No matter where you work or what role you might be in, here’s something you never want to hear from the CEO: “We’re bringing in an outside consultant because to get fit as an organization, [we’re] actively looking for ways to make process and structural changes to our business that will allow us to work more efficiently, with more scale.”

So it goes at Yahoo, where Chief Yahoo (yes, that is his real title) Jerry Yang has enlisted the services of Bain & Co. to look at the business and give some advice on what can be done.

Yang clearly needs some new ideas because the old ones, like putting the company through a massive reorganization, haven’t done all that much to prop up a business model that’s struggling to compete against the likes of Google.

As the Good Morning Silicon Valley blog noted, this exercise seems to be the preamble to Yahoo getting rid of more people. It points out the many euphemisms in Yang’s memo, such as “improve and accelerate our performance” and “be more agile in a competitive marketplace,” as tipoffs to Yang’s ultimate goal. It’s also worth noting that when Bain was invited in for a similar benchmarking project at Intel, the consultancy quickly became know as the “TaliBain” for the headcount whacking that ensued.

In fact, Yahoo watchers and Silicon Valley blogs are having loads of fun with this, especially Yang’s notion that the company “needs to get fit as an organization.” One went so far as to hilariously parody Yang as a Richard Simmons wannabe, and put Yang’s “getting fit” pronouncement in the “Grand List of Asinine Corporate Layoff Euphemisms.”

Here’s my problem with all of this: Why does a major company like Yahoo need to bring in consultants to help it do what it already knows it needs to do? As I’ve noted previously, I’d hire a top-notch consultant in an instant to give me some practical, focused business advice. But to just confirm what I already know? What’s the point?

Maybe Bain & Co. consultants will bring something other than a layoff plan to the table, but it’s more likely that they’ll merely reinforce a management decision that’s already been signed and sealed—and just needs to finally be delivered.

“Yahoo really needs to downsize its staff,” said Jeff Lindsay, an analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., quoted on Good Morning Silicon Valley. “At some point, they’re going to be forced to have to take a few thousand staff out.”

If layoffs are that obvious to people on the outside of Yahoo, why can’t Jerry Yang and team just buck up, get some backbone and do the tough stuff that comes with a management role? I’ve written about that before, and my guess is it’s because Yang is spending far too much time agonizing over a decision that he knows he needs to make, but that he doesn’t have the huevos to actually pull off.

Maybe that’s really why Yang has the title Chief Yahoo after all.