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As someone who works at McKinsey I get kind of irritated by this meme. It is objectively and obviously not true for external blame because all work by McKinsey

As someone who works at McKinsey I get kind of irritated by this meme. It is objectively and obviously not true for external blame because all work by McKinsey is NDA’d. you’re almost never allowed to share that McKinsey helped on anything because we want to maintain firewalls between teams working for competitors / vendors / customers internally and externally as much as possible. I don’t really buy it for internal blame either.

arethuza 3y ago
I thought the advice was NDA'd to hide the fact that exactly the same advice was being sold to different organisations?
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  No, not at all. It should not surprise anyone that hiring the same people to solve the same problem at different places will result in similar outcomes frequently.
  - arethuza 3y ago
    Having the same project name and having pretty much the same materials with different customer names was apparently a bit of a give away...
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      I’m not clear what you mean by project name. Perhaps you mean “product” name? In which case… well yeah. Of course.
angoragoats 3y ago
I have several decades of experience as a software engineer and have worked at several different companies that hired management consultants to rubber stamp decisions they had clearly already made. In each case, the company proceeded to deflect blame to the consultants internally, when employees got mad about the decisions. I have heard similar stories from friends and colleagues. So at least your skepticism about internal blame is unfounded. I urge you to consider the ethics of your current employer and consider seeking employment with a different company.
- spopejoy 3y ago
  Are you sure your experience really maps to McKinsey? There are countless garden-variety Office Space bean counter management consultancies that are called in as RIF shock troops etc. My experience with McKinsey is them being strategic consultants to C-suite where nobody is looking to "shift blame" or a docile rubber stamp. They're far too expensive if that's what you're looking for.
  - angoragoats 3y ago
    I don't recall if my experiences involved McKinsey or not. I do understand that not everyone looking for a rubber stamp needs to involve a firm as expensive as McKinsey, however I disagree with the general assertion that they're always too expensive for this. If there are very large amounts of money or very risky behavior involved (e.g. behavior that could trigger an investigation by a government agency), it's sometimes worth paying for the best of the best, so you can avoid any questions along the lines of "why did you use JoeSchmoe's RubberStampsRUs Consulting, when you could have used one of the big firms?"
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      I can’t guarantee that my experience scales to the entire firm but this doesn’t really resonate. I’ve never come into a project with a day one answer. I think the archetypal example of what you describe is organizing layoffs, in which case the company needs to shed heads and needs to know where it can do so. Which is sort of a day one answer. I’ve never touched this sort of thing Personally. I’m not sure who the rubber stamp would be for either. Your subordinates I guess? But that seems not particularly important tbh.
      - angoragoats 3y ago
        I'll just reiterate what I said above, I urge you to consider the ethics of your current employer and consider seeking employment with a different company.
spopejoy 3y ago
When I worked with McKinsey folks (in a group directly under a C-suite who was ex-McKinsey themselves), it seemed pretty clear that for mega-large companies, external consultants can call shots and "get things done" because they don't have to "play politics" and are thus "objective" and thereby, weirdly, more loyal to the company's mission ... than its own employees. It's pretty wild to watch the McKinsey folks break out their lexicon of mental tools and jargon, "design thinking" etc, and often pretty nauseating. But ultimately, it's the fault of big organizations being pathetically ineffective that they write the big checks to McKinsey and others. McKinsey in particular seems to have done a good job projecting themselves as the "strategic" folks in these strategy groups that advise the top brass, pilot innovation groups etc. The other big consultancies seem to specialize differently, for instance Accenture I associate with big ERP integrations and such.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  Mostly accurate. Big expensive C suite mandated consulting group can make things happen when the org is so shibari’d in its own red tape that it can’t do anything. That is the number one reason to hire a consulting team. The projecting thing is, imo, not about optics. It’s just a different product. Accenture is a body shop. McKinsey is mostly just getting a strategy done. It’s transparent in both firms marketing and proposals.

arethuza 3y ago

I thought the advice was NDA'd to hide the fact that exactly the same advice was being sold to different organisations?

jncfhnb 3y ago
No, not at all. It should not surprise anyone that hiring the same people to solve the same problem at different places will result in similar outcomes frequently.
- arethuza 3y ago
  Having the same project name and having pretty much the same materials with different customer names was apparently a bit of a give away...
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    I’m not clear what you mean by project name. Perhaps you mean “product” name? In which case… well yeah. Of course.

angoragoats 3y ago

I have several decades of experience as a software engineer and have worked at several different companies that hired management consultants to rubber stamp decisions they had clearly already made. In each case, the company proceeded to deflect blame to the consultants internally, when employees got mad about the decisions. I have heard similar stories from friends and colleagues. So at least your skepticism about internal blame is unfounded. I urge you to consider the ethics of your current employer and consider seeking employment with a different company.

spopejoy 3y ago
Are you sure your experience really maps to McKinsey? There are countless garden-variety Office Space bean counter management consultancies that are called in as RIF shock troops etc. My experience with McKinsey is them being strategic consultants to C-suite where nobody is looking to "shift blame" or a docile rubber stamp. They're far too expensive if that's what you're looking for.
- angoragoats 3y ago
  I don't recall if my experiences involved McKinsey or not. I do understand that not everyone looking for a rubber stamp needs to involve a firm as expensive as McKinsey, however I disagree with the general assertion that they're always too expensive for this. If there are very large amounts of money or very risky behavior involved (e.g. behavior that could trigger an investigation by a government agency), it's sometimes worth paying for the best of the best, so you can avoid any questions along the lines of "why did you use JoeSchmoe's RubberStampsRUs Consulting, when you could have used one of the big firms?"
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    I can’t guarantee that my experience scales to the entire firm but this doesn’t really resonate. I’ve never come into a project with a day one answer. I think the archetypal example of what you describe is organizing layoffs, in which case the company needs to shed heads and needs to know where it can do so. Which is sort of a day one answer. I’ve never touched this sort of thing Personally. I’m not sure who the rubber stamp would be for either. Your subordinates I guess? But that seems not particularly important tbh.
    - angoragoats 3y ago
      I'll just reiterate what I said above, I urge you to consider the ethics of your current employer and consider seeking employment with a different company.

spopejoy 3y ago

When I worked with McKinsey folks (in a group directly under a C-suite who was ex-McKinsey themselves), it seemed pretty clear that for mega-large companies, external consultants can call shots and "get things done" because they don't have to "play politics" and are thus "objective" and thereby, weirdly, more loyal to the company's mission ... than its own employees. It's pretty wild to watch the McKinsey folks break out their lexicon of mental tools and jargon, "design thinking" etc, and often pretty nauseating. But ultimately, it's the fault of big organizations being pathetically ineffective that they write the big checks to McKinsey and others. McKinsey in particular seems to have done a good job projecting themselves as the "strategic" folks in these strategy groups that advise the top brass, pilot innovation groups etc. The other big consultancies seem to specialize differently, for instance Accenture I associate with big ERP integrations and such.

jncfhnb 3y ago
Mostly accurate. Big expensive C suite mandated consulting group can make things happen when the org is so shibari’d in its own red tape that it can’t do anything. That is the number one reason to hire a consulting team. The projecting thing is, imo, not about optics. It’s just a different product. Accenture is a body shop. McKinsey is mostly just getting a strategy done. It’s transparent in both firms marketing and proposals.