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All consulting is like this. It’s a way to offload blame for your decisions by not making any in-house.
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.
Legends.
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.
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.
One of my favorite channels. I liked learning new stuff. Factual stuff. Not conspiracy theories disguised as history.
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.
In, fire 30 percent of the workforce, new logo, boom, out.
You are now a fully trained management consultant.
Lean leader certified
"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 plus there's a massive incentive for overpaid executives to farm out any actual decision-making to consultants. They could lose their cushy jobs if they did something unpopular that made the news and hurt stock prices. But if the decision was promoted by an expensive consulting firm, that launders the blame. It hurts the business in a fundamental way, obviously, but publicly traded companies have not been very focused on fundamentals up until lately. Tighter monetary policy should have changed this, but the paradigm has been slow to shift for many.
Isn't the google ceo a McKinsey stooge?
So is Buttigieg, but sharing that information seems to be unpopular.
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.
They certainly hire some "talent"
Fuck McKinsey.
Consulting services are vital because they improving corporate synergy by utilizing market solutions and relocating potential where it is needed most.
I know it's a joke, but executive and analyst are oxymorons in the corporate world.
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.
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.
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.
“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?
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
Sounds like a job that would be easy to replace with ChatGPT.
Guess what the guys an McKinsey are doing...
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?
They've developed a perpetual consulting loop. Genius.
On the other hand, they're grifting Zaslav, who is possibly the worst person in show business, so...maybe let them cook.