McKinsey & Co. Emits the Message “You Are No Longer the Best of the Best”
April 4, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I love blue chip consulting firms’ management tactics. I will not mention the private outfits which go public and then go private. Then the firms’ “best of the best” partners decide to split the firm. Wow. Financial fancy dancing or just evidence that “best of the best” is like those plastic bottles killing off marine life?
I read “McKinsey Is so Eager to Trim Staff That It’s Offering Some Employees 9 Months’ Pay to Go and Do Something Else. I immediately asked myself, “What’s some mean?” I am guessing based on my experience that “all” of the RIF’ed staff are not getting the same deal. Well, that’s life in the exciting world of the best and the brightest. Some have to accept that there are blue chippers better and, therefore, able to labor enthusiastically at a company known as the Big Dog in the consulting world.
Thanks MSFT Copilot. (How’s your security today?)
The write up reports as “real” NY news:
McKinsey is attempting to slim the company down in a caring and supporting way by paying its workers to quit.
Hmmm. “Attempting” seems an odd word for a consulting firm focused on results. One slims down or one remains fat and prone to assorted diseases if I understood my medical professional. Is McKinsey signaling that its profit margin is slipping like the trust level for certain social media companies? Or is artificial intelligence the next big profit making thing; therefore, let’s clear out the deadwood and harvest the benefits of smart software unencumbered by less smart humans?
Plus, the formerly “best and brightest” will get help writing their résumés. My goodness, imagine a less good Type A super achiever unable to write a résumé. But just yesterday those professionals were able to advise executives often with decades more experience, craft reports with asterisk dot points, and work seven days a week. These outstanding professionals need help writing their résumés. This strikes me as paternalistic and a way to sidestep legal action for questionable termination.
Plus, the folks given the chance to find their future elsewhere (as long as the formerly employed wizard conforms to McKinsey’s policies about client poaching) can allegedly use their McKinsey email accounts. What might a person who learns he or she is no longer the best of the best might do with a live McKinsey email account? I have a couple of people on my research team who have studied mischief with emails. I assume McKinsey’s leadership knows a lot more than my staff. We don’t pontificate about pharmaceutical surfing; we do give lectures to law enforcement and intelligence professionals. Therefore, my team knows much, much less about the email usage that McKinsey management.
Deloitte, another blue chip outfit, is moving quickly into the AI space. I have heard that it wants to use AI and simultaneously advise its clients about AI. I wonder if Deloitte has considered that smart software might be marginally less expensive than paying some of the “best of the best” to do manual work for clients? I don’t know.
The blue chip outfit at which I worked long ago was a really humane place. Those rumors that an executive drowned a loved one were just rumors. The person was a kind and loving individual with a raised dais in his office. I recall I hard to look up at him when seated in front of his desk. Maybe that’s just an AI type hallucination from a dinobaby. I do remember the nurturing approach he took when pointing at a number and demanding the VP presenting the document, “I want to know where that came from now.” Yes, that blue chip professional was patient and easy going as well.
I noted this passage in the Fortune “real” NY news:
A McKinsey spokesperson told Fortune that its unusual approach to layoffs is all part of the company’s core mission to help people ‘learn and grow into leaders, whether they stay at McKinsey or continue their careers elsewhere.’
I loved the sentence including the “learn and grow into leaders” verbiage. I am imagining a McKinsey HR professional saying, “Remember when we recruited you? We told you that you were among the top one percent of the top one percent. Come on. I know you remember? Oh, you don’t remember my assurances of great pay, travel, wonderful colleagues, tremendous opportunities to learn, and build your interpersonal skills. Well, that’s why you have been fired. But you can use your McKinsey email. Please, leave now. I have billable work to do that you obviously were not able to undertake and complete in a satisfactory manner. Oh, here’s your going away gift. It is a T shirt which says, ‘Loser@mckinsey.com.’”
Stephen E Arnold, April 4, 2024
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