Being Catholic is hard. So, I’m told. A friend of mine who works at a big, name-brand consulting firm found Catholicism so difficult that he gave it up for Lent a few years back and never came back. “But,” he said, “You get from it what you put into it.” Before I blaspheme on a grand scale, I’m going to get to the real point of this column. Does making things easier make things better?
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McKinsey is, by most accounts, the world’s best consulting firm. I base this statement on a story I read in Forbes. Which calls into question both the statement and my gullibility. Side note, it’s kinda funny to think about how our brains are wired to discount brands we used to value (like Forbes) in the wake of a trust meltdown. For now, let’s agree to leave McKinsey’s “best” sufficiently vague so we can move on.
Working at a consulting firm like McKinsey is hard. People who put in lots of work get a lot of it. The lot they get out of it is money. Lots of it. Most McKinsey partners in the U.S. make more than a million dollars a year. So, as you can imagine, McKinsey is pretty picky about who they anoint to partner.
Firms with McKinsey-like stature have up and out policies. If you can’t move up, they kick you out. There’s no place at hyper-competitive places for complacency.
That’s especially true right now. Firms like McKinsey saw a big revenue uptick at the beginning of last year as clients asked them how to use AI. As that newness slowed, McKinsey jettisoned 1400 consultants or about 3% of their staff. Side note, it’s kinda funny to think about how our brains are not wired to discount brands that are supposed to be experts in helping us grow revenue (like McKinsey) not know how to stave off their own revenue meltdowns.
Things aren’t any better this year which prompted McKinsey to update their up and out policy. Staffers have two and half years to get a promotion or they’re gone. Last month, the firm sent warning notices to 3000 staffers.
It’s easy to dismiss McKinsey as atypical. It’s filled with top one percenters who advise other top one percenters. But, we can’t simply dismiss the competition for college, work, or success.
Which brings us here. To hard Scabble. Scrabble is hard. Knowing words. Being forced to use letters you select at random to create a crossword puzzle on the fly while trying to stymie your opponent’s opportunities and maximizing your score by place words on a board that rewards specific placement. See? Hard.
Gen Z doesn’t like hard. They gave it up for Lent and never came back. So, Mattel made Scrabble easier for them. Instead of being competitive, new Scrabble is collaborative. Simpler scoring and “helper cards,” make the game less “intimidating.”
I wonder if McKinsey has thought of this. Maybe they should be less competitive. Stop pitting consultants against consultants for coveted and required promotions. Instead, maybe they could collaborate. Work as teams to find solutions. Use AI to generate helper strategies and lower the bar for what constitutes a win. Maybe their partners would accept less pay and spread the wealth around to everyone because that would make McKinsey more friendly and less intimidating. Now that’s blaspheming on a grand scale.
Let me leave you with this. “F is for friends who do stuff together. U is for you and me. N is for anywhere and anytime at all,” SpongeBob SquarePants. Plankton knew that was completely idiotic. But, then, he went to college.
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I’m oh-for-two with car stuff this week. Matthew pointed out the Benz who made the journey that changed everything was named Bertha not Martha. I’m going to lay off car stuff for a while.