McKinsey Strikes Again!

Today I'm just going to direct you to two stories. The first is from paidcontent.org, dated July 20th, 2009. It says in part:

Working with McKinsey, Townsend and a Conde Nast team will "develop new perspectives on optimizing our approach to business, growing revenues, and enhancing our brand assets. All areas of Condé Nast will be included in the study." Conde Naste has more than 30 brands between the consumer magazines, which include The New Yorker, Wired and Vanity Fair, and the Fairchild Fashion Group.

The second clip, presented for your amusement, comes from today's news bundle. It is entitled, "Conde Nast zhutters Gourmet After McKinsey Review." Here's a bit:

Conde Nast told shocked staff today it was closing Gourmet magazine, Cookie, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride, surpassing expectations of perhaps one or two shutdowns as a result of McKinsey's analysis.

This is offered simply as a reality check. When desperate companies, at a loss for how to manage change or maintain the standing of their senior management, hire McKinsey, there is often a lot of blather about how this is a positive step, how it will build value, how it has nothing to do with tossing people from the parapets. And then a day very much like today always comes. And we all know what it was always all about. Lest we forget, you know.

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Comments

[Citizen54]

"...or maintain the standing of their senior management­..."

That's what it's all about.
I used to work for a magazine that was McKinsey'd. All the cuts were down in the trenches, where the work got done. The people at the top--the ones responsible for the troubles--were left alone, natch.

[Jeff Atlee]

Once more this is an example of how people are often their own prison gaurds. no doubt people though McKinsey could save their business and they probably will. But one thing McKinsey can never do is save a company and there is a difference. We forget that a company used to mean a collection of like-minded people that shared a goal and a purpose. These days we use fancy terms like collective to indicate that a business is aware of the value of each person in it.

There is a movement to reclaim language back to its original meaning. With that in mind I wish people could reclaim company to mean something that serves people instead of its current meaning where people are the servants of a goal, or entity. I know a lot of people are going to say that this was just cutting off fat. That is stupid and callous. The truth is that more of these type fo things are likely to happen. Industries are being changed and automated daily> Most auto workers will never get back into that field. And the truth is that many other industrial workers will join them.

Every recession/­depression leads to job losses. What a lot of people don't think about it is that technological innovation continues. When the growth cycle re-occurs those people are not all absorbed back into employment because their jobs have been automated or made redundant.

it is time to wake up

[meade]

If the execs at these companies can't figure out how to run their companies anymore, why are they still sucking down the big checks 9(+bonus)?

I'd like to outsource my job duties (at company expen$e) too.

[snaggle2th]

Ah, but it's so much easier to say "McKinsey made me do it...." and go on managing the people left with "clean" hands... Machiavellian tactics: when ditry work needs doing bring in a outsider- a hitman to do it, who can then go away and take the hard feelings with them. Then the managers can cynically say "Gee, guys, I wouldn't have done THAT..." and carry on making the big bucks....