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McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

reuters.com

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Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#121

Post by joshgachnang »

andreilys wrote: post #58
klmadfejno wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a 20 something McK consultant with a $10 haircut. Maybe $20 with tip. Or $0 now, because it's done at home. I post this fairly frequently, but here we go again. Business is hard. Change is hard. Consultants get a lot of shit for saying things that someone lower in the org could have told them. That's not evidence of abuse, that's evidence that your org isn't working well. A lot of the time substantial portions of…

”Bringing in consultants is, among other ways, a way to bring in people who can get shit done, moving bricks at lower levels of the org with the political mandate of the top” It seems more likely that it’s a politically expedient way to get cover for a decision (in other words CYA insurance). If the plan fails, blame the consultants. If it works, take credit for having brought them in. It also puts more pressure on e…

Yup, freelance software dev here, and I've been that consultant before for a large healthcare company. They had a new VP and he wanted to make changes to the app and org but needed a report from an external consultant to CYA. He already knew what he wanted the report to say and was not subtle on it. I talked to a couple people in the org, wrote a quick report basically signing off on his plan, and got paid handsomely. Thankfully, what he wanted to do was IMO correct, but the whole thing was ridiculous. They tried to bring me back to lead the dev team but I wasn't super interested in dealing with those politics.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#122

Post by volta83 »

mola wrote: post #81
klmadfejno wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a 20 something McK consultant with a $10 haircut. Maybe $20 with tip. Or $0 now, because it's done at home. I post this fairly frequently, but here we go again. Business is hard. Change is hard. Consultants get a lot of shit for saying things that someone lower in the org could have told them. That's not evidence of abuse, that's evidence that your org isn't working well. A lot of the time substantial portions of…

No one wants to believe they have a bullshit job. So we usually tell our selves nice little fairy tales to overcome this cognitive dissonance. Truth is, McK and the like, are there just to give mediocre leaders an extremely expensive psychological crutch needed when human beings face uncertainties. Now that these consulting agencies are the behemoth they are, it's mainly corrupt leaders that are being "pursuaded" to…

> Oh and ppl like you are just cheap "brains" to give the optics of credentials for this sordid affair.

100% whataboutism, and I'm not defending the OP or McK, but I wonder what you think of the PhD "brains" hired at Google that end up being in charge of implementing a menu in Google Carplay.

What are they?

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#123

Post by Ericson2314 »

andreilys wrote: post #58
klmadfejno wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a 20 something McK consultant with a $10 haircut. Maybe $20 with tip. Or $0 now, because it's done at home. I post this fairly frequently, but here we go again. Business is hard. Change is hard. Consultants get a lot of shit for saying things that someone lower in the org could have told them. That's not evidence of abuse, that's evidence that your org isn't working well. A lot of the time substantial portions of…

”Bringing in consultants is, among other ways, a way to bring in people who can get shit done, moving bricks at lower levels of the org with the political mandate of the top” It seems more likely that it’s a politically expedient way to get cover for a decision (in other words CYA insurance). If the plan fails, blame the consultants. If it works, take credit for having brought them in. It also puts more pressure on e…

Taking a step back, McKinsey can exist in it's current form, as a nurse for these elderly giants, because of the lack of anti-trust.

If we had real competition, there would be more money to be made knocking the giants down than trying to keep them in their walker.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#124

Post by alex_anglin »

samizdis wrote: post #14
onetimemanytime wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, considering the damage they caused this is nothing. They advised on /got and got paid for how to "turbocharge" opioid sales and that tuned out to be an illegal and immoral thing.

I'd be keen to see the specifics wrt advice given on how to "turbocharge" said sales. Reuters article doesn't give any examples/detail.

Many details have been published in the media. For instance: "Documents filed in U.S. courts last year outlined how McKinsey discussed ways for Purdue to “turbocharge” sales of its drug OxyContin, including paying Purdue’s distributors a rebate for every OxyContin overdose attributable to pills they sold."

source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-mckinsey-is...

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#125

Post by andrewem »

klmadfejno wrote: post #39
tharne wrote: post #4

Too bad they can't be sued for ruining countless businesses with mindless self-serving "advice" meant to do nothing more than get their contracts re-upped. The whole business is a scam built around sending in some 26 year-old with an Ivy League degree and $100 haircut to regurgitate snippets from articles in HBR.

I'm a 20 something McK consultant with a $10 haircut. Maybe $20 with tip. Or $0 now, because it's done at home. I post this fairly frequently, but here we go again. Business is hard. Change is hard. Consultants get a lot of shit for saying things that someone lower in the org could have told them. That's not evidence of abuse, that's evidence that your org isn't working well. A lot of the time substantial portions of…

“Opiod work was bad though, let's not avoid that.” Great, so let’s not avoid that - with your insider perspective:

In what ways do you see McKinsey’s actions with Purdue Pharma as being bad? In what ways were they typical of McKinsey’s behavior with other clients? In what ways do you see the actions with Purdue as being exceptional for McK? What factors allowed the company to act as it did? Have those factors been addressed? How do the events with Purdue show what has and hasn’t changed since McKinsey’s deep involvement with Enron?

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#126

Post by spamizbad »

alisonkisk wrote: post #89
pm90 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Opiod work was bad though, let's not avoid that. Sorry that’s all you have to say about your employer quite literally supercharging the opioids pandemic causing unimaginable pain and destruction across America? “It was bad though.” Let me tell you some hard truths. If you’re 20 something you don’t know Jack shit about running a business and the only reason you’re there is because the C Suite wants to “de-risk” thei…

The point is that you can't say that McKinsey are incompetent and not worth the money, while at the same time saying they are so competent that they created the opiod epidemic. It makes you look silly. Doing good economic work for bad people is a (gigantic) ethical flaw, but not a problem with the economic quality of the work and skillset.

Opioids pretty much sell themselves. You just need permission to sell them more loosely.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#127

Post by dreen »

sharkweek wrote: post #10

The absolutely most fascinating part of this is learning how McKinsey has long argued that making recommendations that businesses may or may not act on does not create legal liability (until this). I’m trying to see that argument applied in any other instance and it becomes totally ridiculous. “You see, your honor, I merely suggested to my client that he kill his neighbor in order to take his land, I didn’t think he’…

Yeah, if "simply carrying out orders" is not an appropriate defence then "simply given advice on orders" isn't either. Both are caught in the gravitational field of the guilt of the person in the middle.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#128

Post by Terretta »

klmadfejno wrote: post #96
bob33212 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words your clients have incompetent executives and instead of suggesting those people be replaced you do their work for them since they are the ones paying your fees.

> clients have incompetent executives Nope. I don't agree with this at all. I'm saying, 100% clarity, that business is really hard. Working with a large organization is really hard. Many cultures are very rigid. People are quick to comment about the intricacies of team dynamics, but hand wave the larger org stuff. There's a tough doublethink whereby I might say its not that hard to play the role of an upper level exe…

Whose fault are all these “hard” negatives you keep citing? Why are they not universal?

Try “five whys” and see where you end up.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#129

Post by a3n »

jcomis wrote: post #102
klmadfejno wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is, by the nature of a partnership, how it affects partner compensation.

Not really. This likely will not effect partner comp. It will effect the firm, but partners will spin it as the guilty parties are gone and the leaders need to be retained (through comp!) to right the organization. The low levels will absorb it through lower comp. I've worked in consulting for years and no matter what happens, EVER, partner comp is NEVER effected. They will hem and haw about it, discuss it, maybe mak…

Nit:

"Effect" is an Entity, a noun. They both start with "E."

"Affect" is an Action, a verb. They both start with "A."

Effect is sometimes used as a verb, especially in bureaucratese, but not in the way you're using it.

With apologies.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#130

Post by asjldkfin »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #117
asjldkfin wrote: post #15

It's funny reading comment here saying how "Consulting is useless BS" whilst also condemning them for "turbocharging Opioid sales"

Personally I don't know too much about this case. But courts can find corporations liable, even if they did a terrible job. It's the same logic as putting the getaway driver in jail for attempted robbery, even if they dropped the clutch and stalled the car. McKinsey could have done a terrible job but also been liable according to courts (who probably just assume white-shoe consultants did a good job anyway).

There’s a difference between a criminal and civil case.

Crimes are boolean, civil is proportional in terms of punishment. Nobody is going to jail, so this is a civil case.

If you break your neighbour’s car, you pay more if it’s a BMW than if it were a Kia.

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