Well, consulting is often used because they need an answer to a question. That may be open-ended like:
“What moves should we make to expand our business?”
But other times they just want confirmation:
“Should we merge with Discovery?” (Sure, I guess. Here are some reasons you could. cha-ching)
“Should we split with Discovery?” (Sure, I guess. Here are some reasons you could. cha-ching)
Other times they just need to pay people to give them excuses to lay off people. McKinsey’s always available for that.
When Chipotle got a new CEO (Brian Niccol, who has since become the Starbucks CEO) a few years back, they were headquartered in Denver. But the CEO lived in Newport Beach. So they brought in a consulting management firm to examine where the best place in the country was for them to have their corporate headquarters.
After weeks of analysis - surprise, surprise - they determined that the best place they could possibly have a corporate headquarters was in Newport Beach, where the CEO lived.
So they fired most of their corporate workers and moved the office to be closer to the CEOs house.
“Sorry we don’t do remote work and you’ll have to come into the office.”
“Counterpoint: …”
Starbucks has a mandatory 3 day a week RTO policy, but this same CEO did not relocate from Newport beach to Seattle.
Instead, he has the corporate private jet fly him 2000 miles round trip every week.
Seems like a solid solution. Why doesn’t everyone just do that?
I have experienced this where I work. There is a consulting company that gets rolled out to make packets full of “data”, graphs, summaries, and surveys that always manages to support the unpopular thing the boss wants.
Other times they just need to pay people to give them excuses to lay off people. McKinsey’s always available for that.
What would you say… you do here?
Get paid to do the work of someone who could be employed for a reasonable salary, but the board or CEO wants the answer to come from someone outside the company to avoid taking any blame.
Look, I already told you: I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don’t have to. I have people skills. I am good at dealing with people! Can’t you understand that!? What the hell is wrong with you people!!
Bob, Bob.
Naga-naga-nagonna work here anymore, anyway
McKinsey:
For when you have no fucking clue how to do your job, and want authoritative, plausible deniability about that.
Obviously you should keep paying my $1.3 million annual salary. We just paid McKinsey $30 million to say how vital my department is
When you used to work for them and hope to return someday as partner, so you push as much business their way as you can.
Yeeep.
Its all an incestuously club of referrals and nepotism at the top of corporate America, who would have guessed.
Sounds like a job that would be easy to replace with ChatGPT.
Guess what the guys an McKinsey are doing…
How should we defend Athens?
Consultancy says “A wooden wall will save Athens”
We’ve been doing this forever…
Consulting services are vital because they improving corporate synergy by utilizing market solutions and relocating potential where it is needed most.
Don’t forget that they also leverage institutional assets to extract value using best practices!
We’ll circle back to that.
Can I talk to you offline?
Then I apply an herb-mint facial mask, which I leave on for 10 minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use an aftershave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then moisturiser, then an anti-ageing eye balm followed by a final moisturising protective lotion.
I was expecting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4
I know it’s a joke, but executive and analyst are oxymorons in the corporate world.
TLC used to be The Learning Channel. Before it was “here’s a bunch of children who are being sexually abused behind the camera,” it was educational outreach. Vocational training. Satellite college courses for people in Alaska and Appalachia.
Then Discovery bought it. Fuck Discovery.
Why do I associate TLC with, like, Trading Spaces and other domestic not-quite-a-game shows like that? Am I conflating it with something else? Also I haven’t had “television” in decades now.
Because that’s the slop it turned into. It was a place for documentaries and educational content, just like MTV used to have music. But watching Kate torment her brood of children or Honey BooBoo eat sketti makes the kind of money airing a college lecture doesn’t.
This kind of content taking off and the popularity of the Kardashians were the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the intellectual apocalypse we’re dealing with now. We are what we eat, and what you watch absolutely influences how you think and act.
I used to watch Trading Spaces back in the day, and I remember when they started off and they’d actually do a good job, then I think there was an episode where the couple didn’t like what they’d done, that got more engagement, then it became a show about neighbors ruining each other’s homes, and thus was born reality television.
It used to be PBS for adults. I remember turning it on and there would be a documentary about like piano players and the connection to the brain.
Went down hill thanks to reality TV.
Yep. I thought for ages that it was a spinoff of discovery but no, it was a whole thing that went back to the 80s. After Discovery acquired it blam.
“What’s your advice?”
“My advice is to not take my advice. That’ll be 63 million dollars, please.”
“Certainly Sir! Money well spent!”
You have to understand why they are employed though - somebody stands to gain from doing some thing, so the way they get to justify doing that thing is to hire these people, so they come in, deliver a report that says the thing is the best thing to do with graphs that go up, and it happens, McKinsey gets paid, the beneficiary gets what they want and life goes on.
That would unironically be good advice which means he couldnt give it.
But if he did, would they take it?
More like "tell me what you already decided to do, and pay me out the ass to create a justification for it so you can pin it on us if it’s a giant fuckup after the fact’.
In, fire 30 percent of the workforce, new logo, boom, out.
You are now a fully trained management consultant.
Lean leader certified
I had a friend who did consulting right out of college. Half the time he said it was his job to suggest layoffs so the people in charge could pretend it wasn’t their idea.
Is that normal shitposting you’re doing?
They’ve developed a perpetual consulting loop. Genius.
From my (fortunately) brief experience in software consulting, I can confirm that is an important unwritten rule of the job. It doesn’t matter what exactly you sell to customers, as long as they are willing to buy it and come back. It explains why a lot of software is dogshit.
“I can’t produce anything, so I’ll take money away from other people doing business” ~consultants
Isn’t the google ceo a McKinsey stooge?
Yes, he is. It explains a lot.
I don’t care if you’re wrong, I will propagate it anyway.
I mean no need to spread misinformation. This information in easily verifiable.
Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, worked at McKinsey for ~2 years and then joined Google in 2004, eventually working his way into the position of CEO.
Pichai’s fuck ups are unlikely a result of McKinsey, at least not directly. That isn’t to say that McKinsey is completely off the hook. They work with plenty of “top” companies and I’m certain Google is one of them.
Pichai was so bad, even McKinsey didn’t want to keep him.
McKinsey likes to hire recent graduates who they suspect will wind up in high places. It builds them strong connections and lets them brag to potential customers as well as customers’ stakeholders that they have cutting edge talent and that they hire the best and to tell potential employees that a few years with them is part of how you move from an elite educational institution into high levels of business or politics.
The worst thing this says about Pichai is that he was the sort of person who seeks to be on the ladder to elite careers.
They certainly hire some “talent”
So is Buttigieg, but sharing that information seems to be unpopular.
All consulting is like this. It’s a way to offload blame for your decisions by not making any in-house.
Our company paid a consulting firm 100k to deliver the same message our internal had been saying for 5 years.
Oh yes. The board member used to work for that consultancy.
Sounds like they still get paid then!
And if you are wondering why the German military is being made fun of so much: it’s McKinsey again. But no worries, we took care if it. The minister of defense in charge back then is long gone. Cause she is the president of the European Commission now. Multiple of her children have worked for McKinsey in the past. What a coincidence!
Legends.
On the other hand, they’re grifting Zaslav, who is possibly the worst person in show business, so…maybe let them cook.
Fuck McKinsey.
Why are consulting companies so successful? Is it all connections? Their role in appeasing investors by external intervention and change (no matter how useful)?
It is all connections and a box checking for the board and/or CEO.
The CEO can deflect bad outcomes on the consulting company for suggesting doing what the CEO had in mind to do, but didn’t have the board’s approval.
Corporate consulting is such a giant fucking grift and they are responsible for the enshitification of so much.
Why are there no employees to help you on the sales floor or at the register? The CEO wanted to hit a performance metric to maximize their bonus and brought in a consulting company to advise. The consulting company looked for low-hanging fruit, which is cutting costs in the form of payroll. The CEO dips when there is no meat left on the bone. The next CEO hires a consulting company to maximize the bonus and then you get fake sales to mask a following price increase. CEO dips and the next CEO’s consultants gives the consumer a rewards program to harvest data to sell and drive sales through psychological manipulation(See Kohl’s cash).
Corporate consultants are horrible people with business degrees looking to harvest marrow from a stripped corpse.
Consulting companies are just esoteric quacks but for businesses.
Prestige and the perception of impartiality, alongside the ability to serve as fall guys. And to a significantly lesser degree they can tell you things you actually don’t know or make recommendations when you’re stuck because they’re an outside set of eyes.
What this means is when you decide to make a controversial decision they can take the heat in place of experts, and unlike internal experts you don’t wind up in a particularly flimsy situation when you inform them of what they’ll be suggesting. And if it all goes as poorly as it might you can blame them. (And everyone knows this so the consultants are shielded)
And for the situation where you don’t actually know what to do, theoretically thet may or may not be bad at it. If you’re stuck you’re stuck and not only can they possibly help, they can definitely provide cover for a bad call or an unwinnable situation
To a certain degree they’re a result of people in a position to spend large amounts of money whose job is to make calls.
