Word: mckinseys
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Mitt Romney told the Wall Street Journal last week that if he is elected President, he will "probably" hire McKinsey, the management-consulting firm, to tell him how to reorganize the government. "I'm not kidding," he said, tactfully adding that it might be another management-consulting firm such as Bain (where Romney worked for years and where he got rich) or the Boston Consulting Group. Or he just might call on Jack Welch, who retired years back as CEO of General Electric but has yet to be replaced in the Lee Iacocca Chair as America's semiofficial Business...
...myth of the management consultant in general and McKinsey in particular has never been stronger. McKinsey consultants are restructuring the educational system of Israel, advising insurers on dealing with Hurricane Katrina, comparing the performance of Indian and American companies, reforming the North Carolina Department of Transportation. Even Time Inc. is a client. And a 36-year-old former McKinsey consultant, Bobby Jindal, has just been elected Governor of Louisiana...
What exactly do management consultants do? I asked this of a McKinsey recruiter many years ago. He said, "We provide expertise." I said, "But you're thinking of hiring me, and I have no expertise." He said, "We'll train you." Nothing about that interview dissuaded me from the view that consultants spend at least as much energy and brainpower selling themselves to clients as they spend doing whatever the client pays them...
...onto their horses and galloping away. Who was that masked man? At their best, consultants see a situation with fresh eyes and bring some useful analytical tools. At their worst, they are a prestige play verging on a protection racket. Hey, Mr. CEO: Every other big company has hired McKinsey. What's your problem...
...politics can be replaced with the smooth hum of expertise and that all the challenges our society faces can be solved by making the government run more efficiently has a long and generally laughable history. It is not inherently either liberal or conservative. President Dwight Eisenhower actually did hire McKinsey to redesign the presidency. President Jimmy Carter talked endlessly of "reinventing government." He took the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and turned it into two departments. Then there was Ross Perot, the presidential candidate who babbled about opening the hood of a car and tinkering with the innards. President...