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Current McKinsey here. I don’t think anyone expects the current difficulties to last indefinitely. Its fairly well established that consulting struggles during times of economic uncertainty (but does fine when things are outright bad or good).
Would there be any advantage for anyone to state they feel the opposite to your view publicly? Seems like a career limiting move.
You can push much, much more volume and absolute impact through by running big merger integrations, digital transformation, and other large scale change projects at big companies.
It is basically a better business to become something like a premium Accenture, a "get stuff done" kind of consultancy. You can staff an army of junior people for a very very long time on those kinds of projects.
It's just not that easy to keep people staffed on 5-6 person teams solely on 8-12 week pure strategy engagements.
These kinds of projects are also the first discretionary spending yo get cut when times get tough.
If you're going to be focused on the pure strategy work, you'll probably want to stay really really small. We've seen some of this in investment banking with firms like Allen & Co or Qatalyst. Challenge is that consulting doesn't come with scalable monetization via success fees.
It's just not great business to be a boutique consultancy, I think.
Let 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…
Yes, but go on taking the logical steps: why are the regulators in bed with so many of the major funds? You very quickly boil it down to morality and ethics. Americans have a broken ethics code that says the free market magically solves the need for anyone to be a good person - if someone's a selfish ass, the free market and 'competition' will magically fix it. Therefore I can be in bed with whoever I like, whenever…
"Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome" —Charlie Munger (RIP)
Money? Is the answer to your question money?
Let 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…
Current McKinsey here. I don’t think anyone expects the current difficulties to last indefinitely. Its fairly well established that consulting struggles during times of economic uncertainty (but does fine when things are outright bad or good).
Only the bullshit kind of consulting McKinsey is known for, IMO. The value of someone coming in and repeating what the smart folks on the team are saying is no longer there. Plenty of boutique consulting shops are eating just fine right now. Delivering real results/solutions and being a SME is always in demand.
However: 1. The costs are insane and probably we reached the point where the benefits do not justify the prices they are charging. 2. Wfh is a cheat code to get access to cheap tech personnel that is pissed with the RTO of big tech. I keep hearing tech folks working at traditional manufacturing shops remotely these days.
Obligatory John Oliver video on the topic: https://youtu.be/AiOUojVd6xQ?si=anI1_FKkDM4oDI1M
Nothing about John Oliver is obligatory
Talking heads are a cancer upon society.
edit: to the folks responding saying something to the effect of “you don’t know what you’re talking about!” - I could have saved you the trouble and written your responses down ahead of time. They’re trite and reflexive. Oliver is a shill, down to the so-called data. He’s an approved mouthpiece on behalf of the state. He discusses and he frames only what is allowed to be said in a context it’s allowed in, and his edgy woke takes are the complete opposite of. They’re edgy because of how milquetoast the Overton window has become.
Put another way, if you’re in unison cheering for someone who is allowed to have their own TV show, it’s time to ask yourself if you’re being played with bread and circuses. You won’t hear the opposition because, well, in older times and other places they’d be disappeared/imprisoned, but today it’s mostly people like this twat (and yourselves) drowning out the contrarian voices.
Job well done lads.
Consulting is the oldest profession ;)
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
McKinsey isn’t in the auditing business at all. And those that do play both went the other way, transitioning from auditing into consulting. There’s a ton of competition in consulting in general.
This is false, the Big 4 are all in the auditing business, in addition to high-end management consulting.