The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business (44 page)

Thanks also to the man on my side of the negotiating table, my agent, David Kuhn, and all the good people at Kuhn Projects: Casey Baird, Jessie Borkan, Becky Sweren, Nicole Tourtelot, and Billy Kingsland.

Another person owed a serious debt of gratitude: my old friend and mentor, Hugo Lindgren, who took time out of one of the toughest jobs in town to touch this book with his magic. Thanks, Hugo, for your help on this project and much else.

And now, to McKinsey. I didn’t expect the firm to cooperate with this book. The firm had never done so before, it didn’t know me from Adam, and, well, this is not exactly the most forthcoming bunch when journalists come poking around. Thanks to Michael Stewart, who shepherded me through to approval. I hope you will still speak to me, Michael.

Thanks to the current and former managing directors who spoke to me: Dominic Barton, Ian Davis, Fred Gluck, Ron Daniel, and Al McDonald. (It seems Rajat Gupta was indisposed, but I thank him for enriching the narrative in any case.) While Marvin Bower passed away a while back, his sons, Dick and Jim, both did me the favor of reminiscing about the remarkable man.

And then there’s a long list of current and former McKinsey people who took time to try and help me understand an institution that’s not that easy to pin down. In alphabetical order: Mike Allen, Carter Bales, Partha Bose, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Dominic Casserley, Logan Cheek, Yolande Daeninck, Clay Deutsch, Diana Farrell, Jim Fisher, Peter Foy, James Gorman, Ted Hall, Juan Hoyos, Michelle Jarrard, Larry Kanarek, Alan Kantrow, Jon Katzenbach, Nancy Killefer, Matt Kramer, James Kwak, Eric Labaye, Michael Lanning, Bill Matassoni, Frank Mattern, Stefan Matzinger, Jodie Neve, Gordon Orr, Tom Peters, Jeff Pundyk, David Robertson, Elizabeth Riordan, Will Riordan, Yves Smith, Tom Steiner, and Bob Waterman.

There are numerous others who will go unnamed. Most of them said something not so nice about McKinsey and didn’t want to suffer the firm’s wrath. Others said very nice things and . . . still didn’t want
to suffer the firm’s wrath. In writing this book, I’m sure I’m going to suffer a little bit of it myself, but I do hope that current and former McKinseyites do not regret the time spent. I do think I painted a balanced portrait of the place.

Thanks to the handful of McKinsey clients and competitors who agreed to speak publicly about things they normally keep private: Frank Cahouet, Jim Coulter, Robert Dell, Tim Flynn, Joe Fuller, Peter Grauer, Chuck Neul, Richard Rakowski, Frederick Sturdivant, and Bill Weldon.

Outside McKinsey, I am grateful to the work of a number of academics who have spent far more time than I have studying this remarkable institution, whether I spoke to them in person or not: Amar Bhide, Robert David, Lars Engwall, Pankaj Ghemawhat, Matthias Kipping, Rakesh Khurana, Christopher McKenna, Henry Mintzberg, and Andrew Sturdy.

And then there are the journalists and authors who informed my work. First place: longtime
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
scribe John Byrne, who has written more magazine pages on McKinsey than any other. Others who enriched the story: David Berardinelli, William Cohan, Stuart Crainer, Peter Elkind, Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Guttman, John Huey, Maryann Keller, Walter Kiechel, Martin Kihn, Nicholas Lemann, Bethany McLean, Kevin Mellyn, John Micklethwait, Dana Milbank, Lewis Pinault, Stefan Stern, Matthew Stewart, Barry Willner, and Adrian Wooldridge.

I am grateful to those who kept the money coming in the door during the project as well (the nanny needed to be paid, after all): Andy Serwer and Stephanie Mehta of
Fortune
, Graydon Carter and Dana Brown of
Vanity Fair
, Ryan D’Agostino of
Esquire
, Brad Wieners and Julian Sancton of
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
, Michael Hogan of
Huffington Post
, and my old pal Jeanhee Kim.

Special mention goes to Mo Cunniffe, an almost relative-by-former-marriage who convened a summit of vintage McKinsey men (and bought the lobster sandwiches) in Greenwich a few years back. Thanks to those who came that day: Doug Ayer, Bill MacCormack, Edward Massey, and Peter von Braun. Thanks too to Bill Stromsem, for being a dedicated copy editor.

Last, my family and friends.

Thanks, Mom, for all the notes you send me telling me I’m a wonderful writer. They make for bright lights on dark days. Thanks, Dad, for all that you were. I still think of you nearly every day. While you never met your granddaughter, I see echoes of your sly smile whenever I look at her happy face. I think she’s got your sense of humor too, which will serve her well.

To my siblings, Steve McDonald and Jackie Pye, and Julie and Gareth Carter: Thanks for putting up with more Duff over these past few years than should reasonably have been expected. I have another sibling, but he comes with an interesting wrinkle. No matter who may have written this book, there would be a conflict of some sort, as McKinsey touches so many people in so many places. My own sin of connection is my brother Scott, who heads Oliver Wyman, a competitor of the firm. In the end, he didn’t spend much time talking to me about McKinsey. But he made up for that crime in other ways. Thanks, brother.

Thanks, Chris Wahl, for your camera and your friendship. And finally, thanks to a very special group of people who provided invaluable support during this long endeavor: Will Arnett, Alan Baldachin, Lindsey Braun, Malcolm Fitch, David Foster, Peter Giles, Brendan Golden, John and Megan Grugan, Mike Guy, Michael Hawkins, Adolphus Holden, Peter and Karen Keating, Chris Kerr, Caroline McDonald, Matt McPherson, Christie Nicholson, Owen Osborne,
Gilda Riccardi, Maer Roshan, and especially Susan Duffy and Joe Schrank. Your friendship means the world to me. Thank you for being there when I needed you.

As always, to all who helped, I hope the results prove worth the time spent.

Duff McDonald

New York, March 2013

© CHRISTOPHER WAHL

Duff McDonald is a New York–based journalist. A contributing editor at
Fortune
and the
New York Observer
, he has also written for
Vanity Fair, New York, Esquire, GQ, WIRED
, and
Condé Nast Portfolio
, among other publications. McDonald is a regular and frequent guest commentator on both television and radio, including CNN, CNBC, Fox News, NPR, and
Charlie Rose
. A dual citizen of Canada and the United States, he lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his daughter, Marguerite.

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Last Man Standing

1.
Hal Higdon,
The Business Healers
(New York: Random House, 1970), 113.

2.
Nicholas Lemann, “The Kids in the Conference Room,”
New Yorker
, October 18, 1999.

3.
Matthew Stewart,
The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting It Wrong
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2009), 178.

1.
William B. Wolf,
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(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 16.

2.
Ibid., 1.

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Marvin Bower,
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George David Smith, John T. Seaman Jr., and Morgan Witzel,
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Hal Higdon,
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7.
Smith, Seaman, and Witzel,
A History of The Firm
, 35.

8.
Wolf,
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, 13.

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Ibid., 42.

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Chandler,
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15.
McGraw,
American Business
, 7.

16.
Alfred D. Chandler Jr.,
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17.
Christopher D. McKenna,
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Management and Consulting
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25.
Higdon,
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, 137.

26.
Wolf,
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, 45.

27.
Matthew Stewart,
The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting It Wrong
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2009), 35.

28.
Andrew Billen, “From Man Management to Mad Management,”
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29.
McKenna,
The World’s Newest Profession
, 59.

30.
Mathias Kipping, “Trapped in Their Wave: The Evolution of Management Consultancies,” in Timothy Clark and Robin Fincham (eds.),
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31.
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32.
McKenna,
The World’s Newest Profession
, 62.

33.
Rakesh Khurana,
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34.
McKenna,
The World’s Newest Profession
, 60.

35.
Stewart,
The Management Myth
, 59.

36.
Neukom,
McKinsey Memoirs
, 34.

37.
McKenna,
The World’s Newest Profession
, 48.