How do McKinsey consultants get up to speed on a project quickly?

Question

Mac Hodell · Accepted Answer

I’ll give a slightly difference perspective, as someone who worked at BCG for 7 years. Consultants at MBB get up to speed quickly by virtue of their problem solving process. Yes, there’s a lot of industry experience and some primers etc- and sometimes these are quite helpful. But in most every project, every single consultant is expected to build a hypothesis-driven workplan.

What is this? It’s lik

What is this? It’s like applying the scientific method to the business problem.

* You make an issue tree- breaking down the possible root causes of what’s driving the issue. This is easier said than done- one must be “MECE” while doing this. {Google it if you don’t know}
 * For each major question you face, you break down the potential causes and advance hypotheses.
 * Then you list out what kind of analytical output (compare X vs. Y, track Z over time, interview customers and derive attribute relative importance….) would be required to answer the question.
 * Then you list out what kind of data would be needed to do those analyses you just listed. Specifically- what exact fields/rows would you need?
 * From there, you iterate because many hypotheses will be disproved (‘turns out price realization is not the problem….maybe the customer mix has shifted…’) and because you never get all the data you’d want in the way you’d want it, you’ll need to develop workarounds and be creative.
Note- the first 4 bullet points above are things that happen in the first 1–2 weeks of a project. Yes, this means late nights.

So what?

It turns out that by doing this kind of clean-sheet thinking and breaking down problems from first principles, humans learn MUCH faster than if they read even the best reports or followed the best pre-existing templates. You actually wire your brain in a way and you begin churning on the problem even when you’re not deliberately thinking about it. You also have a sense of what kind of background information is KEY- what must you really know. Your background reading isn’t just general—- you’re trying to answer specific questions and you’re developing a visual fact-base (charts), which locks the information in your mind in a fundamentally different way than if you just read a book. And once you have your own logical framework, every bit of new data you acquire means more- it ‘fits’ into your framework. You don’t need to memorize that which simply makes sense.

When a whole team of consultants is doing this some interesting things happen. After 2–4 weeks, their questions are no longer basic/dumb— but now they cut right to the heart of the various issues. Clients will say ‘funny, I just came from a meeting where we discussed that’. The consultants will start to explode various myths as every business rests upon certain assumptions about the way things work, but these rules of thumb eventually stop working as the underlying environment changes.

Why mention all this? Well, the OP asked about how McK consultants get up to speed so quickly, so this implies there must be something different from their approach vs. what other consultants do.

If all of this sounds hard, that’s because it is. If it were not, the price premium that MBB get relative to other firms would have compressed.

If you want more background on logical, MECE thinking, read “The Pyramid Principle” by Minto. She was (one of?) the first woman at McK and taught logical problem solving and communication.

ChatGPT · Answer

McKinsey consultants use several strategies to quickly get up to speed on a project:
1. Structured Onboarding Process: New consultants are often introduced to the project through a structured onboarding process that includes project briefs, key documents, and initial meetings with team members.
2. Knowledge Repositories: McKinsey maintains extensive internal knowledge databases that include past project case studies, industry reports, and best practices, which consultants can access to gather relevant information.
3. Team Collaboration: Consultants leverage the expertise of team members. They often hold kick-off meetings where roles are defined, and knowledge sharing occurs, allowing everyone to contribute their insights and expertise.
4. Client Interactions: Early engagement with clients helps consultants understand the context, objectives, and nuances of the project. This includes interviews, workshops, and discussions that provide critical information.
5. Analytical Frameworks: McKinsey consultants use established frameworks and methodologies to analyze problems efficiently. These frameworks help in breaking down complex issues into manageable components.
6. Rapid Prototyping and Testing: For many projects, consultants may create rapid prototypes or conduct quick tests to validate hypotheses, which helps them learn and adapt quickly.
7. Regular Check-ins: Frequent team check-ins and updates help ensure that all consultants are aligned and aware of new developments, allowing for quick adjustments and learning.
8. Mentorship and Support: More experienced consultants often mentor newer team members, providing guidance and insights that can accelerate the learning curve.
By combining these strategies, McKinsey consultants can effectively familiarize themselves with the project and contribute meaningfully in a short amount of time.

Stephen Shu · Answer

A2A. Here are some of the main ways I’ve seen consultants get briefed on projects.

1. Engagement manager - The engagement manager has responsibility for the client problem statement and the problem-solving structure (i.e., project tactics). As the on-the-ground, field leader, the engagement manager can help to get new people on the project oriented both from a high-level and with their role on the project.
2. Engagement workplans and blueprints - Some projects have clear engagement workplans laid out at the outset. Sometimes the high-level workplan is set out before the project even starts. If not before, then most certainly the workplan is addressed in the first week +/-. These often breakdown the workstreams, key activities, deliverables, project roles, and governance structure. Blueprints which potentially specify the templates that should be completed may even be available in some cases. These structures help keep consultants focused on what matters and may help them avoid re-inventing the wheel.
3. Management reports - Consultants often get reports normally directly accessible by the management teams. This helps to accelerate knowledge transfer and provides a lay of the land within any limitations of the reports (which may also need to improved based on mutual agreement between the consultant and client).
4. Peers - Consulting is really based on apprenticeship and teamwork. Consultants often ask peers on the consulting team for information they’ve learned, feedback on approaches, etc.
5. Industry reports - Consultants often dive into industry reports very close to when they arrive onsite for a new client. This can help the consultant come up to speed about industry-specific terminology, product offerings, competitors, new entrants, regulatory issues, geographical considerations, etc.
6. Client interviews - Consultants also get very key info through interviews with client management and personnel. These sessions are usually motivated by the engagement workplan and are used to assess the current state of a particular area, identify issues, collect ideas, and get color regarding business operations. It is often preferred that items #1 through #5 are explored to some extent as preparation for client interviews.

Steve Shu specializes in incubating new initiatives with a primary focus on strategy, technology, and behavioral science. He is author of Inside Nudging: Implementing Behavioral Science Initiatives [ http://www.insidenudging.com/ ] and The Consulting Apprenticeship: 40 Jump-Start Ideas for You and Your Business [ http://www.consultingapprenticeship.com/ ].

Skip Lumley · Answer

It’s simple really, and all consultants worthy of the name do it, not just McKinsey folks.

Speaking in very broad terms, consultant have templates in their minds (and sometimes on ‘paper’) for the problems they offer to solve. Those templates express what has been shown from past experience to be best-practice models for the situations and operations in which those problems appear. They are essentially the consultant’s stock in trade, sometimes gained from their own experiences, sometimes produced by the firm they work for and that trained them.

Consultants look for information to check the template’s boxes and fill in its blanks so-to-speak, and the results - what’s present, what’s absent, what’s out of the norm, etc. - give them the insights and data needed for their recommendations. To the onlooker, they can appear to grasp the problem very quickly as a consequence.

Things do go wrong however. The template might not be the right one for the situation, or the consultant may not have the experience or training needed to use it properly.

Anonymous · Answer

I worked at McKinsey for about 7 years and did projects across a variety of industries / geographies / functions. The firm has an online knowledge base with lots of documents on various industries. I personally got up to speed by readings tons of articles from the knowledge base and also from the internet. At some point all the disparate knowledge will gradually begin to crystallise and I will begin to develop a good understanding of how something works. I learn very quickly, so this approach may not work for everyone…

Robert Barham · Answer

I worked at McKinsey for just over two years. ‘The Firm’ can be exhilarating and stressful and painful and fun. There are deep lows, but the highs can be extraordinary as well.

I was a ‘non-traditional’ candidate - from a non-target university, and with work experience entirely in startups and small companies. McKinsey never stopped feeling slightly foreign to me; I always felt like I was part-employee, part-observer. What follows are my observations – on the culture, the environment, and the day-to-day work.

————
 
The first thing that struck me was the people. It wasn’t so much that they were smart (though they were), but that they were from such a prestigious pedigree. At McKinsey your colleagues are nearly always from the likes of Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, Yale. Or if they’re older: Insead, Goldman Sachs, General Electric, or P&G.

You come across Olympic gold medallists working at McKinsey. People who’ve worked at the top echelons of government. Actual rocket scientists. It’s a melting pot for those who’ve been conventionally successful, and you begin to take this background for granted among almost everyone you meet.

Regardless of background, ‘the Firm’ moulds its consultants into part of a tightly-knit, highly-cohesive culture – one of the strongest I’ve seen for a company its size. Over time, a consultant will begin to talk and even act in a distinct, McKinsey style. You can assemble a team of colleagues from offices all around the world, and they’ll immediately snap together and work as a common unit with this affinity.

So what’s the culture like?

It’s a culture that values intellect over experience; influence over compulsion; logic over emotion; facts over gut feel. It’s left-brained, with a hyper-rational, almost Cartesian view of how business and the world works.

It’s outwardly positive and upbeat. The McKinsey intranet site reaches near-Soviet levels of positivity in talking about the work and achievements of the Firm. Surveys tend to be inflated (below 4 out of 5 is considered shockingly bad score at McKinsey). People are optimists, and very little is seen as impossible.

This upbeat, can-do spirit probably helps the Firm crack the problems others shy away from. But it can also make the place feel occasionally naïve, and frequently unreflective.

It’s also a singular and quirky place, with an abundance of cultural oddities to it that won't be obvious from the outside. For example:

* The Myers-Briggs personality framework is widely used and discussed. You’ll frequently hear people making comments about MBTI types in everyday conversation (e.g. “She’s quite ‘F’, so be careful she doesn’t take it personally”). The classic McKinsey consultant is ENTJ – outgoing, big-picture, hyper-rational, and highly organized. The least common trait is ‘S’ – a focus on the details is not the consultant’s strength
 * Acronyms abound for all sorts of internal roles and frameworks. A consultant might say: “Fill out your EPR after you’re done with BAT, but make sure your EM talks to the AP before it’s passed on to your DGL or PD.” McKinsey folks will be able to translate this, but almost nobody else will
 * Feedback is frequent and expected. It’s one of the things I liked most about McKinsey – you receive frequent ideas and suggestions to improve how you work. It probably also helps create such a cohesive culture; if you’re acting in a way that’s not “how things are done here”, you’ll quickly be steered away from it
McKinsey teaches its consultants to think in a highly structured way, but the organization itself is rather loose and fluid. I could mostly choose the projects I worked on, and sometimes travelled to work in another office at just a couple of days’ notice. Projects have managers and leading partners, but you never have a set ‘boss’ as you would in other types of organization.

Rules are rarely codified, and seldom enforced to the letter. Exceptions can always be made, and the strength and breadth of your internal network will often determine which way something goes. It’s a norms-, values-, and network-based organization, not a regulation- and-process-based one.

As for the day-to-day, your job as a consultant is to solve problems. You might be developing a marketing strategy, a new organizational design, or simply cutting costs. But regardless of the problem, the vast majority of McKinsey projects will share a common approach.

This approach involves gathering information, analyzing and interpreting that information, crafting your findings into actionable suggestions, filing off the complexities, and presenting it all for client consumption.

That means you’ll be interviewing junior clients, persuading them to give you information, building Excel models, preparing presentation ‘decks’, and sitting in meetings to discuss them.

The work is frequently punctuated by ‘problem-solving’ sessions, where the McKinsey team sits down together to intellectually ‘crack’ a challenge, unblock a project’s most stubborn roadblocks, and figure out how best to proceed.
 
It sounds sequential, but in practice it’s much more iterative. You tend to start out early with a hypothesis, and even a “week 1 answer”. You then loop through a process of finding information, filling out the gaps in your knowledge, and adjusting the hypothesis and recommendations as you go.

This hypothesis-driven approach is fast, but it can be vulnerable to misjudgement and inefficiency. If your hypothesis turns out to be wrong, you’ll have some horrible re-work further down the line.
 
Projects are very much “in the weeds” with clients. The classic McKinsey approach isn’t to sit behind a desk for a month and come back with a recommendation. You’re with the clients every step of the way – sitting in their offices, testing and refining ideas with them, delivering interim recommendations. There’s rarely a single “big bang” presentation. You are co-creating the solution with clients, and so the final presentation meeting should contain very few surprises.

McKinsey has something of an obsession with PowerPoint. To convey a thought at McKinsey, you’re generally expected to make a presentation page. Junior consultants spend hours doing this, and there’s even a full-time offshore graphics team to design slides while you sleep.

I was never quite sure why PowerPoint was such an obsession, but I think it stems from a certain insecurity among consultants. They don’t feel sure they've mastered the problem until they can see it substantiated on a page. Perhaps some of them fear their recommendations won’t be seen as credible - or the detail won’t be appreciated – unless they make a detailed ‘pack’ to back them up. The process makes the recommendations feel less about the individual consultant - less about her ideas and credibility - and more about “the deck”.

Ironically the result is often the opposite, and the very abundance of PowerPoint slides makes many clients take recommendations less seriously. I found much of the PowerPoint to be busy-work, and chose to do projects in one of McKinsey niches that generally avoids it (the Firm's turnaround practice).

The Firm has something of an academic feel to it. This is partly because of its history in the detached, hands-off world of corporate strategy rather than the grubby business of execution. Often McKinsey felt like academia meets business to me, and academic terms infect the McKinsey vernacular: a project is a ‘study’; temporary postings are ‘fellowships’; colleagues who’ve been at the Firm longer are ‘higher-tenured’.

In keeping with its academic feel, McKinsey is still a culture that values the business school education, although increasingly the junior-tenured colleagues are electing not to go. Some of the girls choose to opt out of b-school because attending might mean they have to delay starting a family. Some of the guys probably choose to go to b-school for the same reason.

It’s an affluent and rarefied place. Your lunches and dinners are usually paid for, taxis and rental cars are readily available, and you know if there’s a problem the Firm will be able to get you out of it. It’s not a culture of excess so much as one of comfort: whatever happens, you always know everything will be taken care of.

The Firm felt technologically very old-fashioned to me. Microsoft Office is relied upon at the expense of sometimes better tools, and email is still conducted via Lotus Notes. This legacy infrastructure partly reflects the Firm’s obsession with security and confidentiality (cloud-based services are out). Partly, though, I think it’s cultural – technological-savviness is simply not fostered or selected for. A couple of us would write basic scripts as part of projects, but you never got the sense that these skills were highly valued. And while the Firm is making some attempts to improve its digital literacy, it mainly does so by hiring and acquiring – by ‘bolting on’ service offerings rather than trying to change the skills and composition of its core work force. In a world where data and analytics will become increasingly important to consulting, this technological backwardness could be where McKinsey falls behind.

It can be a high-stress environment. McKinsey consultants are frequently performance reviewed, and work under high expectations. Everyone has seen other consultants give in to the stress. People freak out, burn out, sometimes get sick. Yet however bad it gets, most of the stress is internally generated – or at least internally exaggerated – by the McKinsey team itself. When things do go wrong, it’s usually trivial in the grand scheme of things, sometimes even tragi-comic. Maybe you spent a week searching for data that can’t be found, or trying to convince a stubborn client who won’t change their mind. Nobody was hurt, nothing bad really happened; it’s stress mostly fostered by a group of highly-ambitious, highly-strung minds, anxious to avoid perceived failure in an insecure environment.

It almost goes without saying that people work very hard. Hours are long, and travel is frequent. There is a sincere attempt to preserve work-life balance, but it often buckles and breaks against the Firm’s mission to over-deliver for its clients. The work usually far exceeds the resource to conduct the work, and so it often feels like you never really finish a project - you just run out of time.

Despite all of that, it’s not fundamentally a harsh place. McKinsey consultants generally aren’t nasty people, and they’re selected in part because they’re supposed to be likeable. Their nature is to influence rather than demand. The classic McKinsey partner will try and convince you to do a project, and perhaps weave a web of soft incentives and disincentives to get you onboard. But they’ll rarely bark at you and outright force you onto it.

The best thing about the experience is that you learn a lot. This was what made it all worth it for me, at least for a couple of years. You learn heaps of general business skills, from reading and interpreting financial statements, to assessing a business’s cost structure for where to reduce expenditure. You learn ‘softer’ skills too - from networking, to problem-solving, to communication. You also get to see and understand all sorts of industries in a short space of time; I worked in mines, smelters, pharma companies, on consumer products, in the public sector, and elsewhere.

In the end, though, the place has a temporary feel to it. You switch in and out of projects every couple of months, and say goodbye to people you know you’ll never see again. Old faces leave, and others begin to change. Turnover is high, and after a while you no longer even recognize most of the people in the cafeteria. Some do stay to make a career of it, but for most consultants McKinsey is a stepping-stone, not a final destination.

I left at the end of the analyst programme to do other things, but I don’t for a second regret the choice I made in working there. It was a great couple of years.

Naman Shrivastava · Answer

I failed to get into McKinsey/BCG/Bain. What will I miss out it life?

A few days ago, I met a young McKinsey consultant in New York City. On the face of it, he was living the dream. $250,000 salary + Manhattan Apartment + MBA from an Ivy League.

A few drinks later, he casually tells me that he hates his life.

He hasn’t slept peacefully in weeks, every day is a firefight, his migraine issues have resurfaced, and the only thing he looks forward to in his life are the weekends.

His Ivy League degree has put an inherent pressure to always compete with his batchmates, and do better than them.

Confusing your job as your identity is the biggest disservice you can do to yourself.

Your job isn’t your life.

There’s absolutely nothing nice about being overly corporate.

No matter what you do in your day job, do take care of your body and mind. Your work is simply your labor and not your entire identity.

John Huang · Answer

I didn’t work at McKinsey but I did spend 4 years as a management consultant at Deloitte and spent almost 90% of my time traveling for projects. After 4 years I burned out and came to the realization that life was too short to sacrifice myself for a path to partner. Like many ex-consultants, I left for business school at Michigan with no regrets but I wouldn’t trade my incredible experience at Deloitte for anything.

However, during my 4 years at Deloitte I was able to maintain a relatively healthy private life in my early twenties but I can’t say it would be the same if I jumped back in it today in my thirties. Here are a few things that kept me going strong as a traveling management consulting:

1. Exercise - it was essential that I dedicate time to exercising as a stress reliever as well as a way to recharge. During my time as a consultant I was able to train for multiple marathons and later I picked up CrossFit. It was the biggest thing keeping my sane but…it came with a price. To fit exercising into my schedule that I meant getting up at 5:30 am to get a run in or make it to a morning class. I lost a solid hour of quality sleep but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make.
2. Breaks - Block off time during the day and on weekends to take a break and take care of non-work related business. If you don’t take control of your schedule, you will quickly become overwhelmed. Having an hour on my calendar to go for a walk or run a quick errand made a big difference in taking my mind off of work and feel like a normal human.
3. Friends / Significant Other - I can’t tell you how important it is to have a group of close friends or a supportive significant other to come home to after a long week. Life as a traveling consultant is lonely and will eat away at you. I spent those 4 years of my life single because it was so difficult being gone all the time and trying to maintain a committed relationship. However, I had an incredible group of consulting friends that had my back during tough times and gave me something to look forward to on the weekends.
4. Diet - When all your food expenses are covered by the client and you are short on time, it’s easy to take on bad eating habits. I personally would take to stress eating at times since I didn’t partake in drinking or smoking to take off the edge. Exercise and a high metabolism allowed me to get away with it for awhile but I realized I felt the best and had the most energy when I concentrated on eating and snacking healthy. My strategy would be to go to Whole Foods every Monday to load up on healthy snacks so that I would never be tempted to take the easy route on junk food when I was starving or stressed.
5. Travel - As a consultant you get the opportunity to see some unique places and alt-travel for free. Take advantage of that! My favorite memories were exploring the small cities around me and talking to locals during the week while taking one weekend a month to alt-travel to a destination on my bucket list.
Yes I know it’s tough to think about all these things when you have 12 hour work days with two rough travel days baked in. However, if you make important things a priority and commit to having the discipline to follow a plan to incorporate a healthy life balance to your work, it is possible!

Anonymous · Answer

When I walked into McKinsey in June 2008, I was on top of the world. I thought I had literally landed my dream job. In a sense, it was true.

I worked there at the perfect time in my life and career. To this day it is still the best two years of my life I have spent working. But before I got there...

Flash back to summer 2006. I was working in my internship when I found out about consulting. I realized quickly - this is what I want to do.

Consulting seemed so exciting to me. Getting to learn about different topics in a fast-paced way surrounded by great people. I was incredibly motivated. I applied to the top 100 firms on Vault and 100+ rejections later, I ended up going back to work for GE. I had underestimated how much work and preparation it really took to crush the interview and land one of those coveted jobs.

I even saved the rejection letter I got in 2006:

%3E October 2006

Dear Paul,

Thank you for your interest in McKinsey & Company and your patience in awaiting our reply.

Unfortunately, we regret that we are unable to extend an interview to you at this time. Our team’s decision was a difficult one given the strength of our applicant pool and the limited number of positions available. In the event that our hiring needs change, we will get in touch with you directly

On behalf of McKinsey & Company’s recruiting team, we wish you every success in your career.

All the best,

XXX

Recruiting Manager

McKinsey & Company
I didn't lose sight of my goal. After six months I started applying again. I found a posting of a job in the knowledge network, as a research analyst in the operations practice. I had worked in manufacturing and was fascinated with the lean methodology. It was a perfect match for me.

So why did I love McKinsey so much? SIX reasons:

1. I gained an understanding of what "high performance" really meant - and I liked it: I had always been proud of the work I had done in the past but working at McKinsey changed the way I thought about creating something great. Through a healthy obsession (though some may argue otherwise) with logic, structure and communication combined with iteration in teams of great people, I was always impressed with the result of the work I did at McKinsey. It was far better than anything I had done before. It has raised the bar for my own work and has served me well since.

2. I was surrounded by peers who did not see limits, but saw tough problems to be solved - As I've gotten older, I seem to be increasingly surrounded by people who tell me why something cannot be done. To me, this is not an impressive skill. There are always 100 reasons why something cannot be done. While at McKinsey, I was surrounded by people that were hopeful and saw the world as something they wanted to help improve. When faced with a tough problem, I was surrounded by peers who would endlessly problem solve new ways of thinking about a problem or new ways to look at information. This may have been a factor of the relatively low age of most people, but I think it is inherent to the culture of the firm as well. It was fun.

3. I wasn't the smartest person in the room, but I still held my own - I remember one project where I was working with a Rhodes Scholar who was a consultant and also happened to be a practicing surgeon on the side of consulting (not joking!). To say there were some impressive people would be an understatement. But there are also many more people who are not the next world leaders (and I mean that in the best way). While there, I found people did not pay much attention to where you went to school or what you did in your past. Everyone was treated as an equal and judged based on the quality of their ideas and thoughtfulness you brought to problem solving. There is a cultural value of "the obligation to dissent" which I found to be terrifying at first (when Partners are asking you what you think on your first week), but wildly impressive after (I have not had many jobs where the leaders consistently as - "what do you think?").

4. Great mentors who believed in me - I had three different managers and a research team leader that were absolutely incredible. Whether they were a product of a system that knows how to develop people or they were just inspiring leaders (I think a bit of both) - the best thing they all did was give me space to learn, make mistakes, ask questions and develop. Looking back, my work product wasn't the best, but they trusted me 100% and helped me build an incredible amount of confidence. I've realized that this is 90% of leading - finding good people and trusting them. I owe a lot to these people and was lucky to have these experiences

5. A sense of gratitude - While I was at McKinsey, I searched Harvard in the internal database and found 1000 employees that had some affiliation with the school. I searched University of Connecticut (my school) and found six. This made me incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to work there. I wanted to do the most with it. It was also the second job after a big corporate job that I wasn't a fan of. Some things that others complained about I only saw as minor issues.

6. "NAKC" - I worked at NAKC aka the North American Knowledge Center. Mckinsey started really investing in its knowledge network (much earlier than most other companies) and had an open and collaborative space in Boston. It was a collection of a lot of young (and all young at heart) researchers who also came from schools that didn't typically have a shot working at McKinsey in the past. That office and the collection of inspiring people is by far the best environment I have ever been a part of.

Having worked as a strategy consulting with both BCG and Mckinsey, this changed how I think and gave me a problem-solving toolkit which I use in all aspects of my life. This inspired me to create StrategyU where the skills, frameworks, and secrets of the top-tier consulting firms are available to anyone with the desire to learn.

Check out StrategyU [ http://strategyu.co/?utm_source=quorafooter ] for free lessons, 100+ practical PowerPoint templates, or the full self-paced course, Think Like A Strategy Consultant.

Xinyangmill · Answer

1. Industry-Specific Framework Construction

* MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) decomposition: Break the industry into components (e.g., supply chain, regulatory environment, customer segments) to avoid overlap and gaps.
 * Leverage existing models: Apply frameworks like Porter’s Five Forces, PESTEL (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, Legal), or value chain analysis to map key dynamics quickly.
 * Example: For healthcare, use Porter’s Five Forces to assess payer power, supplier consolidation, and regulatory barriers.
2. Rapid Expert Engagement

* Targeted interviews: Connect with industry insiders (e.g., executives, analysts, frontline workers) to validate assumptions and uncover hidden insights.
 * Structured questions: Ask "How do you define success in this industry?" or "What metrics do you track?" to prioritize critical factors.
 * Example: A consultant new to semiconductors might interview a fab engineer to understand wafer yield challenges.

Robin Schlinkert · Answer

I would be surprised if *most* senior management jobs in any industry go to ex MBB consultants, but a fair few may do.

In my experience there are two related skills that most MBB consultants have or develop and that are directly related to their consulting work:

1. Story-telling - i.e., creating and presenting materials in a way that works for the intended audience (Power-point presentations being only one facet of this skill). There can't be many roles where so much time, effort, and emphasis is spent on how to present a story. Consequently, consultants tend to do this very well. 
2. Communicating with and influencing senior management. Consultants interact with senior management ( both at clients and within their own firm) much more and much earlier than virtually any company internal role would. As a result, they speak the language and are at ease when interacting with "very senior" people, and appear very confident, even when they have limited expertise. 
These two skills will go a long way in a candidate search, and are likely to impress in a typical "interview" set-up for such roles. If you combine this with some domain knowledge (even if often not in much depth for a generalist consultant), such a candidate might come across more impressively than an industry insider.

As for developing these skills - get involved in projects beyond your immediate role, ideally cross-functionally, maybe sponsored by someone senior in the company. Get used to presenting, ask to speak to conferences etc., spend time on crafting stories (for presentations / for pitches / for internal projects).

Maybe more importantly, don't forget that there will be many things that you do a lot better than a typical consultant, i.e., actual execution, running a business, practical innovation, closing deals, having real results. I feel like I've learnt a lot more since leaving consulting than I have in my years at McK....

Jason T Widjaja · Answer

Thanks for the A2A.

The headline skill set that management consultants have is strategy development and execution, which is not just a cerebral academic exercise but is rather one rooted in managing the interests of senior stakeholders while arriving at an agreed direction that suits the needs of the company.

Some more specific things you could pick up are: 
 * structured MECE thinking (often an ideal in real life, but still one worth striving for, at least to the point that your peers validate the way you are thinking). 
 * business acumen, which is really more of large-firm business acumen - understanding the mechanism of how plans are made and budgets are allocated in large organisations, and the interests of different players at the table.
 * solution selling, which is the softer, persuasion, business development and ultimately sales side of professional services. I have encountered people outside consulting who are better at this than consulting partners, so it is definitely a skill that can be developed outside the industry.

To learn these skills is a bit more tricky, as learning is mostly done through an apprenticeship model where consultants learn from other, more senior consultants. This is because it is not just about the content, but the pace in which it is done, and the ability to be flexible to suit the context of each engagement. A good place to start are pro-bono social impact consulting firms, where high performing graduates get the chance to experience something quite similar for a period longer than what a school course would allow.

However, as for the jobs you see going to people in those firms, that is actually part of their strategy - to keep in touch with the alumni and help them get strategy roles in firms, so that they can shape how those firms think about strategy. In the long term, this is with a view to channel work back to strategy consulting. It is this, more than technological advancement, which makes strategy consulting tricky to disrupt.

Edit: Fixed a couple of typos.

Anonymous · Answer

Let me focus my answer on what junior entry level consultants (Business Analysts or Associates) do. If you want to better understand what more senior folks like Engagement Managers or Partners do, then that takes a whole book.

At the most basic level, McKinsey consultants use analytical methods to understand business problems faced by senior management and based on this analysis, as well as extensive discussions with colleagues and clients, make recommendations. At the heart of it, this reliance on facts and analytical results using data is what sets aside McKinsey and other top tier strategy firms from other consultants (i.e., those relying on the experience of individual consultants or simply basing recommedations on what they gather in management interviews).

This requires the consultant, therefore, to follow a certain process. First the problem needs to be understood and properly defined. This in itself can involve a fair amount of analysis and discussion. Second it requires collecting data (quantitative data or case studies for example). Data can come from the client, from MCkinsey’s own proprietary sources, from surveys commissioned or conducted by the team, or from public sources. Ensuring data quality and reliability is always a critical problem teams wrestle with.

This data then needs to be analyzed in order to develop an initial answer. Analysis can take many forms from quantitative models to more subjective methods, depending on the circumstances. There needs to be a balance as sophisticated models built on imprecise data are useless. This initial answer will then be debated within the McKinsey team, tested with clients, subjected to further analysis and so on, until a final perspective emerges supported by clients and consultants.

The day to day work naturally follows this pattern, with one important proviso. All work is communicated in power point charts, or slide decks. Decks are how information is recorded and presented, the means by which teams conduct their problem solving, and the medium for communicating results. Consultants consequently get drilled on two things at McKinsey: 1) rigorous analysis, and 2) communication using slide decks. So in a typical day a consultant will do analysis, write charts, discuss the charts, and then go back and repeat. Throw in regular client meetings, team meals, and the occasional bit of travel and you get a pretty good picture of what consultants do.

John Voloudakis · Answer

Generally, I found internal knowledge repositories most useful when writing a proposal to win work. At that time, it was useful to find recent winning proposals and the deliverables from the subsequent engagements. This helped to kickstart the proposal writing process, and upped the odds of winning by starting with a known winning proposal and enhancing it based on the outcomes of the engagement. I liked to look at similar engagements across industries as well, as there were often insights to be learned by seeing how teams from other practices helped customers in different businesses address similar problems. This helped differentiate a large, cross-industry firm from boutique players who focus only in one industry or service.

It was also useful to be able to see who worked on those projects, speak with the project manager, and quickly come up to speed on the process used, the lessons learned, the risks encountered, etc. And to propose the staff who had ‘been there and done that’ as the engagement team for the new project, as well as to use that customer as a reference.

Once the project was won, as the engagement executive, I would generally distribute the proposal that was given to the customer, as well as the relevant deliverables from similar projects, to my engagement team. This both helped them get up to speed on how to best deliver the project, but allowed the reuse of project plans, templates, analysis frameworks, etc., so we didn't have to reinvent the wheel for each project.

David Friedman · Answer

Part of it is that they know each other because of having been in a consulting firm together.

Part of it is that employers assume that having those consultancies' names on a resume means that the candidate is smart and capable.

Part of it is that, by having convinced McKinsey et al to hire them, these people have demonstrated a certain social competence in the workplace.

What I am getting at here is that what separates or distinguishes people who have McKinsey, etc., experience on the resume from other people is soft skills and name brand recognition.  You can't get the name brand recognition without having been employed by McKinsey, et al, but you can can acquire the soft skills.

First, see if any of these senior executives are able and willing to serve as a mentor for you.  If they are, then great.  If not, seek out other leadership opportunities within your company, e.g., leading a group, giving presentation, working with outside clients, etc.

Good luck.

Anonymous · Answer

A few things stand out

* A shared level of performance standard where everyone is aiming to do great work, not just average work. This makes it normal to create a constant feedback environment among all levels
 * Culture of mentorship - people really want to see you succeed - mostly because everyone started from the bottom here
 * Values based culture - informal behavioral norms rather than a ton of rules and policies govern behavior
 * Rigorous training - often the weeks of training are more intense than some of the day-to-day work. I even worked at BCG where I found the training much less serious. After a week of McKinsey training you often felt like you “leveled up” - it was like packing a month of traditional school and maybe more into a week
 * Perks - they spend a lot of money on events, travel and other perks. It makes you feel valued but at the same time humbled that most of the universe does not get treated this well
 * Knowledge database - proprietary knowledge sharing platform makes it working in line with the culture and structure of the firm. Much better than off-the-shelf crappy platforms like JIVE that I’ve used at other places.
 * Space to be yourself. Most people are expected to leave, so you can share openly what you are really passionate about. While I’m skeptical of careerism, it is nice to not have to pretend you will spend your life with the company like you do at so many other places.
 * NERDS! - everyone is so crazily nerdy and well read - the lunch conversations were always so fun and interesting

Anonymous · Answer

There is nothing special about McKinsey. I just got an offer from them and have talked with a number of folks from the Firm. Very few of them were intelligent and interesting people. Most were lost college grads from top schools who didn't know what to do next with their lives. Also the high bar to get into McKinsey is overly exaggerated. It's honestly not that hard to learn how to do cases or come up with answers for their behavioral questions if you really want the job. I do admit that it's probably the best job for non-technical people. Silicon Valley is the only place that could be considered more attractive today. If you can make it in tech, there are so many more opportunities for you that are better than management consulting at MBB.

Kyle Durfee · Answer

Knowledge teams do a variety of things, including but not limited to

* Giving consultants a run-down on the industry or practice area when they aren’t familiar
 * Finding research or data at the request of consultants to support a project
 * Doing new research to support a client project, internal project, or publication
 * Working directly on projects that need a heavier amount of subject matter expertise
For me, the process has typically been pretty fast. I’ve been able to get knowledge team members on the phone typically the same day I request it; certainly within a couple of days if I’m not asking for something crazy or they aren’t unusually slammed.

Although I get responses quickly, the issue I more often encounter is just finding that what I want doesn’t exist. It’s not usually surprising; our clients are often asking us to solve problems that haven’t been done very well before, so there isn’t always research available, but that doesn’t stop me from asking just in case. I’m often surprised at how much they can find that is either a direct answer to a question, or similar enough to be useful.

Dr. Monika Emilia Luca · Answer

Get Talking: Start by having conversations with your team and the people involved – their insights will give you a clearer picture of what's going on.

Read Between the Lines: Take some time to read through the project's history and documents. You'll understand what's been done and what's left to do.

Meet Your Crew: Meet your team members individually – you'll learn about their skills, preferences, and how they like to work.

Clear Role Definition: Make sure everyone knows what your role involves.

Identify Key Folks: Figure out who has a big say in the project. Building good relationships with them is crucial.

Address Issues Directly: When issues pop up, tackle them head-on. Taking care of problems early prevents bigger headaches later.

Know Your Playground: Understand the project's boundaries and scope. This helps you make decisions with confidence.

Prioritize Smartly: Sort tasks by what needs attention first. Focus on what matters most to keep things moving.

Create a Solid Plan: Craft a clear project plan that lays out what needs to be done and when.

Delegate Wisely: Assign tasks based on each team member's strengths. Everyone fits in where they shine.

Stay Connected: Hold regular check-ins with your team. Staying in the loop keeps everyone on track.

Keep Learning: Think of every day as a chance to learn something new. Gather insights from your team and industry resources.

Celebrate Wins: Acknowledge milestones, even the small ones. It boosts morale and keeps everyone motivated.

Adapt as Needed: Be ready to switch gears if the situation changes.

Seek Feedback: Ask your team and stakeholders for their thoughts.

Sparsh Mittal · Answer

This question is very broad and could cover 4 aspects:
1. How do you actually complete that much work?
2. How do motivate yourself to do it?
3. Is there anything you can do to help improve your situation?
4. In the long terms how do you cope with constantly having so much work?

How do you actually complete that much work?
 * Spend time in the start thinking about how you will tackle a big task. Set small targets and corresponding rewards for yourself. 
 * Keep important people in the loop about developments to avoid re-work. 
 * Prioritizing is the key: the famous 80/20 rule is the key. You need to focus your attention to tasks that really add value.
 * You get more efficient with experience and you learn to leverage all the resources that the firm has to offer better

How do motivate/push yourself to do it?
 * Passion - A lot of times you feel passionate enough to not really care
 * Fun Team - Having people you enjoy being around helps a lot 
 * Personal time - You always make sure that you make time no matter what for the personal things that really matter to you. Be upfront with the team about those from the start, they usually respect that
 * Positive attitude - "Its just a couple of weeks like this now and the weekend is just around the corner", "This might be a struggle but it will really help me learn and grow", 
 * Coffee!

Is there anything you can do to help improve your situation?
 * Reach out to your mentors and leaders to seek advice 
 * DO not suffer in silence - Have conversations within the team and strategize ways to help reduce workload - Be honest and upfront but don't be too focused on your self  (usually everyone on the team is suffering just as much)
 * In addition to that a firm like McKinsey provides a number of tools that you can use to communicate your team's situation in studies where you are barely sleeping - One of them is a weekly team health check survey that helps initiate conversations within the team and helps you reach out outside for help as well.

In the long terms how do you cope with constantly having so much work?
A very good answer on how to avoid burnout by Quora User -  Management Consulting and Management Consulting Firms: Is management consulting a sustainable, long-term career option? From what I gather, many consultants are burnt out and change paths after a few years? [ http://qr.ae/rvoIM ]