It's funny reading comment here saying how "Consulting is useless BS" whilst also condemning them for "turbocharging Opioid sales"
Slinging dope isn't exactly rocket science.
McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source
191–200 of 572 posts
Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source
#192Through all of this, no one has received any jail time. That's the biggest crime.
Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source
#193Too 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…
Was the bread price fixing good work?
Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source
#194Earlier 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…
It seems more likely that it’s a politically expedient way to get cover for a decision
That's certainly one of the reasons you would bring in consultants.
I think critics of consultants are, in general, too quick to dismiss the monetary value of political lubrication. If it's going to get your management hierarchy to admit there's a problem at all, or if it's going to get your management hierarchy out of a deadlock, that's worth something. If your organization is able to actually focus on the problems despite the politics, you are probably not a a typical McKinsey/Bain/BCG/etc. customer.
With maybe one exception, none of the consultants I know ever fit the mold of a fresh-out-of-college generalist who thinks their frameworks and raw intellect will help them come up with better answers than a specialist could. They mostly all understood that their jobs were to escort boring, good enough ideas through the boardroom politics. And that was often something they were good at, and they were often acutely aware that some people in those companies already had the answers but the organization was too dysfunctional to recognize the fact.
That's the core of the problem anyway. But naturally they'll sell you a lot of other promises and products, and those are where I think management consultants are the wrong answer. Just hire real specialists.
The other problem I have with management consultants is that I feel they, both the companies and many of the individuals, are too amoral to be healthy for society, but that's not about their competence.
Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source
#195The 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’…
One would have thought that at least one person on their in-house counsel team would have heard the term "civil conspiracy" before.
Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source
#196Too 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…
Can we just keep it real instead of spouting this garbage. I've worked alongside and gotten close with consultants on the business/management side having been one in software myself.
99% of the consultants who come in are human Powerpoint/Email factories who just happen to have the skill/trait of being extremely insistent. They push exactly what their client wants to hear and are not doing groundbreaking worldchanging work.
In fact in almost every case I worked on, most of the team had literally NEVER done any work in the clients field before, and never performed in the functional role they were being assigned to outside of maybe the partner or project leader assigned to the case who likely had a PHD/MD of some kind in the related field.
As others said, they are there as an insurance policy to throw blame.
Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hear this one pretty often. I'm sure it happens to some extent. But flip the perspective there. You're talking about a a company that is so dysfunctional its leaders can't make decisions on their own. Getting stuff done there sounds pretty difficult to begin with. If stuff gets done, that's valuable. That's part of what I'm saying. Business is hard.
They parrot back exactly what the business wants to do. I’ve seen it in action. Rarely do they ever say anything that’s truly business changing.
"Business changing" in this context would seem to mean "actually getting anything done at all", ie pushing back against the bureaucracy. See also "meets expectations" -> firing line, "exceeds expectations" -> kept on.
Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source
#198The 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…
BREAKING NEWS:
Through budget reconciliation, House Democrats legalized fentanyl in the food supply and elevated junkies to protected class status.
We now expect everyone to turn into Lycurgus of Sparta.
Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Programmers who build garbage are part of the problem, no?
Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
”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.
Uhh, I'm not sure what to think of this, but I initially took "walker" to mean "baby walker". The comparison seemed fair for a second, considering old myths about giants and lowered intelligence. Then the "elderly" part properly carried across and I realized, oh.
But still. Hmm.