6 ms·
How McKinsey infiltrated the world of global public health
- creddit 7y agoI can’t believe this article was written and now published in a relatively well known publication. It basically starts with the premise that consultants are evil and then writes as though they are doing terrible, nefarious things by existing in a particular industry without ever really spelling out any nefarious doings in that industry. What a rag.
- corporate_shi11 7y agoI can believe it. Most "journalism" today is glorified blogging, the venting of emotion laden opinion, griping, etc. And all the "mainstream" pseudo-journalists seem to be of one mind.
- tvanantwerp 7y agoIt's Vox, so I find this scenario very believable.
- thinkingkong 7y agoGenuine question. I get the world is turning against management consulting but what is up with all these mckinsey articles? Knowing how PR works Im having a tough time believing about a dozen outlets all decided to write and release investigative articles within the same month.
- vernie 7y agoIt's just the news cycle. I think McKinsey in particular is in the spotlight because of Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign and his former employment there.
- atlasunshrugged 7y agoI doubt it's specifically a Dem play, I think more likely they had a couple of negative pieces, it established a trend, and more and more journo's are jumping on it
- BitwiseFool 7y agoIn my own anecdotal experience - having worked with McKinsey consultants closely - I'm more than happy to upvote criticisms of them and how they operate.
- sho 7y agoPlease include Deloitte in that animus. And even worse, Bain. They are kids doing school projects. Nothing more, nothing less. And you know what - they're smart kids! But still kids. The more sinister aspect is that management consultancies are the equivalent of basic training for the elite. It's a club, an extension of elite university, which by now is basically just a club too [1]. It's simply the next level in the game. The truly rich don't need to pass this level but the general managerial class does. After that, they're loosed on the world, with predictable results. [1] Which is more desirable, a Harvard degree without the education, or a Harvard education without the degree?
- jaclaz 7y ago>They are kids doing school projects. Nothing more, nothing less. And you know what - they're smart kids! But still kids. This description matches perfectly my own (brief) experience on a project with Deloitte.
- JSeymourATL 7y ago> what is up with all these mckinsey articles? Democrat politics at play. A significant progressive faction is trying to take down Buttigieg, tarnishing his good guy image. Lazy Journos buy-in. It has all the elements of a great story-- an Elite, Secretive Consulting firm doing the dirty work of evil Corporate America. Classic Fear, Greed, and Power stuff.
- dls2016 7y agoSo NYTimes started an investigative process a year prior to Buttigieg's exploratory committee? Amazing... and doubly so since the NYTimes isn't exactly a champion of progressive democrats. The less nefarious answer is that these big investigative pieces follow a pattern. The original journalists publish a series of articles, then start writing a book. Meanwhile, other journalists pick up the thread. Sometimes this happens simultaneously because other journalists hear about the investigation and talk to the same sources.
- naravara 7y agoWe're in the middle of a big cultural reckoning with the "business friendly" or "win/win economics" ethos of management consulting having been the guiding star for most large public service and non-profit organizations for the past few decades. Anand G's "Winners Take All" summarizes the problems with this approach and his arguments in that book are slowly becoming more mainstream. On top of that, Pete Buttigieg's status as a McKinsey alum running for President makes it particularly salient.
- supercanuck 7y agoComeuppance.
- refurb 7y agoIt is a little odd. Some organization hires a consulting firm, no coercion or anything. Organization gets output and either acts on it or not. Some consulting firms produce great work, some produce terrible work. How is this news?
- danso 7y agoThose organizations include governments and global corporations. Why wouldn't the aspects of their decision making process be news?
- refurb 7y agoBecause it's the same old things that's always been happening? Maybe my question would be - why is it news now?
- danso 7y agoBecause it's literally "news", in the sense that the definition of news includes something that is newly discovered, regardless of how long it's been happening? So maybe the better question is: why was it newly discovered now? The Internet makes the details of investigations and court cases easier to disseminate and systemically track, for starters. Another factor may be that the company has recently entered an era when it has significantly expanded its influence, and/or has trended toward the kind of performance that becomes controversial and litigious: https://twitter.com/i_m_m/status/1202641126362091523 https://twitter.com/i_m_m/status/1202641126362091523 Some excerpts from this Twitter thread: > The first crack came in 2009 when the SEC charged a colleague I liked, Anil Kumar, with insider trading. Anil was a partner; the partners fired him immediately. The following year he pled guilty, paid a huge fine, but never seriously repented. > The Firm went into crisis mode. In 2014, Dominic Barton became Managing Director. He set out to clean up the scandal and fix the professional culture that tolerated felonious behavior among senior partners. How has that worked out > As he took over, a book exposed bad McKinsey advice. At Enron, a former partner was in jail. The Firm-advised Time Warner AOL merger was a disaster. The advice to GM re Japanese competition had failed. The Internet? Mobile Embarrassing.
- danso 7y agoThe first major investigation into McKinsey ran a year ago. Here's the NYT's explainer about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/reader-center/mckinsey-hedge-fund-reporting-investigation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/reader-center/mckinsey-he... > *The most basic question we set out to answer was this: Did McKinsey’s pristine reputation as the foremost purveyor of “best practices” match its record? After nearly a year of reporting, we found that the answer was often no. Every recent ICE investigation is related to an ongoing major story: - Chinese global economic policy: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/world/asia/mckinsey-china-russia.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/world/asia/mckinsey-china... - The opioid crisis: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/business/purdue-pharma-mckinsey-oxycontin-opiods.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/business/purdue-pharma-mc... - ICE: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/us/mckinsey-ICE-immigration.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/us/mckinsey-ICE-immigrati... - Rikers Island prison: https://twitter.com/i_m_m/status/1204793794975141890 https://twitter.com/i_m_m/status/1204793794975141890 The more recent spate of McKinsey articles are related to the fact that Pete Buttigieg has entered the top tier of presidential candidates, and McKinsey is his third other job on the resume. It's not tough to believe if the investigative hypothesis is correct: that McKinsey is the goto consulting firm trusted by the world's most powerful governments and companies when it comes to decisionmaking.
- droopyEyelids 7y agoAnd even in the specific random example of Buttigieg: He was at McKinsey working for Loblaws (canadian grocery store) on pricing strategies, and afterwards Loblaws was convicted of price fixing. Of course Mayor Pete wasn't responsible, but it's still not a good look for McKinsey.
- claudeganon 7y agoSince whatever his actual work was is still covered by NDAs, we can’t actually say whether or not he had any involvement with price fixing. I don’t really think we should take him (or any other politician) at their word on this kind of stuff.
- peruvian 7y agoProbably because Pete Buttigieg used to work there.
- sailfast 7y agoThe title of this article is "How McKinsey infiltrated the world of Global Public Health" and the straight answer is: "The WHO hired them, and sometimes the Gates foundation prefers their money is used to hire consultancies" Because management consultancy = conspiracy is the new fad I guess? Hell, they even mention Accenture as one of these "secretive" orgs. Clearly they don't understand the business. The article continues to talk about how WHO hires consultants to do jobs that consultants are typically hired to do, and then states "how these secretive businesses, which mostly profit from serving corporate interests, are shaping global public health is an open question — and one that’s hard to answer." Next breaking story on Vox: "How are these shadowy, secretive [insert private held company in any industry] typically profiting from corporations impacting [other big thing they also do work in]." Hard pass. EDIT: None of the above is saying that consultancies are the best use of this money to achieve impact, of course, or that this model yields out-sized results, or an endorsement. It's on the person that hires them as to what they do with the advice and let them do within your org. My comments are rather an indictment of the tone of the argument for click bait and distraction from the main issues that are really important, like how to effectively eradicate disease with a pile of money.
- kyleblarson 7y agoThis is Vox after all, not a news source.
- o09rdk 7y agoSo, I shared some of your impressions, but also some of what Vox is conveying. Speaking from personal experience, the problem with large public institutions (maybe any institution?) hiring these consultancies is that there's enormous intrinsic pressure to accept their recommendations. Say, public institution X spends exorbitant fees on consultancy Y. Now they're going to choose to ignore the recommendations? If the recommendations are bogus, there will be hellfire about why the public institution is transferring huge quantities of funds to a private organization that is incompetent or sketchy. If the recommendations are not, then there will be hellfire about why the public institution is ignoring the recommendations. As a result, a lot of times there's suspicion that these consultancies are just cover for administration or management making decisions that would be unpopular, controversial, or self-serving. At least in my experience, they're seen as a power grab for those already in positions of power. That is, the consultancy comes in, asks management/admin what they would like to see, and then they put it in the recommendations. Then admin can say "look, we didn't tell ourselves to [do incredibly controversial thing Z, like cut basic staff and give administration big raises], this fully independent third party said to do this." As a result, I think hard questions about what you're getting from consultancies are actually apropos of the Vox article, and relevant to the perception that shady constituencies are somehow hijacking public services for their own benefit. When you pay large sums of money to a consultancy, whose methods are unclear, and have unclear scientific support, and assumes that, e.g., management of publicly traded for-profit companies and management of non-profit government organizations can be treated similarly, it leads to legitimate questions about whose motives are being served. The WHO would have been better off imho convening a special strategy or reform committee made of inside and outside members than something like McKinsey.
- crazygringo 7y agoThe word "infiltrated" in the headline is inflammatory clickbait. It's just a company going after a market, same as their competitors are. You might as well say "Apple infiltrated the world of cell phones" or "Warren infiltrated the presidential race". Totally irresponsible. Shame on Vox.
- rayiner 7y agoAlways interesting to see Gell-Mann at work. My knowledge of public health is indirect, but my dad spent his entire career in that sector. The article's portrayal of the public sector versus the private sector is slanted. Here is a fact that many people don't want to admit but is widely acknowledged within the public health sector: UN organizations like the WHO are indispensable, but also among the most bureaucratic, ineffective, and inefficient entities on the planet. There is a reason that the impetus for hiring McKinsey came from inside the WHO itself. Private-sector organizations like Gates Foundation have been welcomed into the field not only because of their resources, but because of their effectiveness and organizational capabilities. The second point is that governments in developing countries are corrupt and direct aid money is quickly siphoned off and dissipated. The third point, following from the first two, is that the United States' foreign aid efforts have always relied heavily on consultants and public-private partnerships, and have been extremely effective. Say, for example, USAID wants to address infant mortality in Bangladesh. It doesn't give money directly to Bangladesh. It gives money to a consulting firm, which hires "boots on the ground" (doctors, etc.) and secures supplies. USAID and the consulting firm then work closely with the health ministry in Bangladesh to execute the vaccine program. This structure works quite well: in Bangladesh, for example, it has been instrumental in reducing infant mortality and improving family planning. The issue with McKinsey, etc., is not that they're "secretive" or "for-profit entities." It's that they have little experience in the sector compared to specialized consulting companies who have been doing that sort of work for decades.
- sct202 7y agoI don't know if I've been desensitized to large numbers but a large organization like the WHO spending a few million dollars per year on consulting services seems pretty minor.
- jshaqaw 7y agoThe surge of negative articles about McKinsey lately seems to suspiciously benefit a certain Democrat running for President at the expense of another. Call me suspicious but this all seems like a politically coordinated hit job.
- jshaqaw 7y agoI expected the downvotes. I am no McKinsey apologist. I worked there for a short time. I didn't like it and left. I have no illusions about the place. But if you don't know what it looks like when a political campaign generates astroturf coverage of an issue in the press then you are naive.