| Topic Name: |
McKinsey in decline? |
| Message Name: |
My take |
| Date Posted: |
12/28/2005 |
| In Reply To: |
I have an outstanding offer with McKinsey. At a recruiting event someone from another firm told me that McKinsey was losing talent in a rapid brain drain. They quoted an article in a consulting magazine that said that growth had slowed from the heady pre-2002 period (is the firm now shrinking?), that headcount had fallen strongly (attrition increasingly both to other consultants as well as other businesses) and that the culture had become significantly diluted by both new offices as well as a higher consultant to partner ratio. McK has always attracted me as the ultimate brand name to put on my CV, but this made me worried in a whole host of ways. Any views out there from McK or others?
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| Message: |
1. I would not worry so much about changes over the last few years or about comparison to other firms
a. I talked once with a 1970s era employee who had the same concerns as me in terms of the recommendations being skewed and the arguments/analyses having tendancy for tendentiousness vice logical examination.
b. The issue wrt growth/shrinking points out that the job has risks associated with recession. I would not put faith in blithe statements based on this year's practices
I would hope that less of this is going on then in teh past. And anyone who thinks that McK did not do layoffs but just "normal up or out" is drinking Kool-aid. Anyways, "normal up or out" was completely de-emphasized or minimized as an issue in 1999 in recruiting discussions. (commence with the ad hominem claims that I'm embittered here...:))
c. If you're going to do MC, it's still a damn good place to do it at. It's premier. Don't go to another firm unless you know strongly that you want to do a specialized industry or fuinction that is done better at other firms. Just realize that many of the (valid) criticisms of MC apply to McK as well. Here I mean things like point 1.a, lifestyle, etc. Not crap like expense padding or sweating the budget--that's a valid criticism for the IT shops, not McK.
2. From other people's comments: I think too much emphasis is made on "distinctive work" or even "impactful* work". It ends up being 50 cent word put on things that don't justify it often. There is a lack of hard-nosed, frank assessment of what does/doesn't justify such praise. Also, the tendancy to use opaque language or overblown consulting language contributes to a culture that does not pursue things to ground truth. In addition, often "distinctive" really means faddy, wrong, Lowell Bryant type work. Also, "being impactful" can drive teams to minimize doubt when making recommendations. There used to be a comment on the performance evals about the desirability of eschewing caveats.
I actually think that many "classic business situations are complex and that better issue analysis would be helpful to actually creating some economic value. As an example look at organizational work. There is a lot of classic work in this field that McK teams are blithely unaware of. In addition this is an area where there are distinct disadvantages of any scheme and where it is not just a matter of an Excel spreadsheet to calculate what is the best way to go. But I did not see teams pursue these issues thoughtfully. In general companies rearrange deck chairs periodically and thoughtlessly and McK plays into that tendancy.
3. I agree with the general concern that many of the top clients for McK went downhill badly while McK was "on the CEO agenda". Can't say the names, but it's most of the big bankruptcies of the last few years. (Aenecdotal) for the one who was McK's top client at that time, I was told by one of the CST that he felt that we were destroying value there. It's too bad because I think that McK could drive value if they just did good work. And the issue with destroying value is not McK's fees but flawed advice, contributing to agency effect, etc.
*hate that word
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