One occurred in 1950, when a partner at McKinsey, Arch Patton, published comparative details of executive pay, and proposed ways in which chief executives – his clients – could be better rewarded by incentivising their remuneration against profit. They identify several key ways in which McKinsey has been directly responsible for a corporate culture that works for the benefit of the elite 1% rather than the wider workforce. For example, the authors’ search of internal records shows that “the firm has advised virtually every major pharmaceutical company – and their government regulators…” Late in life, a former partner was asked how he felt about the impact of his work. There are so many McKinsey alumni at the top of public and private client organisations that conflicts of interest are priced in. As a result, the authors suggest, “Americans and, increasingly, people the world over are largely unaware of the profound influence McKinsey exerts over their lives, from the cost and quality of their medical care their children’s education”. To this day, the firm won’t identify clients or disclose the advice it gives. McKinsey’s claims to ethical purity have never extended as far as transparency. Suggesting an ill-advised revision to a maintenance regime in Disney theme parks, one partner is quoted here as saying: “Change of this magnitude is not managed – it is led… and leaders must inspire and develop a bench of true change champions.” Savage cost-cutting became “optimising” brutal redundancy programmes, “rightsizing”.Ī great deal of this work was done in secrecy. Over the years, reflexive euphemism became very lucrative. It was a practice, not a firm it engaged with clients, rather than worked for them. To this end, the company quickly created a lexicon to describe its operations. “The very word commercial, when spoken about anyone at McKinsey, is akin to profanity,” one consultant suggested. From the beginning, his company operated with a high-minded, somewhat delusional sense of its own integrity, as if the advice it gave was on a higher plane than bottom lines. James O McKinsey, an accountant from the Ozarks, was an evangelist of the new management science of efficiency.

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