7 ms·

In some cases the customer is just looking to put a veneer on a decision they already made. The big 4 name is what they're deliberately paying for.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Another rôle they play is a kind of out-in-the-open corporate espionage. You pay them to come in and tell you what the "best practices" are in your industry (i.e. effective new things your competitors have been doing since the last time they came to visit you—and they'll learn some new ones from you to tell your competitors, next time)
- _carbyau_ 4y ago
  Oh, so they increase productivity across the industry, thus leading to wage rises for employees, increased margins for company profits and a higher GDP for the country.... right? (Off to dig my tongue out of the deep hole in my cheek.)
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Didn't necessarily say it was bad. It's a bit like the Japanese R&D-pooling system post-WWII, in some ways, and AFAIK that worked great. Just unofficial, and with a profit margin. [EDIT] Well, and also it's not kept within the host country, but exports those ideas & methods globally.
kennend3 4y ago
AS someone who has both read the book and interacted with "big 4" names a few times this is going to be one of those "underrated" comments you sometimes see here. At my previous place of employ they made some really terrible decisions which ended up costing a LOT of money later. Their response was classic "the design was vetted by McKinsey".. No.. you sent them what you wanted to do, they told you what you wanted/needed to hear and now you are deflecting your decisions.
- azemetre 4y ago
  I worked for a health insurance provider that paid BCG $1mil to confirm that we should be using agile in our org. It took BCG a month to do their "study." We were already using agile in our org, but nice to know some incesteral relationship between directors/VPs were able to make a nice pay day.
  - kennend3 4y ago
    > nice to know some incesteral relationship between directors/VPs were able to make a nice pay day. you should read the book.. The industry is rife with this type of behaviour. There are always stories about how "senior manager" X is basically a shadow employee. While they work for company "Y" their real job is to send business to the consulting mother ship.
    - azemetre 4y ago
      I think I will now. I can't find the comment now, but there was a similar conspiracy about ex-Amazon Managers being paid to force their new employers to adopt AWS on one of the programming subreddits.
      - toyg 4y ago
        There is usually no forcing: they are typically hired because of their AWS knowledge - the business has already decided to go AWS, the new hire is doing what he's expected to do.
    - throwaway202212 4y ago
      This really sounds like a conspiracy theory. That being said, McKinsey (and presumably BCG and Bain) very much embrace their employees leaving to join their clients. It creates a good "referral" network if you will. But more than that, I don't buy it.
      - kennend3 4y ago
tequila_shot 4y ago
This. They are just a rubber stamp on some of the shitty decisions that management makes.
kneebonian 4y ago
This was one of those big eye opening moments for me. Consultants are hired mercenaries in coporate warfare, they don't care about you, they don't care about your company or the rivalries or the squabbaling. You pay them a bunch of money to come run roughshod over your enemies by producing reams of analysis and Powerpoints, to fling the arrows of jargon, and lay siege to your enemies employees by endlessly trapping them in meetings and then they depart. Consultants are brought in to secure your flank, to provide air cover and to act as disposable pawns in interoffice combat. They are not brought in to solve problems, to find solutions, or because of their incredibly acumen. It's because they have no loyalty or love but money.
- luckylion 4y ago
  So everyone pays them and whoever pays them the least ends up with them wreaking havoc on their company by "helping" them to "improve" things?
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Amazing, I'll have to save this quote.
- bps4484 4y ago
  "Consultants are hired mercenaries in coporate warfare, they don't care about you, they don't care about your company or the rivalries or the squabbaling." "They are not brought in to solve problems" I've known people that worked for consultancies and the biggest value add they think they have brought is when the problem is the rivalries, politics, and squabbaling has led to inaction and they've needed outside support to come in who don't care about these things. Perhaps we should hope for companies to have leadership teams where they are able to cut through this intransigence, but unfortunately all too often with old companies stuck in their ways this isn't the case.
  - freetinker 4y ago
    They might see their role as brilliant mediators facilitating action by settling feuds using 2x2 matrices, but I think that's naive at best, disingenuous at worst. They care about the agenda of the person they've been hired by. Usually a C-level agenda-setter or someone influential in the org, and often a McK "alum". And speaking of action, they have zero stake in the actual implementation of what they proselytize. All this isn't to say that they don't provide value. Exchange of money is usually is a reasonable signal of providing value, and these firms and its employees do reliably well in that area. However, the narratives around what value strategy consultants provide I find to be truthy, but not actually true.
KineticLensman 4y ago
I have worked as a consultant, but not for the one of the big 4. We understood that we were often being used to develop an 'independent' perspective that would support a decision that had essentially already been made or disprove a rival decision. We also were fully aware of the old joke that a consultant is someone who borrows your watch and then tells you the time. We sometimes deployed this ourselves with customers, and extended it to say that unlike our rivals, we would actually point out how late you were and how to get back on track. [Edit] We sometimes found ourselves supporting one of the big 4 companies (as domain experts). We were often amazed by the quality of the A team that they would deploy to win the work, compared with the B or C team that would then actually execute it (often bright but junior staff).
- xapata 4y ago
  I'd extend the joke with, "You're wearing it upside-down." It's never ceased to amaze me how incompetent large organizations can be.
AlexandrB 4y ago
I had an Econ prof who described his consulting business as: 1. Coming into the company and gathering information from the low-level staff. 2. Presenting the information to management. 3. Collecting $1000/hr or more for his trouble. Basically information washing to get execs to accept information that they would normally ignore. I wonder how much of this kind of thing goes on in industry.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  haha, I definitely saw some of that at Amazon This highly-paid factory efficiency expert was enthusiastically explaining how he works. "You just listen to the workers. They know where the inefficiencies are"
  - UK-Al05 4y ago
    That's lean.
    - globalise83 4y ago
      Not really, lean would be listening to the workers
  - pempem 4y ago
    No matter how many times you recommend managers do this very thing, they do not.
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullsh... Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs elaborates on this
  - ianmcgowan 4y ago
    I've worked with senior managers who have zero regard for the knowledge of the people doing the work. It might be those workers don't have some over-arching conceptual framework for how the company works, but they do have intimate and sometimes deep knowledge of what they do all day. And not taking advantage of that is a huge blind spot.
Loic 4y ago
In fact they have a name for it internally: "Cover my ass assignment". Just come to provide the results the boss wants to have for him to rubber stamp and justify the cost cutting.
- tyingq 4y ago
  "scapegoat as a service" is another common nickname for it.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Yep. The ability to say "the design was vetted by McKinsey" is exactly the cover that they were being paid to provide.
mbesto 4y ago
Furthermore, they're trying to convince someone else (usually a boss) of a theory/idea/strategy that they might have but don't have the resources/rapport/etc. to demonstrate it's effectiveness.
kriro 4y ago
That's exactly my experience in Europe. We want to fire 50 people/close a factory/whatever without blowback...let's hire McK to tell us to do exactly that. I've also had some experience working for a smallish company with very big clients and they sometimes insisted on having an IT-Consulting company like Capgemini as a middleman. That's the biggest nightmare because they were always a net-negative from my POV...integrating them was just extra work and they provided no value except for their brand name to make the client feel at ease.
game_the0ry 4y ago
This has been my experience when the company I work for engages with an external consultant. Managers look for validation from an external source so that: - when things go well, they can take the credit, or - when things go bad, they can blame the consulting company. Grubby business if you ask me.
7thaccount 4y ago
This. They also sometimes just interview employees and write a report about what they heard. That should be easy for the company to do lol.
bane 4y ago
I'd say companies like this are a scam, but they're only half a scam -- half the customers know exactly what they're getting. The other half haven't figured it out and think they're getting top-tier stuff and end up with life destroying garbage like your employee performance system or a citywide trash crisis? [1] Do you need to spend millions to justify an inevitable decision but blame the hired guns for it? Hire McKinsey. Do you need to spend millions for severely overworked junior grade consultants and offshored "experts" to provide you with objectively terrible advice and create an opioid epidemic? Also hire McKinsey! [2] 1 - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/nyregion/new-york-city-trash-mckinsey.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/nyregion/new-york-city-tr... 2 - https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/opioidfacts https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/opioidfacts
mayankkaizen 4y ago
I have worked in a third-grade infrastructure company in India. Everyone in top management (including founder) was corrupt. Their business practices were always about bribing, siphoning off investors money, inflating assets, money laundering and so on. When it was trying to go public, it hired one of 'big 4' to do the auditing and other due diligence. Once it went public, that agency was fired (2 years after going public). With in 6 years, that company became bankrupt. Everyone knew that one of 'big 4' was hired to make the prospects of going public legit and credible. That consulting firm made things look right in exchange of big bucks.
darkstar_16 4y ago
This. Big 4 consultants are also needed by law or by convention in a lot of places for auditing and such tasks. If it's for actual consultancy services, the decision has already been made. Having a Big 4 company "sign" and provide authority on a decision a manager has already made, just makes it an easier sell to his/her higher ups.

yamtaddle 4y ago

Another rôle they play is a kind of out-in-the-open corporate espionage. You pay them to come in and tell you what the "best practices" are in your industry (i.e. effective new things your competitors have been doing since the last time they came to visit you—and they'll learn some new ones from you to tell your competitors, next time)

_carbyau_ 4y ago
Oh, so they increase productivity across the industry, thus leading to wage rises for employees, increased margins for company profits and a higher GDP for the country.... right? (Off to dig my tongue out of the deep hole in my cheek.)
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Didn't necessarily say it was bad. It's a bit like the Japanese R&D-pooling system post-WWII, in some ways, and AFAIK that worked great. Just unofficial, and with a profit margin. [EDIT] Well, and also it's not kept within the host country, but exports those ideas & methods globally.

kennend3 4y ago

AS someone who has both read the book and interacted with "big 4" names a few times this is going to be one of those "underrated" comments you sometimes see here. At my previous place of employ they made some really terrible decisions which ended up costing a LOT of money later. Their response was classic "the design was vetted by McKinsey".. No.. you sent them what you wanted to do, they told you what you wanted/needed to hear and now you are deflecting your decisions.

azemetre 4y ago
I worked for a health insurance provider that paid BCG $1mil to confirm that we should be using agile in our org. It took BCG a month to do their "study." We were already using agile in our org, but nice to know some incesteral relationship between directors/VPs were able to make a nice pay day.
- kennend3 4y ago
  > nice to know some incesteral relationship between directors/VPs were able to make a nice pay day. you should read the book.. The industry is rife with this type of behaviour. There are always stories about how "senior manager" X is basically a shadow employee. While they work for company "Y" their real job is to send business to the consulting mother ship.
  - azemetre 4y ago
    I think I will now. I can't find the comment now, but there was a similar conspiracy about ex-Amazon Managers being paid to force their new employers to adopt AWS on one of the programming subreddits.
    - toyg 4y ago
      There is usually no forcing: they are typically hired because of their AWS knowledge - the business has already decided to go AWS, the new hire is doing what he's expected to do.
  - throwaway202212 4y ago
    This really sounds like a conspiracy theory. That being said, McKinsey (and presumably BCG and Bain) very much embrace their employees leaving to join their clients. It creates a good "referral" network if you will. But more than that, I don't buy it.
    - kennend3 4y ago

tequila_shot 4y ago

This. They are just a rubber stamp on some of the shitty decisions that management makes.

kneebonian 4y ago

This was one of those big eye opening moments for me. Consultants are hired mercenaries in coporate warfare, they don't care about you, they don't care about your company or the rivalries or the squabbaling. You pay them a bunch of money to come run roughshod over your enemies by producing reams of analysis and Powerpoints, to fling the arrows of jargon, and lay siege to your enemies employees by endlessly trapping them in meetings and then they depart. Consultants are brought in to secure your flank, to provide air cover and to act as disposable pawns in interoffice combat. They are not brought in to solve problems, to find solutions, or because of their incredibly acumen. It's because they have no loyalty or love but money.

luckylion 4y ago
So everyone pays them and whoever pays them the least ends up with them wreaking havoc on their company by "helping" them to "improve" things?
moffkalast 4y ago
Amazing, I'll have to save this quote.
bps4484 4y ago
"Consultants are hired mercenaries in coporate warfare, they don't care about you, they don't care about your company or the rivalries or the squabbaling." "They are not brought in to solve problems" I've known people that worked for consultancies and the biggest value add they think they have brought is when the problem is the rivalries, politics, and squabbaling has led to inaction and they've needed outside support to come in who don't care about these things. Perhaps we should hope for companies to have leadership teams where they are able to cut through this intransigence, but unfortunately all too often with old companies stuck in their ways this isn't the case.
- freetinker 4y ago
  They might see their role as brilliant mediators facilitating action by settling feuds using 2x2 matrices, but I think that's naive at best, disingenuous at worst. They care about the agenda of the person they've been hired by. Usually a C-level agenda-setter or someone influential in the org, and often a McK "alum". And speaking of action, they have zero stake in the actual implementation of what they proselytize. All this isn't to say that they don't provide value. Exchange of money is usually is a reasonable signal of providing value, and these firms and its employees do reliably well in that area. However, the narratives around what value strategy consultants provide I find to be truthy, but not actually true.

KineticLensman 4y ago

I have worked as a consultant, but not for the one of the big 4. We understood that we were often being used to develop an 'independent' perspective that would support a decision that had essentially already been made or disprove a rival decision. We also were fully aware of the old joke that a consultant is someone who borrows your watch and then tells you the time. We sometimes deployed this ourselves with customers, and extended it to say that unlike our rivals, we would actually point out how late you were and how to get back on track. [Edit] We sometimes found ourselves supporting one of the big 4 companies (as domain experts). We were often amazed by the quality of the A team that they would deploy to win the work, compared with the B or C team that would then actually execute it (often bright but junior staff).

xapata 4y ago
I'd extend the joke with, "You're wearing it upside-down." It's never ceased to amaze me how incompetent large organizations can be.

AlexandrB 4y ago

I had an Econ prof who described his consulting business as: 1. Coming into the company and gathering information from the low-level staff. 2. Presenting the information to management. 3. Collecting $1000/hr or more for his trouble. Basically information washing to get execs to accept information that they would normally ignore. I wonder how much of this kind of thing goes on in industry.

Firmwarrior 4y ago
haha, I definitely saw some of that at Amazon This highly-paid factory efficiency expert was enthusiastically explaining how he works. "You just listen to the workers. They know where the inefficiencies are"
- UK-Al05 4y ago
  That's lean.
  - globalise83 4y ago
    Not really, lean would be listening to the workers
- pempem 4y ago
  No matter how many times you recommend managers do this very thing, they do not.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullsh... Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs elaborates on this
- ianmcgowan 4y ago
  I've worked with senior managers who have zero regard for the knowledge of the people doing the work. It might be those workers don't have some over-arching conceptual framework for how the company works, but they do have intimate and sometimes deep knowledge of what they do all day. And not taking advantage of that is a huge blind spot.

Loic 4y ago

In fact they have a name for it internally: "Cover my ass assignment". Just come to provide the results the boss wants to have for him to rubber stamp and justify the cost cutting.

tyingq 4y ago
"scapegoat as a service" is another common nickname for it.
SoftTalker 4y ago
Yep. The ability to say "the design was vetted by McKinsey" is exactly the cover that they were being paid to provide.

mbesto 4y ago

Furthermore, they're trying to convince someone else (usually a boss) of a theory/idea/strategy that they might have but don't have the resources/rapport/etc. to demonstrate it's effectiveness.

kriro 4y ago

That's exactly my experience in Europe. We want to fire 50 people/close a factory/whatever without blowback...let's hire McK to tell us to do exactly that. I've also had some experience working for a smallish company with very big clients and they sometimes insisted on having an IT-Consulting company like Capgemini as a middleman. That's the biggest nightmare because they were always a net-negative from my POV...integrating them was just extra work and they provided no value except for their brand name to make the client feel at ease.

game_the0ry 4y ago

This has been my experience when the company I work for engages with an external consultant. Managers look for validation from an external source so that: - when things go well, they can take the credit, or - when things go bad, they can blame the consulting company. Grubby business if you ask me.

7thaccount 4y ago

This. They also sometimes just interview employees and write a report about what they heard. That should be easy for the company to do lol.

bane 4y ago

I'd say companies like this are a scam, but they're only half a scam -- half the customers know exactly what they're getting. The other half haven't figured it out and think they're getting top-tier stuff and end up with life destroying garbage like your employee performance system or a citywide trash crisis? [1] Do you need to spend millions to justify an inevitable decision but blame the hired guns for it? Hire McKinsey. Do you need to spend millions for severely overworked junior grade consultants and offshored "experts" to provide you with objectively terrible advice and create an opioid epidemic? Also hire McKinsey! [2] 1 - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/nyregion/new-york-city-trash-mckinsey.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/nyregion/new-york-city-tr... 2 - https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/opioidfacts https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/opioidfacts

mayankkaizen 4y ago

I have worked in a third-grade infrastructure company in India. Everyone in top management (including founder) was corrupt. Their business practices were always about bribing, siphoning off investors money, inflating assets, money laundering and so on. When it was trying to go public, it hired one of 'big 4' to do the auditing and other due diligence. Once it went public, that agency was fired (2 years after going public). With in 6 years, that company became bankrupt. Everyone knew that one of 'big 4' was hired to make the prospects of going public legit and credible. That consulting firm made things look right in exchange of big bucks.

darkstar_16 4y ago

This. Big 4 consultants are also needed by law or by convention in a lot of places for auditing and such tasks. If it's for actual consultancy services, the decision has already been made. Having a Big 4 company "sign" and provide authority on a decision a manager has already made, just makes it an easier sell to his/her higher ups.