The following article is a written adaptation of an, Slate’s new podcast about companies in the news and how they got there.
“For all my criticisms and questions about McKinsey, I think it’s one of the most brilliant ideas for a business that anybody’s ever had,” says Duff McDonald, who wrote a history of McKinsey titled. He called management consulting “one of the most flexible business models in the history of Western capitalism.” “There is a certain brilliant essence to a company which sells what you’re buying, as opposed to what they’re selling,” McDonald says.
Under Marvin Bower, McKinsey would respect the numbers, but it would refuse to be bound by them. Instead, the firm would offer advice and counsel of all sorts. If James McKinsey had turned accountants into consultants, then Bower turned consultants into professionals. To Bower, a professional was discreet; a professional talked and dressed like those top executives. McKinsey consultants were even required to wear hats right up until the 1960s, when John F.
So the executives started bringing new problems to the consultants: foreign competition, increasing costs, declining profits. And what the McKinsey consultants started telling them was, broadly, “Do you really need all those middle managers?” Of course, most executives don’t enjoy putting people out of work, and they certainly don’t like being seen as heartless. Fortunately, that’s another problem McKinsey can help them with.
Of course, losing all those white-collar workers in the middle saved companies a lot of money. Some of that money went to profits. Some of it went to the consulting firms they brought in to help them. And some of it went to the salaries of those increasingly important top executives. According to Markovits, this is exactly how the meritocracy looks after its own interests.
Consultants are the fucking worst.
It's extraordinary, given how many f%$k ups they have been behind. It's really a marketing powerhouse, not a management consultant.
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