Ebook The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business, by Duff McDonald
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The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business, by Duff McDonald
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The story of McKinsey & Co., America’s most influential and controversial business consulting firm, “an up-to-date, full-blown history, told with wit and clarity” (The Wall Street Journal).
If you want to be taken seriously, you hire McKinsey & Company. Founded in 1926, McKinsey can lay claim to the following partial list of accomplishments: its consultants have ushered in waves of structural, financial, and technological change to the nation’s best organizations; they remapped the power structure within the White House; they even revolutionized business schools. In The New York Times bestseller The Firm, star financial journalist Duff McDonald shows just how, in becoming an indispensable part of decision making at the highest levels, McKinsey has done nothing less than set the course of American capitalism.
But he also answers the question that’s on the mind of anyone who has ever heard the word McKinsey: Are they worth it? After all, just as McKinsey can be shown to have helped invent most of the tools of modern management, the company was also involved with a number of striking failures. Its consultants were on the scene when General Motors drove itself into the ground, and they were K-Mart’s advisers when the retailer tumbled into disarray. They played a critical role in building the bomb known as Enron.
McDonald is one of the few journalists to have not only parsed the record but also penetrated the culture of McKinsey itself. His access puts him in a unique position to demonstrate when it is worth hiring these gurus—and when they’re full of smoke.
- Sales Rank: #119626 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-09-10
- Released on: 2013-09-10
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Booklist
McDonald is a contributing editor at Fortune magazine and the New York Observer; he has also written for Vanity Fair, New York, Esquire, Business Week, GQ, WIRED, and other publications. His first book, Last Man Standing (2009), delved into the 2008 financial crisis through a profile of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase. In his new one, he examines one of the world’s most influential companies that you probably never heard of, the consulting firm of McKinsey & Company. Ranked among the top-rated consulting organizations for decades, McKinsey & Company has been a top-brass advisor to most of the Fortune 500 corporations at one time or another, though its client list has always been a well-guarded secret. This is a company that has prided itself as having the highest standards in the industry yet has contributed behind the scenes to severe cost cutting and downsizing, acted as enablers to the Enron and General Motors bankruptcies, and seen a former CEO hauled off to jail for insider trading. McDonald’s reporting reveals how and why this Teflon firm has continued to thrive through the years. --David Siegfried
Review
“[T]hought-provoking . . . a fascinating look behind the company’s success. . . . [The Firm] chronicles McKinsey’s rise but also raises an important question about it that is applicable to the entire netherworld of consultants, advisers and other corporate hangers-on: ‘Are they worth it or not?’” (Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New York Times DealBook)
“There have been other books about this American icon, but The Firm is an up-to-date, full-blown history, told with wit and clarity.” (The Wall Street Journal)
“[T]hrough an expert accretion of damning detail, McDonald builds a convincing case that, for better and (mostly) worse, McKinsey became the quintessential American business of the 20th century.” (Bloomberg Businessweek)
"A fascinating account of the rise of McKinsey. If you want to know what it is about the culture of the firm that sets it apart and has made it so successful, read this book." (Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lords of Finance )
“In this highly readable history, Duff McDonald brings us deep inside one of the smartest and most important firms doing business today – a place where no other journalist has taken us before. With his straightforward storytelling and thoughtful analysis, McDonald demystifies the secrets behind McKinsey’s successes and offers concrete lessons on changing companies and practices for the better.” (Jamie Dimon )
"In his superb examination of one of the most powerful, secretive, and least understood organizations on the planet, Duff McDonald finally solves the mystery, in elegant prose, of how McKinsey can be well known without anyone knowing anything about it. Thanks to McDonald, now we do." (William D. Cohan, bestselling author of The Last Tycoons, House of Cards, and Money and Power )
"Duff McDonald's new book about the people who built McKinsey, the consulting firm that has quietly influenced American business for decades, explains the firm's tremendous accomplishments—and its equally stunning failures. As McDonald shows, the firm's greatest success may well be itself. This is critical reading for anyone who wants to understand how the world of business really works." (Bethany McLean, coauthor of the New York Times bestseller All the Devils Are Here )
"McDonald has written the definitive history of McKinsey, and through McKinsey of the entire multibillion-dollar industry that is management consulting. It's a heartbreaking tale of wasted talent." (Felix Salmon, finance blogger, Reuters )
“Timely.… A fast-paced account of a key business institution, its deeds and misdeeds.” (Kirkus Reviews )
“Revealing… McDonald combines a lucid chronicle of McKinsey’s growth and
boardroom melodramas.” (Publishers Weekly )
“[An] admiring book that nevertheless asks hard questions about the organization’s future.” (The Economist)
“McDonald’s reporting reveals how and why this Teflon firm has continued to thrive through the years.” (Booklist)
About the Author
A contributing editor at The New York Observer, Duff McDonald has also written for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, New York magazine, Fortune, and Esquire, among other publications.
Most helpful customer reviews
88 of 113 people found the following review helpful.
lacks insight
By James
This book makes clear that there is no such thing as McKinsey. It changes so quickly that to work there is to touch a moving train. First it's all strategy and no numbers from Harvard Business School, then computers and engineers from all Ivy schools, then scientists and experts of any sex, color or nationality are fine. This is what is known in the trade as dancing between the raindrops. And the storm is getting stronger. It's important to note that as the focus shifts, the people change as well.
In this respect the book was an eye opener and expanded impressions I gathered from my employment there. There wasn't much in the book about how consultants actually work or what the day to day work is like. The perspective of the writer seems to be to blend hero worship with hero dislike. The result is a mishmash of mischaracterizations, probably of little interest to outsiders.
Here is a little peek from my years. You can compare this with what you find in the book to see if it expands your understanding.
I entered the "Firm" as an associate in the early to mid 1970's, a time of turmoil outside and weakness within. As the director of the Washington D.C. office of a minor competitor, I had recently beat McKinsey out of two prestigious assignments in real estate, a field where McKinsey had no credible capability but wanted to establish a foothold. I was also a consultant to the National Academy of Sciences in new town development feasibility. But my employer was sinking fast.
In an initial interview, John Garrity, managing director in Washington predicted that I would be attacked by others in the "Firm" since I insisted on working at least ½ time in real estate and since I was being brought in by an unpopular partner who was essentially banished to the London England office. Nobody made employment contract demands with McKinsey. You were supposed to be glad for any offer of employment. This was, after all, the leading fad employer of choice. We agreed that I would work out of New York. I was not loved there either.
Young college graduates often mistake placement for achievement. You're supposed to be special if you work in New York. Or employment at McKinsey is a putative sign of achievement. These assume that placement in a picture actually signifies something, that without this you have nothing.
Depak Chopra gives a lesson about the nature of a lump of gold. If it is turned into a ring, is used for a tooth or becomes part of a party mask it is always just gold. Employment in a place might eventually assist you in growth, but you're still you. You will become actually aware of this when you leave these places. The real you needs to have the right brand of horse power to succeed.
Soon after being hired I met Marvin Bower when he held a greeting session for new associates. I can still remember his large red nose, slicked back hair and pin striped Capone era suit draped over his huge frame (look for it on Wikipedia), very old fashioned. When he assured us that this employment would not lead to wealth, we all looked at the wall in despair.
The idea of a hair shirt job of service to large corporations wasn't what we had in mind while grinding through our Ivy League MBA's. Ron Daniel, the then New York managing director thought that associates ran to work each morning. It was more like looking around for a while and then running for the door. A component of employment therefore involved pretending that you believed the company orthodoxy.
Bower also emphasized that this was essentially a word and logic shop that had little use for computers. When he said "There are no formulae at the top," I wondered where I would fit in. I was an engineering and MBA finance grad with a heavy career background in computer modeling.
The engagements to which I was assigned mostly had similar characteristics. A conclusion was formed almost immediately followed by months of shaping arguments and data for selling the conclusion to the client, followed by an illusion of verbalization session presented with an overhead projector. The client had no opportunity to preview the analysis. The actual analysis was the sort of weak stuff you would expect from liberal arts graduates with business school degrees, the McKinsey specialty of that era.
In one assignment with the British House of Commons, for instance, we were to determine the feasibility of building a new city near Gatwick Airport. The main analytical team didn't know how to construct a spreadsheet with discounted cash flow, an essential feature of this type of assignment. In another, Certainteed Products wanted to know if they should continue with the development of a resort community that involved high pressure phone sales. When I suggested to the partner that the McKinsey cash flow analysis was flawed by failing to distinguish between cash and installment sales, the response was "Shut up, this division is immoral and should be closed anyway!"
The worst study I witnessed was for the State of New York. Many students were defaulting on student loans. What could they do? The answer was obvious; be stricter with the loans, monitor grades, etc. But this would violate the liberal nature of this team. The result was to tell them after $50 thousand or so that we determined they had a loan default problem and we needed another hundred grand to figure it out. They were not impressed.
The big one for me was Sea Pines, a developer of high end southern U.S. resort properties. We were to determine the financial feasibility of Brandermill, their first primary home community located in suburban Richmond Virginia. A retired Supreme Court justice owned the land.
The rest of the team quickly but informally conceded primarily control of the analysis to me since this was my specialty. After the first week I determined that for Brandermill to break even, everybody who would buy a house in the Richmond Virginia metropolitan area for the foreseeable future would have to buy it here. This development was headed down fast and hard. For a new community to have a 10 percent market capture would be a fabulous success. 110% was ridiculous.
For the next three months, the report was shaped and rewritten many times. Sea Pines had recently been one of the leading employers of graduating students at Harvard Business School. The people running the place were classmates of others on our McKinsey team. This was supposed to be a white shoe rubber stamp of a Sea Pines expansion into the primary home arena. Instead they were headed for insolvency.
Everybody associated with real estate from the senior director down to the lowest research person was released from he "Firm," although not necessarily at the same time. "McKinsey's clients don't go out of business, we make them better, stronger." The underwriters sniffed this all out, analyzed all of the Sea Pines developments and liquidated the company. It's all on line for you to see.
I was informally advised that I might possibly be able to become part of an analytical team in Tanzania. I declined and took a job with a company that previously built the Pan Am building over Grand Central Station. One of their clients was Aristotle Onassis. This was REAL real estate. Snakes in the parking lot in Africa had no appeal for me.
The net from all of this is that the idea of having generalists floating around in multiple fields is ridiculous, as I saw in real estate. All of the other consulting companies I worked in did a better job with real estate than McKinsey. The people might not have been as smart, but they had more depth from specialization. The idea that time at McKinsey leads to executive success is at odds with the facts. A quick scan of the McKinsey alumni directory will reveal that while there are notably successful alums, most are mediocre and many never had another job. The idea that there is a tremendous supporting network of alums is another myth. In the 40 or so years since I left, not a single person from McKinsey or its alums has ever contacted me for anything.
At this point, a career in Silicon Valley holds much more promise. At least if you're going to bust your hump for an employer, it should also hold the prospect of a path to riches. Recent graduates from prestige schools are preferred simply because they are young, dumb and full of............. well, you know. The kind of bookworm students who typically excel in these colleges have mainly spent their early lives perfecting their appeal to little old ladies, feminized males and eccentric loner professors. The resulting social retardation persists about two years into an early career, which is about as much time as a good percentage of associates spends at "The Firm."
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Great book
By Mr D
A must read book for anyone in corporate America. A very interesting and informative book on how to market and insulate yourself from accountability while generating hugh consulting bills from "overpaid, egotistical, insecure and many times ineffective corporate execs". i.e.- Enron, GM, K-mart, Sears, etc.
I learned McKinsey does a fantastic job marketing and networking themselves. When you read about it you'll marvel at how incredibly simple yet extremely effective it is.
Interesting the original founder of the firm took a job as CEO at Marshall Fields in the 1930's and died two years later acknowledging it's much easier to give advice than successfully implement it. It's believed stress was factor in his ailing health. McKinsey is also widely credited for creating the current excessive executive pay programs for CEO's.
It's also been said they accounted for more layoffs in corporate America than any other organization. I wonder if they invented the term "Human Capital" that corporate America is using. Thank you McKinsey!
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
very informative and enjoyable read
By Alastair MacAndrew
This book documents well the beginnings and evolution of McKinsey as a consultaing firm: from providing generalist advise to clients on implementing the multi-divisional and conglomerate structures, from the 1940s to the 1970s, and later, changing its focus to knowledge-based and highly specialized consulting to business, government and other organizations from the 1980s onwards. The author points out the changing strategies but the relatively constant cultural values which drove them: an unrelenting and self-effacing devotion to client needs,selectivity in human resources and clientele, adaptability to changing demands, prizing teamwork over individual achievement, continuous culling of the workforce, and a capacity to bring rigorous analytic thinking to customer's decision-making processes. Side-effects of the company's success have been a large dose of hubris, uber self-confidence and a penchant for seeing themselves as Masters of the Universe.
He also points out that McKinsey managed to deftly balance the two opposing facets of a professional service organization, which are to maintain the professional values of providing sound and objective advise to clients, and at the same time, ensure the economics of the business itself are optimized. This balance was seriously compromised during the 1990s and early noughties, when under the leadership of Rajat Gupta the firm shifted its focus in favor of more commercial goals, and growth at any cost. Quaity was compromised and discontent flowed within its ranks. According to McDonald, these aberrations have since been corrected, although management is still struggling to hone its vision of itself and its future.
Although any consulting firm with over 2,000 assignments/year is bound to have a few failures, the author stresses that in the case of McKinsey these have been egregious: tending to the needs of the iconic GM just before its demise, allowing itself to be caught up in the dot-com bubble, failing to foresee early on the importance of the internet, and indirectly contributing to the systemic real-estate and banking collapse, among others. These are big-picture events which one would expect such a large bevy of world-class thinkers should have foreseen or shied away from. Then there is the continuous nagging critique, especially from the European press, that a large portion of McKinsey's bread-and-butter has come from helping CEOs justify downsizing, i.e. fire lots of people. But, the author concludes, this has not stopped McKinsey's huge client base from continuing to hire its services, nor from it gaining new customers.
Even though he dedicates each chapter ot an individual theme, the author's style is somewhat desultory: switching continuously from criticism to praise, from favorable quotes of journalists to unfavorable ones, from positive to negative anecdotes,etc. Yet, as th author suggests, this is a company hard to pin down, and this style makes the story juicy and more colorful.
In recent years McKinsey has had far more comptetition both for clients and for talent and in some surveys it does not always come out on top vs Arthur Andersen or BCG. ( But in this business, is being the biggest synonymous with being the best? does size matter? and if so, how ? to the benefit or the detriment of the client ? ). The author also observes that the company may not be so succesful in the "modern" world of the Internet, young entrepreneurs, technology firms and others not so inclined to hire the services of consultants. Yet,this whole book reveals that McKinsey has never had a serious problem with strategy or growth, and the author concludes that if it manages to retain its original strong culture as its own internal complexity grows, it will continue to succeed.
The reason why I gave four stars instead of five is because I feel the author needed to include a couple of examples of McKinsey's work, showing their thought-process, procedure, their conclusions and recommendations. Perhaps this may not be possible, but if it is, it would definitely enhance a second edition.
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