With labor becoming fungible in the eyes of c-suites, the holders of institutional knowledge are the libraries of the consulting firms. Consulting firms also have tech talent that traditional businesses had no access to in the past, so any large scale data driven related project is done with consultants. However: 1. The costs are insane and probably we reached the point where the benefits do not justify the prices th…
Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?
101–110 of 197 posts
Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's by design. They have few verticals that they focus on and have templates for every situation that might arise. (Former McK SW engineer here)
Would you say McK is the consulting equiv of SAP? Where they push the business into the vertical template vs do the actual legwork to improve the org in the vertical in question?
Don't fall into thinking they just want to make some easy money and don't care about your situation. They most probably saw hundreds or thousands of clients like you, and know that unless you're a unicorn, the "standardized" approach will be better for you - they synthetized it from thousands of engagements to be as simple and as idiot proof as possible. And here I mean idiots on both sides - consultants as well as the client. If you were an unicorn, you wouldn't need to hire McKinsey. Remember, most of us aren't Gates/Jobs/... This is just like tech startups thinking they're an unicorn and spending an absurd amount of effort (and thus money - also opportunity cost) on reinventing the wheel and building for infinite scalability, instead of simply doing what works well for everybody else.
Not saying they don't want money, but their approach to making easy bucks is to add a zero to their quotes, not by not doing anything worthwhile. The quotes seem crazy to us mere mortals, but the clients are usually happy - what's a few million dollars when they helped you save tens or hundreds of millions. You don't care how simple was what they did - you probably tried many times yourself before hiring them, and if they made a stupid thing work, you're grateful.
Sometimes it's really stupid - like a consultant randomly noticing that the client buys protective earplugs from 20 different suppliers while drinking coffee in the common area of 5th branch they're visiting; acting on it and making a much better deal (money and services-wise) with just one or two suppliers globally, and similar kinds of random ad hoc but monetarily significant optimization. That's where the templates come in - if you hire McKinsey they just ask "how do you do X?" - and if you say '"well we don't have a global process for that, each location handles it themselves", their reaction is to implement a template process - and I think that's good. Yes, the branches will scream bloody murder, but the corporate doesn't care - it's not their business to create cultural centers for adults. Create a lifestyle business for yourself if you want that.
Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?
#103The big firms just need to be big and known. There value delivered isn’t in the PowerPoint explaining that cutting costs and increasing revenue will increase profits. The value added is that companies buy a stamp from a famous firm when they deliver staff cuts, reorganizations or other controversial news. As such it doesn’t really hurt to go for scale. They’re a standards org for headcount reduction.
Why though? Why a company with a board, which is already independent, would need some consulting? Isn't the board to convey ideas to CEO?
Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?
#104Let me propose an alternate theory: fines and enforcement have become too small, so-as to become just a cost of doing business . Many of these employees are so-incentivized by fiscal profit that they fail to see the immorality, just seeing opportunity. Maybe if our regulators weren't in bed with so many of the major funds... "If you think there's a solution, you're part of the problem." —George Carlin (Conan O'brien…
Fines are trivial.
Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?
#105Obligatory John Oliver video on the topic: https://youtu.be/AiOUojVd6xQ?si=anI1_FKkDM4oDI1M
Nothing about John Oliver is obligatory
Keep some salt handy.
Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is nobody left, old enough, to remember that the last project with that consulting firm failed.
Are we living in middle ages that electronic records don't exist of what happened in the past engagement. Maybe one can locate the last McKinsey dossier on OneDrive? The problem is and always was of incentives of people involved.
It is also quite difficult to surface useful information amongst all the noise in the giant archive of documents
Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?
#107It was a really interesting place to work at a Software Engineer. It made me understand the business. It made me understand that doing the right thing isn't valued. You do the thing that has the shortest ROI. It also made me realize that it is horrible to build software with people who expect short term deliveries like the usual McKinsey engagement. People who expect that the automation of an Excel file takes the sam…
If you had to fight fires all hours day, night and weekend to keep on top of it, then so what? That’s the job. Getting heart palpitations because the red circle came up on the Slack icon on your screen? That’s the job.
Even with a clear path to a mid-term or even sustainable solution, it was like you weren’t building software but in a constant race to keep ARR ahead of churn, like in Wallace and Gromit where Gromit is frantically laying down track to keep his train going. Does the software even work? Who cares… it’s the $$$ that count.
I wasn’t really built for that, I felt like I was at odds with my own passion and I didn’t really want to put my name to the work I was doing.
Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, a lot of organizations can't do this on their own . Which is why they hire a consultancy. Information is siloed, teams compete rather than cooperate, any team's own dossier is going to be seen as biased and unobjective. There's real value in hiring a neutral, competent vendor to come in, assemble the relevant information using best practices, and present a "dossier" with common-sense conclusions. Then the…
> teams compete rather than cooperate [...] political cover for taking the necessary actions they wanted to in the first place That looks like three deeper problems than the consultants were tasked to solve. (Not only do you have counterproductive, misaligned culture; but even the CEO can't/won't fix it; and the CEO even has to play political games, just to work around the bad culture, for smaller goals.)
No, this is exactly the reason the consultants were hired. Not to solve the cultural problems, but to work the broken process. It's not really in the consultants interest to solve the cultural problems anyway, because it drives repeat business.
Re: Have McKinsey and its consulting rivals got too big?
#109Is it fair to say that ... Consulting is the oldest profession ;)
Some would dissagree. Though i think prostitution comes after politician. /s