| Topic Name: |
Mitchell Madison |
| Message Name: |
the truth part IV |
| Date Posted: |
03/26/2001 |
| In Reply To: |
With marchFIRST's stock recently trading under $2, MMG partners have
been given little reason to hope that the stock will rebound enough
to keep the provisional liquidators from performing their duties. In
fact, a number of former MMG partners fear tha t they could possibly
lose their long-awaited third "tranche" - 3.2 million shares of
marchFIRST stock that are scheduled to be distributed later this year
to former MMG partners as the final payoff of the MMG buyout.
To those familiar with the meteoric rise and subsequent fall of the
fiery clan of MMG renegades, such a calamity may seem to be the only
fitting epilogue for the upstart consultancy, whose appetite for
growth ultimately abbreviated its vision and reduc ed its guiding
principles to those grounded in the profession's "hunter model,"
where the central strategy is just "Kill meat!" The fate of the firm
and its shareholders may now disclose a stunning reversal of fortune,
when the hunters became the hunted.
But MMG's high-wire finale is far from the only cliff-hanger in this
rebel tale in which a group of entrepreneurial consultants mounted
consecutive insurrections inside both McKinsey & Company and A.T.
Kearney before founding the firm they would dub Mi tchell Madison
("Mitchell" for the street in upstate New York where the plan was
hatched, and "Madison" for the firm's first Manhattan address).
|
| Message: |
In the years that followed, MMG would enjoy eye-popping growth, while
dazzling on-campus recruits with its provocative vision of a strategy
firm determined to liberate its consultants from a profession's
growing bastion of hierarchical consultancies. M MG was meant to be a
firm where creative thinkers thrived in a freedom-based culture. It
was an inspired vision, but one MMG former partners say became
stifled by a frat house culture and an unyielding drive for growth -
a firmwide mandate that would ulti mately lead to a boardroom scuffle
and the exit of five of MMG's founding partners and directors.
MMG's story is one that speaks to the clandestine and clubbish nature
of partnerships within an industry that's been slow to adopt
professional standards. It's a tale in which MMG consultants become
as much a victim of their firm's appetite for growth as they do an e-
consulting stock bubble.
Hunters & Farmers
"We spent about two years at A.T. Kearney, and then we bought
ourselves out to start Mitchell Madison, and there was one other
person and myself who started the firm in 1994," says Arnab Gupta,
one of the former McKinsey consultants who looms large in the history
of MMG.
Gupta's words would likely be something of a revelation to the firm's
25 other former founding partners who helped establish a financial
services practice at A.T. Kearney before breaking away to form MMG.
But for those who run with the renegades, team spirit has never been
ranked high among consulting's prerequisites.
As the chief architect of MMG's sourcing business, Gupta, along with
MMG partner Vikas Kapoor, is credited with having built the practice
responsible for capturing 50 percent of MMG's annual revenue - a fact
that elevated his and Kapoor's stature withi n the $250 million firm.
Asked about the necessity of instilling shared values or principles
inside the professional services construct, Gupta prefers to boil
down what he views as a firm's critical components.
"In professional services you hire good people, you allow them to
control their own franchises and have them get the clients going, so
they can build it," explains Gupta, who, like a true renegade, once
again broke away from his adopted consutancy, mar chFIRST, and last
May established Zeborg, a marchFIRST spin-off specializing in
business-to-business sourcing. Prior to the sale of USWeb, Gupta
would play a central role in MMG's efforts to evaluate and enhance
its compensation scheme.
|
|
