More Inside Dope about McKinsey & Company
April 23, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
It appears that blue chip consultants are finding some choppy waters in the exclusive money pond at the knowledge country club.
“I Was a Consultant at McKinsey. Here’s the Frustrating Way They Pushed Me Out” reveals some interesting but essentially personal assertions about the blue chip consulting firm. McKinsey & Co. is associated in my mind with the pharmaceutical industry’s money maker, synthetic opioids. Living in Kentucky, evidence about the chemical compound is fairly easy to spot. Drive East of my home. Check out Nitro, West Virginia, and you can gather more evidence.
ChatGPT captures an elite group pushing someone neither liked nor connected out the door. Good enough.
The main idea of the write up is that McKinsey is presented as an exclusive club. Being liked and having connections are more important than any other capability. A “best of the best” on the outs is left marooned in a cube. The only email comes from a consultant offering help related to finding one’s future elsewhere. Fun.
What’s the firm doing in the first quarter of 2024? If the information in the Business Insider article is on the money, McKinsey is reinventing itself. Here are some of the possibly accurate statements in the article:
- McKinsey & Co. has found easy consulting money drying up
- The firm is downsizing
- Work at McKinsey is mostly PowerPoint decks shaped to make the customer “look good”
- McKinsey does not follow its own high-value consulting advice when it comes to staffing.
What does the write up suggest? That is a question with different answers. For someone who has never worked at a blue chip consulting firm, the answer is, “Who cares?” For a person with some exposure to these outfits, the answer is, “So what’s new?” From an objective and reasonably well informed vantage point, the answer may be, “Are consulting firms a bunch of baloney?”
Change, however, is afoot. Let me cite one example. Competition for the blue-chip outfits was once narrowly defined. Now the competition is coming from unexpected places. I will offered one example to get your thought process rolling. Axios, a publishing company owned by , is now positioning its journalists as “experts.” Instead of charging a couple thousand of dollars per hour, Axios will sell a “name brand expert,” video calls, and special news reports. Plus, Axios will jump into the always-exciting world of conferences in semi-nice places.
How will McKinsey and its ilk respond? Will these firms reveal that they are also publishing houses and have been since their inception? Will they morph into giants of artificial intelligence, possibly creating their own models from the reams of proprietary reports, memoranda, emails, and consultant notes? Will McKinsey buy an Axios-type outfit and morph into something the partners from the 1960s would never recognize? Will blue-chip firms go out of business as individuals low-ball engagements to cash-conscious clients?
Net net: When a firm like McKinsey finds itself pilloried for failure to follow its own advice, the future is uncertain. Perhaps McKinsey should call another blue chip outfit? Better yet, buy some help from GLG or Coleman.
Stephen E Arnold, April 23, 2024
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