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The McKinsey Way
Book

The McKinsey Way

Using the Techniques of the World's Top Strategic Consultants to Help You and Your Business

Ethan M. Rasiel
McGraw-Hill, 1999
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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Ethan M. Raisel describes the problem-solving process used by McKinsey & Company, a well-known corporate consulting firm. The book offers easily digested tips. The insightful section on conducting interviews and the tips on building teamwork are particularly useful. However, because the author and other McKinsey consultants are prohibited by confidentiality agreements from discussing the specifics of their cases, the book lacks real-world examples of the firm’s problem-solving approaches. getAbstract recommends this book to managers seeking useful information and problem solving techniques.

Summary

Thinking Like a Consultant

Companies worldwide hire McKinsey & Company, a well-known corporate consulting firm, for its problem-solving expertise. McKinsey experts credit the firm’s success to the use of its proven guidelines for problem solving. Those guidelines include techniques you can use, including standard ways to think about problems, gather information, and present findings to clients.

The first rule of McKinsey’s approach is to embrace facts. Facts are the foundation of McKinsey’s advice, partly because the company’s consultants aren’t experts in any specific industrial field. Therefore, they don’t rely on intuition to guide their recommendations. Facts create credibility, a big issue to young consultants who are making presentations to skeptical executives.

McKinsey’s entry-level consultants typically finish near the top of their college classes, spend a couple years at a large company, and then earn an MBA from a top university. The entry-level consultants are in their twenties, so they’re vulnerable to being easily dismissed when they make presentations to top executives of huge companies. However, they find they can build effective cases when...

About the Author

Ethan M. Raisel worked for McKinsey & Company from 1989 to 1992. His clients at McKinsey included major financial, telecommunications, technology, and consumer goods companies. He has a bachelor’s degree from Princeton and a master’s of business administration from Wharton. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

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