McKinsey & Company : Managing Knowledge and Learning

By Group 6

Click to edit Master subtitle

Divij Nath Pandya Manolya Srivastava style Harish Mysooru Daksha Hegde Asish Soans

5/2/12

An Introduction (manolya)

Founded in 1926 by James (Mac) McKinsey

Knowledge is the lifeblood of McKinsey

Accounting and Engineering firm General Survey Outline

o

Recruitment of experienced executives & training them in integrated approach.

Undeviating Sequencing

5/2/12

One firm policy Upgrading the size & quality of McKinsey clients New Engagement guide Managing Director Bower 1950
o

McKinsey turning into elite firm unable to meet its demand for services.

Extraordinary domestic growth led to international expansion Offices in London, Geneva, Amsterdam, Paris
5/2/12

McKinsey growth engine stalling

Reasons:

Economic turmoil of the oil crisis

European Expansion

Growing sophistication of client management

New competitors (BCG)

5/2/12

Recovery

Commission on firm aim and goals

Committee to study the problems and make recommendations

Report of the commission

Firm had been growing too fast Negligence of development of technical & professional skills. Concluded that quality of work done was uneven. Consultants lacked deep industry knowledge

Recommendations

Recommit itself to continuously development of its

5/2/12

Practice Development Initiative (harish)

Ron Daniel elected as MD in 1976 - the fourth to hold the position since Bower had stepped down

McKinsey still struggling to meet the challenges

Competition from Boston Consulting Group

Thought leadership Simple but powerful tools

Created industry-based Clientele sectors in consumer products, banking, industrial goods, insurance.
5/2/12

Encouraged formal development of firms functional expertise in

Assembled working groups to develop knowledge in two areas

Strategy (Headed by Fred Gluck) Operations

Gluck invited a Super Group of young partners- Meeting to develop and share agenda for strategy practice.

5/2/12

Revival and renewal

Glucks beliefo

Knowledge development had to be core Needed to be ongoing and institutionalized It had to be a responsibility of everyone and not just a few

Created 15 centers of competence:

Role of these centers To help develop consultants To ensure continued renewal of firm's intellectual resources.

On Gluck identified highly recognized experts and called them practice leaders.
5/2/12

Center of competence began to generate new insights and many felt the need to capture and leverage the learning

Strong suspicion on big ideas or creating proprietary concepts.

Launching of McKinsey staff paper series encouraging consultants to publish their key findings

Gluck introduced the idea of practice bulletins and also Knowledge Management Projects

The team suggested three recommendations

1.

Build a common database of knowledge accumulated 5/2/12 To ensure databases were maintained and used

2.

Support Systems

Firm practice information system to make data more complete, accurate and timely

Practice development network collection of documents that represented their core knowledge

Knowledge resource directory also called McKinsey yellow pages

5/2/12

Managing Success (divij)

Fred Gluck elected as MD - new offices in Rome, Helsinki, Sao - Paulo and Minneapolis.

Clientele And Professional Development Committee (CPDC).

Change the more structured discover-codify-disseminate to a looser and more inclusive engage-explore-applyshare approach.

CPDC began integrating the diverse groups into seven sector and seven functional capability groups

Objective was to replace leader driven knowledge creation 5/2/12 with a Stewardship Model or Self Governing practices

Client Impact Committee

to ensure that the expertise it was developing created positive measurable results. Persuade the partners to redefine the firm's key consulting unit from the engagement team to client service team.

Professional personnel committee decided to create two career path for client service support and administrative staff.
1. 2.

Practice dedicated specialist Practice management track

5/2/12

Knowledge Management on the front (daksha)

Jeff Peters and the Sydney Office Assignment

Jeff Peters was a Boston based senior engagement manager and bettran of more than 20 studies for Financial Institutions

Peters assembled a group of internal specialists and experts who would act as consulting directors

The team convened an internal workshop designed to keep client management informed, involved and committed to the emerging conclusions.

The team focused on 7 core beliefs and 4 viable options

5/2/12

Warwick Bray and European Telecoms:

Warwick Bray, MBA, Melbourne University Systems engineer at HP

Presented a PD Document Negotiating Interconnect at firms annual worldwide telecom conference.

Michael Patsalos-Fox invited Bray as a deregulation expert

Fox launched a series of Practice-sponsored series by some of the practices best consultants and focused on big topics like The Industry Structure In 2005 or The Telephone Company Of The Future
5/2/12

Initiated a practice-specific intranet link designed to allow members direct access to the practices knowledge base. It was develop to accelerate the engage-explore-apply-share knowledge cycle.

5/2/12

Stephen Dull and Business Marketing Competence Center

MBA, University of Michigan

After joining Atlanta office, Dull soon discovered there was no structured development program

Because of Dulls negligence in developing strong client relations, his prospects of being elected as principal who are in doubts.

He consulted Rob Rosiello, a principal in New York for suggestions and proposed the firms first business marketing specialist.

Recent meetings had stressed on importance of building 5/2/12

A New MD, A New Focus (ashish)

Rajat Gupta appointed as the new MD

Committed to Development

continuing

emphasis

on

Knowledge

He stressed on diverting energy to activities rather on debates

He launched a four-pronged attack

o

Capitalize on firms Long term investment in practice development Supported by knowledge infrastructure of PDNet and FPIS
5/2/12

Concerns

Growth might stretch the fabric of the place

o

McKinsey couldnt keep on disaggregating the units to create niches for everyone because they had exhausted the capability of their integrating mechanisms

To support high growth rates McKinsey must be more aggressive in using technology
o

Support knowledge transfer Allow partners to mentor more young associates

Dark side of technology

o

Drives out communication

5/2/12

IT can lead to information overload

o

The more time employees at McKinsey spend searching out for the ideal framework or the best expert, the less time they spend thinking creatively about the problem

Uncertainty about the future in the company

o

Promotion aspects

Commissions central proposals

5/2/12

Conclusion

Growth from accounting and engineering advisors to No. 1 Consulting firm by focusing company business on the one firm vision

Manage information and benefit from it

Technology as barrier

Support Systems

Changed shape of consultant

5/2/12

Thank You!

5/2/12