Have been on the receiving end of several McKinsey engagements.
The work itself was generally not all that good. The knowledge of “experts” brought into meetings rarely contributed more than what a reasonably intelligent person could dig up on Google search results in an hour. They were also often farmed out on random staff augmentation functions that just annoyed the hell out of people. “Hi I need you to fill out this excel spreadsheet with 35 columns so we can put a presentation together... oh and if you could do that by 6 PM tonight that would be great.” That sort of nonsense so they could produce some nonsensical 50 page PowerPoint deck that nobody read.
There were a few decent people there but by and large value was not generated. As others have pointed out a major motivator seemed to be to provide some C-level exec with CYA coverage to claim that programs being implemented were based on the advice of outside “experts.”
In the two main cases I saw the McKinsey strategy ended up being a total disaster that seriously damaged the company and the C-level exec that hired them in both cases got canned as a result so in the end even the CYA concept didn’t really work.
Have worked with two ex-McKinsey consultants (hired as employees) and want to echo the observation that they tend to use their fast execution to generate excessive BS like large spreadsheets to win office politics.
In one case, the guy had built a small org to fulfill a need that we had previously outsourced to a vendor. The company was thinking of signing a large contract with the vendor and he created a barrage of 20-page spreadsheets to try to justify his budget. He made me sit with him for an hour to extract random cost estimates for one of his sheets. The vendor ended up turning into a Silicon Valley unicorn... exactly the sort of opponent he wanted I guess.
I think the trouble with McKinsey is they breed competitors who have never seen working products. If a product works, there’s probably a clear vision and a clear definition of value. When products are broken, winning office politics looks valuable, hence the McKinsey fascination.
The work itself was generally not all that good. The knowledge of “experts” brought into meetings rarely contributed more than what a reasonably intelligent person could dig up on Google search results in an hour. They were also often farmed out on random staff augmentation functions that just annoyed the hell out of people. “Hi I need you to fill out this excel spreadsheet with 35 columns so we can put a presentation together... oh and if you could do that by 6 PM tonight that would be great.” That sort of nonsense so they could produce some nonsensical 50 page PowerPoint deck that nobody read.
There were a few decent people there but by and large value was not generated. As others have pointed out a major motivator seemed to be to provide some C-level exec with CYA coverage to claim that programs being implemented were based on the advice of outside “experts.”
In the two main cases I saw the McKinsey strategy ended up being a total disaster that seriously damaged the company and the C-level exec that hired them in both cases got canned as a result so in the end even the CYA concept didn’t really work.