Amusing Moments in Business Analysis
April 27, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I noted two interesting examples of business analysis crashing into reality. I like to visualize the misstep as a well-dressed professional slipping in a doggy deposit and creating a “smelly shoe in a big meeting problem.”
Let me explain the two examples.
The first is MBA baloney about business change or as it is now jargonized “transformation.” If you are a bit rusty on business baloney, a quick look at the so-far free “Organizational Change Management: What It Is & Why It’s Important.” But McKinsey, a blue chip consulting company with a core competency in opioid-related insights, published its version as “What Is Business Transformation?”
The write up says:
Research by McKinsey has long documented that enterprise-wide transformation is difficult, with less than a third of transformations reaching their goals to improve organizational performance and sustain these improvements over time.
I found this recommendation notable:
Many transformations are enabled by a central transformation office (TO), with the CTO at the helm.
As I recall, McKinsey allegedly worked two sides of the street; that is, getting paid to advise certain companies and government agencies about the same subject. I won’t go into details, but the advice proved problematic, and some connect McKinsey’s input with the firm’s efforts to change.
So, does McKinsey have a chief transformation officer? It appears that a Microsoft veteran occupies that position at the venerable, bluest of the blue chip consulting firms. However, this professional has two jobs according to the McKinsey blog. But I thought the chief transformation officer had to operate according to the precepts outlined in the “What Is Business Transformation?” article? Now the job is not just transformation; it is platform. What does platform mean?
Here’s the answer:
Jacky will accelerate this work by helping our firm further leverage technology in our client work and innovate new platforms to help client organizations transform and grow. She will also lead McKinsey’s internal technology team, which serves our more than 40,000 colleagues across 66 countries.
Does this mean that McKinsey’s chief transform officer has to do the change thing and manage the internal technology staff globally?
If I keep in mind the chilling factoid that one third of transformation efforts fail, McKinsey has to focus to make the transformation work. The problem is that, as I understand how the McKinsey and other blue-chip experts operate, is that incentive plans for those leading practices allow the loose confederation of “partners” to hit their goals. In order to hit those goals, partners will have to generate money in ways that are known to work; for example, work for industry, work for the government, heck, work for any entity with the ability to pay.
Will McKinsey change under the firm and informed hand of a chief transformation officer? Not unless that “hand” writes specific incentive plans to cause change from the pocketbook outwards. I wonder whether McKinsey will be in the 33 percent failure set? ‘
The second example comes from Mr. Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. The essay (not real news in my opinion) appeared in the April 21, 2023 edition. The article’s title was “Justice Thomas and the Plague o Bad Reporting.” The author, according to my dead tree edition of the newspaper, is James Taranto, who is the Journal’s editorial features editor. What’s amazing about this essay is that it criticizes other “real” news outfits for their coverage of what appears to be some dog-doody moments for one of the Supreme Court justices. Pardon the pun, but I don’t have a dog in this fight.
What caught my attention is that the essay makes zero intellectual vibration of a sentient being in the wake of the Rupert Murdoch settlement of the Fox News and Dominion matter. Paying about a billion dollars for exactly the type of “real” news the WSJ essay addresses makes clear that more than the Foxy folks are intellectually dishonest. Amazing.
Net net: Two classy outfits, and each is happily, willingly writing baloney. Transformation without altering executive compensation plans and excoriating other publications for bad reporting illustrates the stuck dials on some organizations’ ethical compasses. I hate to repeat myself, but I have to end with: Amazing.
Stephen E Arnold, April 27, 2023
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One Response to “Amusing Moments in Business Analysis”
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Both links go to the Harvard Business article. I think you intended the second link to go to this article: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-business-transformation
The 2 quotes you pull go to the McKinsey article.