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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

#171

Post by asjldkfin »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #167
asjldkfin wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mcks wasn’t asked for advice on ethics, they were asked advice on increasing sales. If you go to a Tattoo artist and ask for a portrait tattooed on your face, it might be gauche as hell, but that didn’t change the fact the artist might’ve done a great job.

Not even close to a comparable analogy. A better analogy would be yours, but where the ink disappears after 1 day and the person getting the tattoo dies a day later.

No, it’s a perfect analogy, because it illustrates that efficacy is independent of moral perspective.

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

#172

Post by rmrfrmrf »

asjldkfin wrote: post #171
rmrfrmrf wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even close to a comparable analogy. A better analogy would be yours, but where the ink disappears after 1 day and the person getting the tattoo dies a day later.

No, it’s a perfect analogy, because it illustrates that efficacy is independent of moral perspective.

Morality has nothing to do with it. If consulting advice literally bankrupts your company, the advice is trash, full stop.

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

#173

Post by klmadfejno »

andrewem wrote: post #125
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…

“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 ad…

> In what ways do you see McKinsey’s actions with Purdue Pharma as being bad?

I think it's mostly self evident.

> 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?

McK is large and very decentralized, and there's a culture of not talking about work to avoid creating conflicts of interest, so it's easy for one partner to end up doing their own thing in a way that the majority would not agree with. The Opioid work had a spin on it with the rebates that I recall had a mind towards preventing them, but I cannot remember the details so I won't pretend that's supposed to be compelling at all.

The work with Opioids, and I would also call out ICE, were high profile struggles internally that have been addressed numerous times by top level leadership on global calls, in a way that I thought was emotionally empathetic to the situation. Voicing dissenting opinions is encouraged, and I think people were free to voice grievances. They have since created a committee whereby other unrelated partners need to review proposals for ethics before it gets approved.

If you work for facebook, you build facebook. If you work for mckinsey, you may work on improving access to renewable energy, automaker margins, oil and gas marketing, or pro bono human rights work. Most people will fall into one of the neutral categories. To what degree are you accountable for a few guys doing something completely different that have no particular connection to you? I don't know. It's a weird dynamic but I would say "a bit, but less than a more traditional centralized company". I feel convinced that top level leadership is taking reasonable steps to address ethical issues and the the broad general population of the firm wants to encourage this. I don't know if it's possible to fully prevent bad decisions in the long term. From an external perspective, there's always going to be just one McKinsey, and that's tough to reconcile.

I can't say I know anything about Enron.

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

#174

Post by Balgair »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #165
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consultancy sounds fancy, but when it comes down to it it's fairly mundane. I used to be in consultancy as a software dev, it's basically same job, higher cost. But these companies use consultants because they have tons of money but aren't sexy enough to attract internal employees that do the same thing.

> But these companies use consultants because they have tons of money but aren't sexy enough to attract internal employees that do the same thing. Does not sexy mean they are not willing to spend the tons of money they have on internal employees?

One more piece of the puzzle:

Consultants are easy to fire. Depending on the company's policies, local laws, and the internal politics of the organization, a 'real' employee may be a lot harder to get rid of. Consultants are also time/task limited (in theory), while a 'real' employee is not (again, in theory).

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

#175

Post by Balgair »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #114

When company management wants to make a big change they hire consultants to provide cover and justification for it. The consultants role is to agree to and implement whatever the management's desired change is. The consultants exist to provide an air of authority behind the decision and to act as a smokescreen to the employees facing the change. If the plan succeeds, upper management takes the credit. If it fails, th…

Aside: When this occurs, how do the C-suite look at themselves and think that they are the ones in charge? You'd think that they'd just have the ability to do it regardless, but an expensive whipping boy (almost literally) is the better fit. How political is your org such that this even becomes a possibility to contemplate? What terrible lack of communication and respect between layers causes this? (These questions are rhetorical, of course)

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

#176

Post by toby »

a3n wrote: post #129
jcomis wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Since you went there...

"Affect" can also be a noun, referring to behavioral characteristics :)

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

#177

Post by tokai »

iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote: post #93

The war on drugs is responsible for the opioid crisis. Companies psychopathically seek out profits, and need to be kept in check, but that does not diminish the fact that US (and Canadian) drug policy bears direct responsibility for opioid deaths. This kind of news story, while maybe satisfying, is a red herring. As long as addiction is criminalized, and legal drug supplies dont exist, it doesn't matter how many Purd…

The opioid epidemic was started by over prescription of legal opioids. The war on drugs is an inhumane disaster. But the opioid issue is on the US health system.

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

#178

Post by asjldkfin »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #172
asjldkfin wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s a perfect analogy, because it illustrates that efficacy is independent of moral perspective.

Morality has nothing to do with it. If consulting advice literally bankrupts your company, the advice is trash, full stop.

No, the advice Purdue asked for bankrupted the company.

Just like how asking a programmer to build a garbage program doesn’t mean the programmer is trash, it just means the specs are.

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

#179

Post by ves »

klmadfejno wrote: post #120
jancsika wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether this is a bona fide comment or a troll, I love this comment: * quick witted aikido-move-of-a-sentence to accept OP's insult, thereby disarming it * enormous paragraph made up of short, frank, vague sentences with an compelling rhythm of overarching claims that frame the 20-something haircut's ostensible work in a positive light. It's the wrong generation but I'm reading them in Ari Fleischer's no-nonsense, et…

I guess I'm glad you enjoyed my prose so much. All I'm trying to convey is that my day to day is listening to client problems, looking at data, talking to employees, and presenting findings. It's neither a conspiracy, nor a scheme, nor a world of wealthy indulgence. I make a healthy wage, but its likely lower than I could get in tech. Like almost every company in the world, its a normal company.

> Like almost every company in the world, its a normal company.

This in a thread about McKinsey settling for over half a billion dollars over its role in causing the opioid crisis, which is just one of the many, many arrows in McKinsey’s “aiding and abetting horrible shit” quiver. This was literally a conspiracy and a scheme. On just the basis of “harm caused” alone, McKinsey is far from a normal company.

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

#180

Post by toong »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #165
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consultancy sounds fancy, but when it comes down to it it's fairly mundane. I used to be in consultancy as a software dev, it's basically same job, higher cost. But these companies use consultants because they have tons of money but aren't sexy enough to attract internal employees that do the same thing.

> But these companies use consultants because they have tons of money but aren't sexy enough to attract internal employees that do the same thing. Does not sexy mean they are not willing to spend the tons of money they have on internal employees?

They usually want their tech outcomes to be more like Netflix, but they don't want to have a tech-culture. So they bring in the consultants to implement "the digital transformation"!
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