As The Guardian explains, McKinsey is the most influential management consulting company in the world. Presidents, kings, and corporations hire them to get their expert advice. When I worked for Bush 1 in the early 1990s, youngsters from McKinsey met frequently in the White House to give advice on education policy; by their age, it was apparent that none had ever been a teacher. McKinsey has been hit with numerous scandals, but nothing seems to stick.
The Guardian article includes a link to John Oliver’s brilliant takedown of McKinsey. Don’t miss it.
Oliver demolished charter schools in 2016. If you missed it, watch it now.
If that link doesn’t work, try this one.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Mayo Pete is a proud McKinsey alum.
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Mayo Pete? Sounds like something Donald Trump would say, obnoxiously using a demeaning nickname (“proud?? alum”) to substitute for a cogent argument as to why that person hates a gay Democrat politician so much and yet has nary a negative word for the now mainstream neo-fascist Republicans who love attacking him and his family.
Pete was recruited to work for McKinsey at 24 or 25! He was a kid. He worked there a handful of years, and was elected Mayor of South Bend by the time he was 29. Pete was interested in public service, not making as much money as he could in a lucrative consulting career.
I don’t hear Pete praising McKinsey and advising young people to go work there. I have heard him criticizing McKinsey for actions long after he left.
Why not go back just a very few years earlier than when he took the McKinsey job? I mean when Pete Sanders won the JFK Profiles in Courage essay contest with his essay about Bernie Sanders. When he decided to run for Mayor, he was likely thinking about Bernie’s trajectory.
From young Pete:
“While impressive, Sanders’ candor does not itself represent political courage. The nation is
teeming with outspoken radicals in one form or another. Most are sooner called crazy than
courageous. It is the second half of Sanders’ political role that puts the first half into perspective:
he is a powerful force for conciliation and bi-partisanship on Capitol Hill. In Profiles in
Courage, John F. Kennedy wrote that “we should not be too hasty in condemning all
compromise as bad morals. For politics and legislation are not matters for inflexible principles
or unattainable ideals.” It may seem strange that someone so steadfast in his principles has a
reputation as a peacemaker between divided forces in Washington, but this is what makes
Sanders truly remarkable. He represents President Kennedy’s ideal of “compromises of issues,
not of principles.”
…….
Sanders’ positions on many difficult issues are commendable, but his real impact has been as a
reaction to the cynical climate which threatens the effectiveness of the democratic system. His
energy, candor, conviction, and ability to bring people together stand against the current of
opportunism, moral compromise, and partisanship which runs rampant on the American political
scene. He and few others like him have the power to restore principle and leadership in
Congress and to win back the faith of a voting public weary and wary of political opportunism.
Above all, I commend Bernie Sanders for giving me an answer to those who say American
young people see politics as a cesspool of corruption, beyond redemption. I have heard that no
sensible young person today would want to give his or her life to public service. I can personally
assure you this is untrue.”
Thank you MayOR Pete, who even at the young age of 18 did not demonstrate the ugly, destructive cynicism of his elders – the very same elders who said sacrificing the one chance in a generation to have a liberal Supreme Court was a small price to pay to achieve their goal of destroying Democratic politicians, like “Mayo Pete” because they are no better than the far right Republicans. Pete’s elders were wrong then and they are wrong now.
I have far more admiration for someone like Pete who walked away from McKinsey than some rich scion with a famous name who spent his 20s (and 30s?) partying and rehab and cheating on wives and living off his famous family’s name who gets a pass for his 3 worst years in his 20s because he hates the Dems as much as they do.
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Thank you, NYC PSP! You saved me the trouble of writing that! Well done!
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Right, the only reason I could possibly hate a guy who worked for a company where selling your soul to the highest bidder is a job requirement is that he’s gay. You guys are brilliant! To think I ever had respect for you bunch of war-mongering genocide supporters.
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I think the real cautionary tail in this case is that companies like McKenzie probe sources in the Democratic Party who might support their practices. I think you are right about Mayor Pete, but the effort to recruit unsuspecting progressives is further evidence that this firm believes anyone is corruptible.
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Young people who get a business degree or law degree compete for a job at McKinsey. It’s prestigious, and they can learn new skills. I don’t think that working there is a lifelong stigma.
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We have no idea why you hate Mayor Pete, since aside from using a demeaning nickname and the ugly and totally dishonest insinuation that any young college grad who gets recruited to work for a consulting firm, and then LEAVES after a few years is evil. Other than that, I can’t even begin to know why you hate Pete B. so much because you never make any cogent argument about his positions or character. You have this weird double standard in which truly abhorrent people who do terrible things are given a pass (“Putin is fighting nazis in Ukraine”) as long as you see them as your allies as destroying the Democratic party. You reserve your hate for people like Pete B who do nothing to deserve it, and excuse the actions of people who are such destructive forces in this world.
It is shocking to hear this person – a war-mongering defender of Putin’s genocide against the Ukraine people – accusing others of doing what she does. Right out of the Republican playbook.
But sure, Pete B. is the real problem, not your right wing Republican buddies you keep normalizing, and their best pal Putin.
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He did a great job.
It’s not just McKinsey. Almost all of these consulting firms are made up of bs artists. More often than not, management brings them in because they have already made up their minds to take some unpopular course of action, and they want someone else to blame it on, and these guys are the experts at bullshitting—at producing long, complex reports that say a) the obvious or b) whatever it was you wanted them to say or c) whatever will lead to more work for them. Management consultants are especially good at the last of these. The most important section is always the “Next Steps.” $$$$$$$$$$$
I worked for one of these outfits for a while. Yes, there are examples of highly competent, experienced businesspeople who can offer good advice. Then there are these bullshit artists and their teams of recent b-school grads with clipboards. And their usual job is eliminating jobs. Bucketloads of them.
One exception to all that: six sigma and lean quality control consultants. The best of these people can make huge differences for the better. I’ve done that, too.
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From Walt Bogdanich’s highly recommended “When McKinsey Comes To Town”:
One college graduate clarified for Bogdanich and Forsythe the differences between McKinsey and the investment bank Goldman Sachs, which is often competing to hire the same top-performing business school graduates with less of the “values” nonsense. At Goldman, “There was never ever, ever an attempt to be anything other than what they were — ‘We are the sharks and that’s why we are the best and everyone wants to work here because we are the sharks,’” the graduate said. “And that’s refreshing. No one was lying to themselves at night.”
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I worked in commercial banking for many years, first as an auditor and then as a business loan officer. It took at least five years of on-the-job experience and mentoring by talented people before I really knew what I was doing enough to be able to lead projects on my own. Hiring inexperienced, unproven young people – whatever their academic credentials – to advise people who much experience and many accomplishments has always struck me as absurd, whether that’s in education, banking, or any field.
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You nailed it, Nate. In business and in teaching, it took a LONG TIME before I knew what I was doing. I was lucky out of the gate in business, but really, I wasn’t ready to give anyone advice about anything at the beginning. But there is a LOT that younger people can learn from older ones. That mentoring is extraordinarily important. For example, Bill Grace, my boss at Allyn & Bacon, taught me how to do the analyses to see if a new educational textbook product was going to fly. His prognostications were breathtakingly accurate? Why? He knew what he was doing, over years of experience, and he was able to teach this.
And yet he remained humble. He told us all in a meeting once, “You might all wonder about the secret to my success. Here it is: I hire people who are smarter than I am and get the hell out of their way.”
I loved that guy, and I learned a lot from him.
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Bill Grace lived up to his last name. Cultured but not pretentious. Deeply experienced and learned about the publishing business and willing to take the time to mentor young staffers like me. I learned so much from this man. Grateful for the role he played in my life.
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“You might all wonder about the secret to my success. Here it is: I hire people who are smarter than I am and get the hell out of their way.”
–an exact quote from my first Principal in a public school.
He was, of course, a horrible liar. He was the smartest one there.
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Same with Bill. LOL.
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Just think of all the knowledge, skill and talent that retired teachers have. It’s unfortunate that we haven’t found a way to use that in our current educational system. How about the creation of some well-paid part time jobs? I can think of various ways they could be very helpful and not have to endure the rigorous teaching schedule and burdensome bs. But then, I imagine that once many teachers are out, they want to be OUT of the whole thing. But make it lucrative and interesting and it might work.
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It is tragic that the obvious argument against charters is ignored by everyone. No branch of the press seems likely to cover this issue . So we are obliged to read about it here and be accused of being in an echo chamber promoting Public Schools. So much crap.
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Alas, yes
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Not only an echo chamber promoting Public Schools but also Union Shills only worried about their salaries.
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All McKinsey does is reduce the quality of everything in order to enrich themselves. They cut budgets down to the bare bones and don’t care that the quality of products and services is also cut down to bare bones. It’s an American company that weakens the United States. Yes, McKinsey employees are, like sharks, merely eating machines. They have the intelligence of sharks too. They are just stupid eating machines. Like many sharks, they are not hunters, but scavengers. For leadership, we need something more like orcas, intelligent, coordinated hunters, the top of the food chain. McKinsey is like a shark — or a vulture, disgusting and dumb.
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By comparing them to McKinsey you do a disservice to innocent sharks and vultures, which have found their ecological niche helping other species out by eliminating detritus, decaying remains, etc. . . . McKinsey produces that junk, leaving the stench and debris for others to clean up afterwards.
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True, but I wouldn’t put a shark in charge of deciding which whales get to eat.
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Another example of the oligarchy we do not pay attention to at our peril. I watched this and was not surprised by the ever growing grift that rips off tax payers around the world while claiming some form of expertise that they do not have. Too often consulting firms are just mouth pieces all too willing to promote corporate propaganda as justification for economic exploitation.
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