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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

#261

Post by arrosenberg »

refurb wrote: post #108
cochne wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate, they could be both ineffective and harmful. Just because they succeeded in getting the company to do something, that not mean it was the right thing. The sale of the drugs could have produced a net loss as well as harmed the people who bought them.

Ineffective = “having no effect” Harmful = “having a negative effect” How can they be both?

With a comma? Ineffective doesn't mean no-effect, it means 'not the intended effect'.

I.E. "McKinsey worked with Purdue to implement an ineffective business strategy that resulted in bankruptcy for the business, due the harmful nature of the product and the predatory nature of the strategy."

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

#262

Post by LatteLazy »

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…

Sometime (often in my limited experience) they do the same in order NOT to change. My employer before last Brough consultants in to see how they could improve. Employees listed the same things as we're listed 3 years previous when the same exercise came in. No action was taken, just lots of considering and discussions.

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

#263

Post by 2112 »

aisengard wrote: post #156
mola wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If a consultant is being brought in to do a job you think you should be doing yourself, then who really has the bullshit job in this instance?

Context : "Bullshit Jobs: A Theory is a 2018 book by anthropologist David Graeber that argues for the existence and societal harm of meaningless jobs. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless, which becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth. Graeber describes five types of meaningless jobs, in which workers pretend their role is not as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber

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

#264

Post by Frondo »

jankyxenon wrote: post #217
Maarten88 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a discussion on the experiments by Stanley Milgram about obedience to authority, and it applies here. When a consultant gets hired for advise or to "get stuff done", and the result of this is massive profits with a secondary effect of death and destruction, then the consultant is (i.m.o.) morally responsible for that second part as well. And, it seems, legally as well (but let me guess nobody goes to jail).…

Are Instagram engineers partly responsible for depression among teens?

The Facebook engineers who tweaked the news feed to change the ratio of positive to negative news absolutely are partly responsible for that.

Remember this one?

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinke...

> In an academic paper published in conjunction with two university researchers, the company reported that, for one week in January 2012, it had altered the number of positive and negative posts in the news feeds of 689,003 randomly selected users to see what effect the changes had on the tone of the posts the recipients then wrote.

> The researchers found that moods were contagious. The people who saw more positive posts responded by writing more positive posts. Similarly, seeing more negative content prompted the viewers to be more negative in their own posts.

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

#265

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

Terretta wrote: post #64
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what I call “decision insurance” (“but our consultants confirmed this made sense!”) so decision accountability is laundered, everything makes much more sense. I hear this all the time but it sounds like an urban myth. I highly doubt someone is not getting fired because the consultants they hired fucked up. They're still responsible for the business. I think consultants can help more with the "we need to do X, Y, Z"…

> hear this all the time, sounds like an urban myth I didn’t hear it. I’ve spent years as an L3 (CEO is L1) of one of the largest enterprises in the free world, interacting with other enterprises at that level, and collaborating with all the top consultancies’ teams that work at that level. My take is while not always the case, the higher level the committee approving the consulting spend (because even that choice/de…

I won't doubt your experience. I'm sure it has happened, but I've been in some pretty high up areas as well.

> My take is while not always the case, the higher level the committee approving the consulting spend (because even that choice/decision is diffused), the more frequently this is involved.

It sounds this has more to do with the clout of the individual than it does "oh well mckinsey said this."

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

#266

Post by trhway »

jancsika wrote: post #106
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…

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…

>the many troubling associations McKinsey has had with shithole companies.

not only shithole companies. At the total service of shithole governments:

"McKinsey Bans Moscow Staff From Attending Pro-Navalny Protest

...

In line with policy, McKinsey employees must not support any political activity either publicly or privately. This ban does include posts in social media featuring your political views or your attitude to any action with a political flavour. This line of conduct is mandatory. "

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/01/23/mckinsey-bans-mosc...

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

#267

Post by ihaveajob »

I know someone who worked for McKinsey for a few years, and some of the projects he described were straight up slimy. The one I recall right now was helping a big payday lender (read: large scale loan shark) figure out how to get their money back from people who were behind on their payments. The problem was that they can only attempt to withdraw so many times from someone's bank before they're banned, so the agreed solution was to estimate the best time of the month when the client had received their paycheck, but before they had used it to pay rent and other expenses.

This person is no longer working there, and I'm not surprised.

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

#268

Post by SMAAART »

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.

ORLY?

Sauce?

I have worked in Management Consulting, not with MK, but I have worked with MK alumni and in engagements where MK was there before us.

TL;DR: I respect their work, take the price tag away since it's meaningless. Running a business is hard, Management Consulting is also hard. Unbeknown to most people, Consulting companies also - often - execute, and there's something to be said about an outsider doing the heavy lifting, dirty work, and be the garbage person.

If that comes with a fancy label, well.. there's a price for that too.

Amen.

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

#269

Post by csharptwdec19 »

jancsika wrote: post #106
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…

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…

> Ari Fleischer

Honestly I got more of a '1 life is a tragedy, 1million lives is a statistic' vibe from GP

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

#270

Post by Closi »

Balgair wrote: post #174
lotsofpulp wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

I think this is mixing up 'Management Consultants' vs 'Engineering Consultants/Contractors'.

I'm a (supply chain) consultant which is similar and have a full time contract and full worker protections with my employer. Projects are sold on a fixed price basis, so there isn't anybody to fire - clients are buying the work output or report, not the person or set hours. Some projects are time & materials, but if the project gets cancelled I'm still getting paid - I have a full time contract.

As an example of the value prop - I come with information that your company doesn't necessarily have. Let's say you need to expand your existing (15 year old) miniload ASRS and are locked in with the incumbent provider - I know up-to-date market rates for miniloads and racking, and will be better able to credibly negotiate it down to market rates (particularly as I have probably done a project with the vendor before). I will also be better able to tell you if there is a better solution to expanding the ASRS because, while this is a '1 in 10' year activity for the client, this is what I do every day. Maybe they would be better putting some shuttles in a separate ASRS fed by the miniload because the actual bottleneck is throughput/accessions instead of storage, and their stock profile is different to what it was 15 years ago? They are better than me at running their warehouses, but (hopefully!) I'm better at specifying automation.

So that's the value proposition of consulting - you can get access to very specific expertise that you don't need for long. Most companies don't need a full time expert on specifying warehouse automation!

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