to the bundle of court-side audio-visual cables the snake decided to bury itself among for the next forty minutes until it could be safely removed by security.

For those of a conspiracy-bent, Thiem was down a set at the time of the delay before storming back to take the match, while The Strategy Group’s viral video has generated thousands of dollars worth of free publicity.

To add a few more; the consulting firm was founded in 2003 by one-time global Cisco innovation strategy practice lead Jeffrey Tobias, and through its human-centred design approach serves clients in the areas of digital strategy, innovation, employee experience and customer experience.