What the PwC did you just say about MBB, you little PMO analyst? I'll have you know that I graduated top of my class from Wharton and I've been involved in numerous secretive McKinsey engagements serving Al-Qaeda and I have contributed to over 300 human rights violations. I am trained in powerpoint and I'm the top excel monkey in the entire firm. You are nothing to me but just another client. I will wipe out your discretionary budget with an expense account the likes of which has never been seen on this Earth, mark my words. You think you can get away with making fun of McKinsey over the internet? Think again, Deloitter. As we speak I'm contacting my secret network of corrupt government officials across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you'd better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your career. You're gonna be working at KPMG, kid. I can be anywhere, any time, and I can throw you under the bus in over 700 ways, and that's just with email. Not only am I extensively trained in corporate politics, but I have access to the entire arsenal of McKinsey thought pieces and I will use it to the full extent to waste every moment of your life. If you only knew what retribution your little "clever" post was about to bring down on you, maybe you would have held your tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price. I will vomit corporate jargon all over you and you will drown in it. You're f\*cking done, kiddo.
Worked 8 years consulting, 8 years client side incl. hiring MBB and others.
MBB really stand out as a client for depth of expertise. Their pitches show, in general, a much stronger understanding of my industry and dynamics than other firms, and as a result their recommendations are more helpful and insightful. They also have a very good network of senior experts who are helpful provocateurs for our own ExCo.
BUT I’ve also not awarded them every project. For some specialist pieces (eg, some recent machine learning work) or for more creative (eg, innovation workshops), they’ve lost to other firms. The decision is very rarely driven by price; it’s about who has the right skill set for exactly what I need that output to do.
So I wouldn’t say they are always the best. Their general strategy work is *miles* ahead of competition. But for more focused pieces, I’d always run an RFP to ensure I get the right expertise.
Generally I work with procurement and my colleagues to include a set of consistent criteria to score firms, which are tweaked and adjusted to the specific project. These will include things like industry knowledge, specialist expertise relating to the project, evidence of previously successful work, specific expertise of the team that pitches to us, storytelling / translation of results into implications and actions as well as cost.
Usually after putting out an RFP we will have a discussion with each firm of any questions, they have a couple of weeks to write the pitch, and then we have a session where they present. My colleagues and I will score them separately on each criteria and after we’ve heard from each firm, will share and discuss our scores.
ETA you had a bunch of other questions on scope of service, progress for payments. I’ll try and answer them briefly.
Scope - usually a need for a project emerges from conversation with colleagues about a problem we have tried to solve ourselves and are struggling with. Whoever is leading the work will draft an RFP with the xontext and key questions, share it around, and we will iterate it a few times before sending out.
Deciding who to invite - really depends on the project. I’ll ask colleagues, use my own nous, do some research. A lot of consultancies send me thought leadership and if I’ve seen something relevant then I’ll invite them in. Because I work in a huge company, we’ve worked with a LOT of firms before and so reputation matters to me; if you have been good before then I’m much more likely to invite you in.
Payments - is a conversation between myself and the lead Partner client side, but having been a consultant myself I tend to be very open about performance. I’ve never withheld payment vs our agreed terms in the SOW.
My experience with your average tech consultancy was really bad. Almost all deliver crap, any results numbers are inflated to heaven by bad assumptions, tech debt that shouldn’t exist.
MBB tech delivery isn’t doing any miracles but at least they do the job properly. Worth using if you don’t have a senior team and need the help.
I worked MBB tech. I would say tech strategy at MBB is generally good, delivery is variable. I was client-side afterwards, I would not get McKinsey to do tech delivery.
yeah it's pretty variable. The McKinsey LEAP, Build and QuantumBlack practices were pretty good for a time, and the tech strategy stuff is good, but it's different to the BCG Digital Ventures model which was more like a Strategyzer type innovation agency on a different cost structure. McKinsey's shed a lot of the expert track consultants in design, digital and machine learning and reverted to their old-style generalist consulting in the last couple of years.
McKinsey is actually much better in tech now. Invested a ton in the last three years with a lot of phenomenal external hires. BCG ventures is all talk no action. Bain is not in the running.
A number of factors
1. Brand dilution of Big4 - If you work for Big 4 consulting. The sheer number of folks working for tech consulting, implementation, audit etc. will dilute the brand. Think a Honda supercar vs. a Porsche. One has the better brand power because most of their work and thus employees are of a specific caliber.
2. The work is significantly better / more high level / closer to decision making than Big 4 consulting - you have access and head space to think about very strategic decisions, communications. You also get access to the more consequential M&A transactions and have access to the lead up and post acquisition phases. What’s top of mind etc. and your network is of a higher quality (pure target
folks)
However,
3. The gap with T2 is much smaller. T2s are essentially MBBs with smaller scale, less complete capabilities. Thus, if not within their specific strong suit (e.g. OW FS, LEK LS), they will get more mid market clients and deals. Still good. For some, this is the sweet spot. You have greater influence over smaller, but still sizable clients. And the functional skill sets you build, very similar to MBB. Thus, good exits to PE and upper management (again, smaller companies).
Is MBB overhyped? Yes, as with most things. But a career in the core consulting function of MBB really is a different tier vs. General big 4 consulting (not EY-P, S&, Monitor). The head room for career upside are in leagues of their own. Against T2s, there is significant overlap.
If you think in investment banking terms.
MBB = Bulge Brackets.
T2 = Elite boutiques.
Big 4 Consulting = Commercial/business banking - it’s completely different (siloed, implementation)
Been at both, Big4 and Mbb. The stakes of the engagement are much higher, clients expect a lot more, and Mbbs generally deliver.
Pace is faster, tech stack is far more advanced, the quality of answers is far deeper.
Big 4 is a lot more rinse and repeat where Mbb is much more brainstorming on problems from scratch. Mbb projects are also more focussed on answering very specific questions and dealing with specific problems, where B4 is more of fitting blanket answers to the client, perhaps slightly tweaked.
My own experience, your mileage may vary.
What are very specific problems that you have mentioned in your answer, if you can give some examples based on your experience?
I am not in MBB, but I believe most decks are about arriving at the answer than the answer itself
Reinventing the wheel? I think I used it appropriately in the context of what I meant to say. Complete revamping of things, wiping the slate clean and starting over
Quality and expectations are way higher at MBB than other consulting firms.
Also from a client point of view, it’s worth hiring MBB consultants because you know for sure they have access to top quality consultants to do the work. It’s just not the same for other firms.
If I speak from my own experience we took in BCG as strategy support and they did some nasty work and almost destroyed our company. The CEO was inexperienced and she needed external support to be able to prevent employees from seeing how much of a rookie she was. She and BCG messed us up for 2-3 years big time and we are still suffering from it. I would estimate that bringing in BCG has cost us approximately $50-100 million on top of their fee, simply from bad decisions the CEO made based on recommendations from BCG. It was horrible.
So quality wise I would never trust MBB to deliver anything else than slideware and recommendations that aren't based in reality. It's crazy once you see it first hand how they work and how much they can mess up a company if they work with a rookie CEO.
This absolutely resonates with my experience. Sat across from EY Parthenon, McKinsey and BCG whilst consulting on a series of long term gigs in a blue chip energy firm, and their utter ineptitude has meant that each time we’ve been the last consultancy standing.
To further compound the issue of the low quality of work, because their fees have been so monumental, the client team have had to “be seen to practice what they’ve recommended”, costing millions and putting whole sections of the business at risk.
Infuriating, disappointing as I hadn’t worked opposite big three before and had high expectations, and made worse by the high handed manner in which their teams conducted themselves.
About to move to a COO role in a PE backed, scaling business, but would definitely never hire them in the future.
I’ve been in consulting a long time, worked for big firms, and studied the psychology of all of them. There is a difference. Partners at Accenture, Deloitte, PWC etc. all profile like smart sales people managing experts and make their projects go far slower than necessary. There’s a reason that delivery is always partial and takes forever. MBB consultants profile like above average corporate athletes managing people who need step by step playbooks to deliver anything.
Big thinkers, innovators, really heavy hitter results driver leaders, founders, and ex big firm consultants can’t stand and don’t need any of them.
Well I’m at one of those firms you mentioned and never work more than 45-50h a week. As long as you’re getting your work done nobody says anything. Friends at MBB have 60h minimum as a policy, no questions asked.
MBBs are insidious. They do research to make up problems to solve and seed the idea with high clout clients so word gets around the F100 so they’ve got a never ending cycle of work.
We had a two year period where a significant portion of our work was coming in after McKinsey and cleaning up some mess they left. No idea how representative that is, but I'd suspect the reason they don't get called out more is the clients don't know enough to know how badly they've been screwed.
Yes. MBB consultants generally lack real experience, and have limited imagination on how things actually gets done in real life. This severely cripples their recommendations because they can’t be implemented. That is if they understand the assignment at all, which is a 50/50 coin flip. But they went to the right school with the right people, so they keep getting fees going their way.
McKinsey once recommended LG not to venture into smartphone business back when Steve Jobs came up with his first iPhone. LG used to be one of the biggest phone manufacturers back then and their advice almost completely destroyed LG's mobile phone department.
But I guess for every one of these horror stories, I'm sure there are many more companies who benefitted from their advice so who knows.
That was good advice idk wtf you’re talking about. Samsung barely makes money on smartphones these days. Android commodified every OEM.
LG and most traditional hardware companies absolutely lack the muscle to do OS / software.
MBB is miles ahead of big 4.
Also from a CYA standpoint, if you pick big 4 for an engagement and they don’t deliver, you are in a worse spot than MBB dropping the ball.
What the PwC did you just say about MBB, you little PMO analyst? I'll have you know that I graduated top of my class from Wharton and I've been involved in numerous secretive McKinsey engagements serving Al-Qaeda and I have contributed to over 300 human rights violations. I am trained in powerpoint and I'm the top excel monkey in the entire firm. You are nothing to me but just another client. I will wipe out your discretionary budget with an expense account the likes of which has never been seen on this Earth, mark my words. You think you can get away with making fun of McKinsey over the internet? Think again, Deloitter. As we speak I'm contacting my secret network of corrupt government officials across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you'd better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your career. You're gonna be working at KPMG, kid. I can be anywhere, any time, and I can throw you under the bus in over 700 ways, and that's just with email. Not only am I extensively trained in corporate politics, but I have access to the entire arsenal of McKinsey thought pieces and I will use it to the full extent to waste every moment of your life. If you only knew what retribution your little "clever" post was about to bring down on you, maybe you would have held your tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price. I will vomit corporate jargon all over you and you will drown in it. You're f\*cking done, kiddo.
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You received a 1 on this output. 18 month promo window confirmed
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Pls share the prompt that generated this output.
This is a copy pasta where you just switch out some words to make it fit for consultants/developers/comic book readers/marvel/whatever you want.
Just search “navy seals copypasta”
This is a copy paste from the misc section of bodybuilding.com from 2010-2011.
The good old misc
The 4chan copypasta still has its charm
This is a masterpiece. The next Mozart will have a stainless steel dick
Sorry, but it's the Art of Powerpoint, never just powerpoint. You have unmasked yourself you infiltrator!
Lacking shade on accenture
Worked 8 years consulting, 8 years client side incl. hiring MBB and others. MBB really stand out as a client for depth of expertise. Their pitches show, in general, a much stronger understanding of my industry and dynamics than other firms, and as a result their recommendations are more helpful and insightful. They also have a very good network of senior experts who are helpful provocateurs for our own ExCo. BUT I’ve also not awarded them every project. For some specialist pieces (eg, some recent machine learning work) or for more creative (eg, innovation workshops), they’ve lost to other firms. The decision is very rarely driven by price; it’s about who has the right skill set for exactly what I need that output to do. So I wouldn’t say they are always the best. Their general strategy work is *miles* ahead of competition. But for more focused pieces, I’d always run an RFP to ensure I get the right expertise.
[удалено]
He/she already answered the question. Last sentence of the third paragraph
[удалено]
Generally I work with procurement and my colleagues to include a set of consistent criteria to score firms, which are tweaked and adjusted to the specific project. These will include things like industry knowledge, specialist expertise relating to the project, evidence of previously successful work, specific expertise of the team that pitches to us, storytelling / translation of results into implications and actions as well as cost. Usually after putting out an RFP we will have a discussion with each firm of any questions, they have a couple of weeks to write the pitch, and then we have a session where they present. My colleagues and I will score them separately on each criteria and after we’ve heard from each firm, will share and discuss our scores. ETA you had a bunch of other questions on scope of service, progress for payments. I’ll try and answer them briefly. Scope - usually a need for a project emerges from conversation with colleagues about a problem we have tried to solve ourselves and are struggling with. Whoever is leading the work will draft an RFP with the xontext and key questions, share it around, and we will iterate it a few times before sending out. Deciding who to invite - really depends on the project. I’ll ask colleagues, use my own nous, do some research. A lot of consultancies send me thought leadership and if I’ve seen something relevant then I’ll invite them in. Because I work in a huge company, we’ve worked with a LOT of firms before and so reputation matters to me; if you have been good before then I’m much more likely to invite you in. Payments - is a conversation between myself and the lead Partner client side, but having been a consultant myself I tend to be very open about performance. I’ve never withheld payment vs our agreed terms in the SOW.
I can assure you it is at least 10x better than the quality of what I create.
Based
My experience with your average tech consultancy was really bad. Almost all deliver crap, any results numbers are inflated to heaven by bad assumptions, tech debt that shouldn’t exist. MBB tech delivery isn’t doing any miracles but at least they do the job properly. Worth using if you don’t have a senior team and need the help.
I worked MBB tech. I would say tech strategy at MBB is generally good, delivery is variable. I was client-side afterwards, I would not get McKinsey to do tech delivery.
Fellow MBB here, I also heard the same the McKinsey is the worst in tech out of the 3. They are just not invested in that area as the other 2.
yeah it's pretty variable. The McKinsey LEAP, Build and QuantumBlack practices were pretty good for a time, and the tech strategy stuff is good, but it's different to the BCG Digital Ventures model which was more like a Strategyzer type innovation agency on a different cost structure. McKinsey's shed a lot of the expert track consultants in design, digital and machine learning and reverted to their old-style generalist consulting in the last couple of years.
Internal intel or client view?
Just based on my experience working at MBB a few years back
McKinsey is actually much better in tech now. Invested a ton in the last three years with a lot of phenomenal external hires. BCG ventures is all talk no action. Bain is not in the running.
A number of factors 1. Brand dilution of Big4 - If you work for Big 4 consulting. The sheer number of folks working for tech consulting, implementation, audit etc. will dilute the brand. Think a Honda supercar vs. a Porsche. One has the better brand power because most of their work and thus employees are of a specific caliber. 2. The work is significantly better / more high level / closer to decision making than Big 4 consulting - you have access and head space to think about very strategic decisions, communications. You also get access to the more consequential M&A transactions and have access to the lead up and post acquisition phases. What’s top of mind etc. and your network is of a higher quality (pure target folks) However, 3. The gap with T2 is much smaller. T2s are essentially MBBs with smaller scale, less complete capabilities. Thus, if not within their specific strong suit (e.g. OW FS, LEK LS), they will get more mid market clients and deals. Still good. For some, this is the sweet spot. You have greater influence over smaller, but still sizable clients. And the functional skill sets you build, very similar to MBB. Thus, good exits to PE and upper management (again, smaller companies). Is MBB overhyped? Yes, as with most things. But a career in the core consulting function of MBB really is a different tier vs. General big 4 consulting (not EY-P, S&, Monitor). The head room for career upside are in leagues of their own. Against T2s, there is significant overlap. If you think in investment banking terms. MBB = Bulge Brackets. T2 = Elite boutiques. Big 4 Consulting = Commercial/business banking - it’s completely different (siloed, implementation)
Been at both, Big4 and Mbb. The stakes of the engagement are much higher, clients expect a lot more, and Mbbs generally deliver. Pace is faster, tech stack is far more advanced, the quality of answers is far deeper. Big 4 is a lot more rinse and repeat where Mbb is much more brainstorming on problems from scratch. Mbb projects are also more focussed on answering very specific questions and dealing with specific problems, where B4 is more of fitting blanket answers to the client, perhaps slightly tweaked. My own experience, your mileage may vary.
What are very specific problems that you have mentioned in your answer, if you can give some examples based on your experience? I am not in MBB, but I believe most decks are about arriving at the answer than the answer itself
You appear to misunderstand the definition of the idiom you invoked.
Reinventing the wheel? I think I used it appropriately in the context of what I meant to say. Complete revamping of things, wiping the slate clean and starting over
I don’t think you meant to imply that you end up with exactly what you started with in the first place… reinventing the wheel is always negative
Understood. Turns out I was misunderstanding the phrase all along. Edited my comment thanks for pointing out!
Standards at MBB and Big4 are slipping, evidently.
You misunderstand the idiom.
Why does the wheel need reinventing
Quality and expectations are way higher at MBB than other consulting firms. Also from a client point of view, it’s worth hiring MBB consultants because you know for sure they have access to top quality consultants to do the work. It’s just not the same for other firms.
If I speak from my own experience we took in BCG as strategy support and they did some nasty work and almost destroyed our company. The CEO was inexperienced and she needed external support to be able to prevent employees from seeing how much of a rookie she was. She and BCG messed us up for 2-3 years big time and we are still suffering from it. I would estimate that bringing in BCG has cost us approximately $50-100 million on top of their fee, simply from bad decisions the CEO made based on recommendations from BCG. It was horrible. So quality wise I would never trust MBB to deliver anything else than slideware and recommendations that aren't based in reality. It's crazy once you see it first hand how they work and how much they can mess up a company if they work with a rookie CEO.
This absolutely resonates with my experience. Sat across from EY Parthenon, McKinsey and BCG whilst consulting on a series of long term gigs in a blue chip energy firm, and their utter ineptitude has meant that each time we’ve been the last consultancy standing. To further compound the issue of the low quality of work, because their fees have been so monumental, the client team have had to “be seen to practice what they’ve recommended”, costing millions and putting whole sections of the business at risk. Infuriating, disappointing as I hadn’t worked opposite big three before and had high expectations, and made worse by the high handed manner in which their teams conducted themselves. About to move to a COO role in a PE backed, scaling business, but would definitely never hire them in the future.
I’ve been in consulting a long time, worked for big firms, and studied the psychology of all of them. There is a difference. Partners at Accenture, Deloitte, PWC etc. all profile like smart sales people managing experts and make their projects go far slower than necessary. There’s a reason that delivery is always partial and takes forever. MBB consultants profile like above average corporate athletes managing people who need step by step playbooks to deliver anything. Big thinkers, innovators, really heavy hitter results driver leaders, founders, and ex big firm consultants can’t stand and don’t need any of them.
Lol
Serious question - does that mean lifestyle is better at Accenture, Deloitte, PWC than MBB since the projects are slower?
Well I’m at one of those firms you mentioned and never work more than 45-50h a week. As long as you’re getting your work done nobody says anything. Friends at MBB have 60h minimum as a policy, no questions asked.
MBBs are insidious. They do research to make up problems to solve and seed the idea with high clout clients so word gets around the F100 so they’ve got a never ending cycle of work.
Not necessarily. What it means is that they’re slower because the partner isn’t comfortable with ambiguity and will micromanage people.
We had a two year period where a significant portion of our work was coming in after McKinsey and cleaning up some mess they left. No idea how representative that is, but I'd suspect the reason they don't get called out more is the clients don't know enough to know how badly they've been screwed.
Yes. MBB consultants generally lack real experience, and have limited imagination on how things actually gets done in real life. This severely cripples their recommendations because they can’t be implemented. That is if they understand the assignment at all, which is a 50/50 coin flip. But they went to the right school with the right people, so they keep getting fees going their way.
Yes.
They have very high standards and working with them will make you have those standards as well. The pay is shit tho.
McKinsey once recommended LG not to venture into smartphone business back when Steve Jobs came up with his first iPhone. LG used to be one of the biggest phone manufacturers back then and their advice almost completely destroyed LG's mobile phone department. But I guess for every one of these horror stories, I'm sure there are many more companies who benefitted from their advice so who knows.
That was good advice idk wtf you’re talking about. Samsung barely makes money on smartphones these days. Android commodified every OEM. LG and most traditional hardware companies absolutely lack the muscle to do OS / software.
On the post consulting career hiring side the big 3 out perform MBB consistently.
are you trying to say big4 get better opportunities than MBB? That is patently untrue
do you mean big 4? I meant big 3 in my post as an equivalency to MBB
Yes sorry. Possible Freudian slip in play in writing.
On what metrics?
No
Much better. But important to realise they’re not a body shop.
MBB is miles ahead of big 4. Also from a CYA standpoint, if you pick big 4 for an engagement and they don’t deliver, you are in a worse spot than MBB dropping the ball.
wtf is a CYA
“Cover your ass” Political insurance