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Genuine 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 tou

Genuine 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 ago
It'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 ago
  I 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 ago
In 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 ago
  Please 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 ago
  So 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 ago
We'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 ago
Comeuppance.
refurb 7y ago
It 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 ago
  Those organizations include governments and global corporations. Why wouldn't the aspects of their decision making process be news?
  - refurb 7y ago
    Because it's the same old things that's always been happening? Maybe my question would be - why is it news now?
    - danso 7y ago
      Because 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 ago
The 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 ago
  And 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 ago
    Since 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 ago
Probably because Pete Buttigieg used to work there.

vernie 7y ago

It'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 ago
I 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 ago

In 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 ago
Please 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 ago
So 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 ago

We'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 ago

Comeuppance.

refurb 7y ago

It 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 ago
Those organizations include governments and global corporations. Why wouldn't the aspects of their decision making process be news?
- refurb 7y ago
  Because it's the same old things that's always been happening? Maybe my question would be - why is it news now?
  - danso 7y ago
    Because 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 ago

The 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 ago
And 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 ago
  Since 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 ago

Probably because Pete Buttigieg used to work there.