Optimist: The glass is half full. Pessimist: The glass is half empty. McKinsey: Use a smaller glass.

Thanks for this. I'm 60 and have been watching McKinsey destroy companies for most of my career & never get blamed for anything. They are a horrible cancer in our economy.

So, they help corporate leeches be as leechy as possible.

I worked for a large competitor of this company. I was a data analyst. They kept trying to fit the data to their conclusions rather than the other way around. They were creepy and exploitative. There were some good people there, but they didn't last long. Most of the people at these places are...not people I'd ever choose to be around again.

CEOs getting paid millions, and STILL they need to hire consulting firms to tell them what to do. You would think that for millions of dollars, a CEO could actually do the job themselves. Why are we paying CEOs so much money? For what?

We need to clean up corporations. It's clear this company is working against average Americans.

Deloitte is similar to McKinsey in many ways. Back in 2010 I worked for a bank and they paid Deloitte several million dollars to come in and tell them how to "improve" their business. The employees had been telling the leadership all along what needed to change, but Deloitte came in and said the same things and got a big payday for it. I anonymously had to vent about that one on the company feedback page.

“You worked for a company that was fixing bread prices” is such a cold line. Mayo Pete puckered up REAL quick

John Oliver did a piece on McKinsey. It's worth looking up.

Here in Canada McKinsey was being used a lot as well for Government consulting etc. but my understanding is that they are no longer being used by many companies because of the scandals. My wife works for a Crown Corp and they were told last year that McKinsey has been banned from all future consulting.

I work in government, and I work frequently with consultants. I can tell you that the primary reason that they are used is because if employees or even management have recommendations, neither the public nor elected officials will be willing to accept those recommendations unless they are verified by a consultant. You can be saying for 20 years that a particular change needs to occur and no one will take it seriously, but once a consultant comes in and says the same thing, it's taken as gospel truth. I think the same thing probably happens in private companies as well; shareholders (and CEO's by extension) just won't take action based off of the recommendations of their employees unless a third party comes in and makes the same recommendation. 95% of the time, the consultant will just come up with a report that pretty much says exactly what the organization wanted the report to say.

Love seeing real investigative journalism

Great reporting. The layers upon layers of corruption in this country is staggering!

Consultants are generally hired to come up with the solution that management already wants.

This where Pete Buttigieg came from. It's still mysterious to me how a guy goes from this, to mediocre mayor of podunk town, and then directly to national political figure with such quickness. 🤔

There’s also a rotating door between consulting companies and private equity firms. I work at a healthcare advertising agency currently majority owned by a PE firm. The CEO of this PE firm is from McKinsey. They installed a new CEO when prepping for the flip and he was also ex McKinsey. Private Equity + Consulting = no accountability absolute wild west

Never forget, a business major's greatest aspiration is often to work for a company specifically like this. That isn't a coincidence that these companies cause more damage than good.

Journalism like this is gonna have people revolting

I work in consulting. These days I feel like consultings primary purpose to give corporations justification for decisions they were going to do anyway. Consultants just provide a layer of justification for an action but often have little impact over the actual decision being made in the first place

"We were just following advice." You did it. You should've known better. You get punished. "We were just giving advice." You know the results of the last several times you gave this advice. You did know better. You get punished.

If a Disney park never have a failed ride injury because of adequate maintenance, that child's death after firing the maintenance is on Disney. Since they were warned, it's effectively murder by willful neglect.

In Germany they have two workers representatives on any company executive board.

Never ask a man his salary a woman her age what a McKinsey consultant was doing with that pharma company

I love when this sort of thing gets revealed. ????? How about doing a story about how food shelves and food banks really work? A lot of people, even food shelf workers, mistakenly believe that large corporations kindly donate their products to food shelves (via the big regional food banks like Second Harvest for redistribution to local food shelves) out of the goodness of their hearts. In reality, what happens is that the Farm Bill provides for an "enhanced" fed tax credit equal to cost + 50% of retail value for items "donated" to food banks. This form of tax credit means the corporate food suppliers actually are getting paid (just like the former child tax credits issued checks) amounts that are probably pretty close to what they would get by selling their products to retailers. The bonus for these corporations is that this is a profitable way to unload products that do not sell and that are close to the sell-by date or even significantly beyond the sell-by date. Some corporations even package products specifically to go to food banks which are heavily processed and filled with cheap unhealthy ingredients no one would choose from a grocery store shelf. Because corporations in this country have a mandate to increase shareholder wealth above all else, unless these companies are actually making a profit from "donating" products, they could actually be sued by their own shareholders. That is why they make sure that every "donation" benefits their bottom line and that is why food shelves are full of unhealthy, heavily processed products with inferior ingredients that contribute to chronic health problems like diabetes, obesity and heart disease, and many are also past their sell-by dates. Let's stop pretending these corporate food giants are being nice to the food insecure and expose what that they are making money off of the most vulnerable members of our population. As an example take a look at the fabulous new Second Harvest food bank building in the Mpls suburb, Brooklyn Center (" A guided tour of Second Harvest Heartland's new Brooklyn Park facility" on YT) that has Cargill, General Mills and Target logos all over it, despite the fact that the MN taxpayers spent over $18 million on this. The fact that these corporations control these food banks is obvious and they are controlling them because it is profitiable for them. Second Harvest makes it sound like there is a lot of fresh wholesome food, but that is NOT the case; it's almost ALL unhealthy processed food. It is NOT the case that over 60% of their product assortment is fresh (lean protein and produce), as they claim. The other catch is that these food bank packages are NOT forwarded to local food shelves free of charge; they have to pay huge delivery fees and the lightest weight, cheapest foods to get delivered are processed foods. The public has a right to know what is really going on with this scheme. At the very least, the government should not be giving these enhanced tax credits unless the products meet health and freshness guidelines.

Is Boeing a McKinsey customer?

insane. "what if you just didn't do basic safety measures? you would save so much money!!"

Idk if the kid was from McKinsey, but he came to my workplace at a construction firm and every one of us field workers knew he had NEVER been on a construction site after just 3 minutes into his "consulting" speech. Long story short: the company wasted our time and thousands on his utterly useless "services"

They do suck. Never cross one of their "ring fence" types ("best mates" with the exec) in an a org they operate in - they will make it their mission to have you fired. If a boss is an "alum" think again about that company - the mental attitude never leaves. Never take a job at a place McK or any competitors is "reorganizing", and if you see them arrive find another job ASAP. Life to too short to deal with their shiny but deranged BS ?

Correction of US economy and society starts with shutting down McKinsey

McKinsey is the company the Bob's worked for in office space.

Thank you for calling out Buttigieg, people aren’t as hard on him as is needed

Mc Kinsey plays on both sides like mercenaries

I had a phone call night before my hip replacement. They needed 5,000.00 deposit on surgery. I said call it off, I don't have 5,000.00!! Call it off? Lose money? Of course they said I could pay it later. I never did. They tried to charge me for a test on old hip. I said, never said a word, I would've said no, not my problem. Didn't pay that either. FIGHT YOUR BILLS!! Refuse!

How can I find a list of McKinsey's clients so I can boycott every company they have ever offered consulting to

I have worked as a consultant. I worked for a company who needed a software developer to build a tool. I work as a software developer. That makes sense as a consultant cost, the company isn't going to hire someone full time for a temporary job, I know enough about my field to make the tools. In what world does someone who has never managed their own company have the skills necessary to teach other people who are managers how to manage?

THIS YOUNG LADY IS A TRUE JOURNALISTS ‼️

This is what people need to be talking about, we need more voices like this.

We need more journalism like this

I used to be a corporate consultant. My last job dealt with "dead peasant insurance" - a company putting life insurance on their officers and workforce to be paid out to the company, not to the family, as a method of raising capital in the event of death - and that was enough for me. I'm poor now, but at least I have self-respect.

I'm a consultant who is not an MBA grad. We come in to do temporary work so the company doesn't have to hire highly skilled people full time. Demystifying consulting jargon, Model and analysis= use Excel to do simple math with information available to check assumptions. For all the engineers and scientists who are used to complex modeling programs that need a computer cluster, that's not what general consultants do, it's corporate speak.

Edward Snowden did a great breakdown in his book Permanent Record on the rise of consultants, particularly those working in government. I have yet to see any consultant that I have had to work with as a city planner that actually created anything new, innovative, or creative. Civil servants do the majority of work and consultants are there for the ride. It's a role meant to suck out government employee value and relevance and, in this respect, I guess that McKinsey succeeded.

The consulting interview preps I’ve observed always end with the same advice : layoffs, close US production, offshore the jobs. Pretty standard advice from consultant kids

I worked with them 40 years ago and they haven't changed a bit.

The only time I've worked anywhere that wasn't riddled with corruption was when I started working for myself as a handyman. The larger the company or the institution, the more corrupt. We're pretty much all part of it willingly or not.

The former McKinsey employee offered such critical information for the public. I'm just wondering if perhaps he might consider looking in to the development of worker owned co-ops? Co-ops are democratically run and can offer an alternative to workers and consumers who are tired of being exploited.

That one girl in the promo video, "When I first applied, I had no idea what a consultant even does." Boom. Gets hired to high end job at major firm. While the rest of us cant even get work when were highly qualified, in large part DUE to these clowns at McKinsey. 😡

Why the hell did this video completely leave out the ALLSTATE McKinsey papers??????? This was one of the biggest scandals out there.

Best journalism I have seen in I can't even remember how long! I'm not used to journalism even existing anymore. Thank you!

One of the best things that happened to me is that they did not give me a job offer. 😂

McKinsey is also listed on The World Economic Forum partners list.

Enact law(s) making consulting firms liable for the harmful consequences of their recommendations to organizations. This will be contentious and messy, but lawyers will love it. Why not sic sharks on the barracudas? Additionally, rigorously ban conflicts of interests among consulting firms and their clients. The burden of proof that no conflict exists is on the consulting firm.

Mackenzie would remove costco rotisserie chicken lol

People should be aware that management at some companies is filled with former McKinsey’s employees as well

This is the real, actual "Swamp", not the civil servants.

Walmart also gets life insurance on their employees, so if they die Walmart gets paid.

McKinsey & Company is a Council on Foreign Relations corporate member &/or donor. Accenture is also CFR.

McKinsey also has a huge influence because so many of its former employees get high ranking jobs in corporate America. For example the COO of Meta/ Facebook used to work for them

Add Canada to the list. I hear their name being thrown around by MPs in parliament.

Haven't you found Sauron already? He should be hiding somewhere in that building. 😂

My company has recently been working with another big management consultancy firm... Thing is, 80% of what they've recommended so far is just stuff people lower down the totem pole have told them. Like, we didn't need to spend millions for management to hear it... we just needed management to ask and listen. (The other 20% is drumming sales for their operations software which might be useful but is redundant to thing our ERP system would do if it were competently implemented). Also, can we get more of this host? Hell, even if it's just a weekly stream reading the phone book. I think I'm love. =D

Thank Edward Bernays too, Freud's nephew, who started this mindset altering.

Thank you for an outstanding video. What's long long overdue is a piece on United Way and their cozy relation with mega corporations like UPS. Thanks again

The Minister of Culture and Education in my country started his career as a management consultant at McKinsey for 3 years and now not just as a Minister, he also own a giant delivery company with $550 million dollar revenue. I can't believe a leech become a Minister in my country. Well my country has a big corruption problems for decades so it's not so surprising for such individual get a job at the government.

Evil Corp. How do these people sleep at night? It just shows that people will do anything for money. They’re hurting millions of people but justify it by saying “we don’t do anything illegal “.

I’m surprised KZfaq (most likely consulted by McKinsey) let you show this content; great job on it too.

My elder sister is a partner with Mckinsey and works with big pharma. Told her to quit and not work with them hope she listens. I chose to work in actual work building a FDA approved surgery tool with a leading orthopedic company, I chose to not do anything with these consulting firms/investment banks because I am the only born again Christian in my family

Read the 'managerial revolution' by James Burnham .

In the 90's a relative of mine recommended I read the McKinsey Quarterly. He was all into investing and ultimately retired at an early age. But it wasn't interesting to me perhaps due to my young age and being overall crazy busy with attending college. What little I did read about its financial advice just seemed so...unnatural to me.

I got fired from a job as the head mechanic for a trucking company 30 years ago. The CEO said that I wasn't working hard enough. He said that all the previous mechanics were rebuilding engines, transmissions, drive axles, etc all the time and that I wasn't doing that. I wasn't doing all those heavy repairs because the trucks were not breaking, they were all out on the road working. Stupid me, I thought I was there to reduce breakdowns.

This video is spot on For Consultants to be able to "consult" they need both expertise and experience, so you'd expect these companies to hire middle-aged employees who've spent a decade working in a particular industry in a position of influence. Instead, McKinsey recruits graduates fresh out of university, but also advises senior management irrespective of industry/sector, even they don't have the expertise to consult. Instead, they're employed for other reasons, but mainly to take the blame. A common reason is to justify redudancies. Companies who need an excuse to lay off a lot of employees hire these consultants to advise them that they need to "restructure" and "cut costs", so that when they make people redundant they can claim they're acting under advisement. As an ex who worked for Bain & Co once told me bluntly, "my job is to find a way to fire people".

Would love to know if there is anything we can do on our end, from a civilian perspective. They have been messing with our lives for far too long. Class action lawsuit and the likes?

I worked for 1 of the big 4 10 years ago. They are also guilty of exploiting their workforce. They work consultants like slaves.

I work for a McKinsey and have been a consultant for about a decade. AMA

Reminds me a lot of a book I'm reading, Confessions of a Union Buster, an autobiography of a "union avoidance" consultant and his use of terror to destroy employees' will to speak up. Absence of accountability, or as Levitt calls it, a magician whose tricks lose their power when put in the spotlight, has been one of the key themes of the book so far. We individually need to become informed, and collectively call these people out for their obscenities against society. This McKinsey book seems like the perfect next book to follow up on this...

Add PWC to this list. They were a major pain in my very first real world job, and have somehow followed me through every single company I've worked with over the past 20 years. Somehow they are present in every job I've had.

I worked for them. Can confirm. They're evil.

Reports like this are absolutely critical, while the public is so easily distracted by superficial social and political issues, companies like this fly under the radar and reap havoc, keep up the great work!

My dad worked for a company named Temco, which became Ling Temco, which became Ling Temco Vought, which became Chance Vought, which I believe became McDonald Douglas. Monopolies.

Amazing the way you are opening our eyes to the traitors and help recover our Republic!

All corruption is being brought to light. God is victorious. 🕊️

When my hubby worked at an oil company in the Netherlands, the company had an intern who just received Masters in BA, a very smart guy. The company hired McKinsey. This guy helped one consultant one time with his work. And the next week other consultants coming to the company were queuing up to get the intern’s consultation. The bosses didn’t even appreciated his brains and didn’t offer him a job, although he was a real value. He was from India.

I know we arent talking about my employer, but I could swear you were. Management and layoff are two words every journeymen would rather not hear, at all.

Privatization needs to be banned, period!

They compare Disney to Vought but these guys are closer to Vought imo 😅

It’s funny how as a student of economics I was simultaneously encouraged to go work for McKinsey while learning how much damage they have done to people and our economy.

I worked on a few projects with McKinsey. Companies use them because they excel at what they do: top-to-bottom analyses of how to make companies more productive and profitable. Don’t blame McKinsey. If there are failures, blame a system where profit and shareholder returns are the priorities. It’s what the global economic system is built on.

The problem with removing consultants from the government, is that the government relies on consultants to blame any unpopular policy they want or need to enact, or else they'd get voted out. I hate the system, but it exists for a reason.

McKinsey wouldn't be around if more unions were around and not allowing this kind of shit on a dialy basis

Keep up the fantastic reporting, the more people can see the more informed decisions are made.

And they wonder why people move from company to company

Thank you for doing this work. I was injured after consultants came in and designed the new workspace. Ended a 30 year career. I was sent to workers comp. In Ca. your knees are worth about $30,000. They told me to take some classes at the jr. college and start a new career. ☹

When I was growing up, capitalism was touted as the MOST EFFICIENT WAY to do business. The absolute gold standard way to run an economy. Now we know that capitalism incentivizes cost cutting that eventually cannabalizes essential things like standards of living, health, and safety. * Owners cut pay for the workers that make their profits possible, while keeping an obscene amount for themselves and investors. * Owners cut back on essential maintenance because there haven't been accidents, causing accidents. * Owners cut back on safety regulations, leading to hazardous conditions that threaten the lives and health of the general public. I'm starting to think that our current form of capitalism is a game played by sociopaths who fail the Marshmallow Test.

Blaming the supply chain for the consumer products you choose…such logic.

Greed always ruins the good stuff!

Pay attention to dates that's all I'm saying.

BlackRock runs the world

Having a German PhD with top grade and an MBA from INSEAD/Harvard I worked for McKinsey Duesseldorf in their first Austrian assignment at their largest bank, Creditanstalt Bankverein in Vienna.. I liked the experience and the thin air of high altitude.. Some consultants aim at being hired by a client to implement their advice. An INSEAD colleague of mine advised as McKinsey a wealty noble estate in Southern Germany and then left to become its general manager. A German chemical company paid 250 000DM for a McKinsey report on its inorganic division . I was hired as boss of that division (80 million DM turnover in 1983) also to implement the report. I improved the profit by 1 million DM disregarding the report.

Way to go! Great research y'all! We just keeping finding our more and more who runs the show, but it's thanks to people like you. Keep up the good work.

Please consider doing a video on the lifeboat foundation and lifeboat ethics!

Obama Care was made by McKinsey & Company. I was with McKinsey at the time, not on this assignment but I knew about it. McKinsey takes no blame for the fallout. I left after a couple of years, went on to better and more fulfilling work. McKinsey work will slowly suck out your soul and quickly fill your wallet.