Client Service Insights & Publications About Us Alumni Careers Global Locations Register Log in About Us Overview Who we are What we do Media center New at McKinsey blog New at McKinsey blog A collection of stories about our people, our capabilities, our research, and the ever-changing face of our firm September 22, 2015 One of Working Mother’s ten best employers Today we received recognition for our efforts to achieve gender equality here at McKinsey: a Top 10 position in Working Mother’s ranking of the 100 best employers in the US. The ranking reflects the strength of the programs we've put in place to support working mothers, and the excellent qualities that strong women bring to McKinsey. Recognition of this kind is also humbling. While the Working Mother ranking is a significant accolade, we understand we aren't where we want to be in terms of gender diversity. Neither is the broader business world. That's why we're redoubling our efforts—including making specific commitments as part of the United Nations Women HeForShe campaign—and continuing to invest in research that analyzes the business case for gender diversity and contributes to greater understanding of the multiple factors that are barriers to women in the workplace. more September 14, 2015 Our newest location: Vancouver This week, we're celebrating the opening of a new McKinsey office, in Vancouver. Vancouver marks our 107th office worldwide. Other recent office openings include Almaty and Denver. Vancouver is the fourth office of ours to open in Canada and will serve British Columbia where a variety of industries are poised to grow. The expansion is partly the result of double-digit growth in Canadian operations, and the potential to increase it further in western Canada. “The client opportunity out west has been substantial, because that’s where Canada’s economic and population growth has been,” says Eric Lamarre, Managing Partner for Canada. Vancouver itself has a diverse business community that’s particularly strong in the natural resource sector. more September 4, 2015 Our surprise best seller Back in the late 1980s, when Tim Koller and his coauthors were looking for publishers interested in a book about business-value creation, they were politely informed that such a book, if successful, would sell perhaps 10,000 copies. Twenty-five years later, Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies has not only sold more than 600,000 copies in 11 languages but has also earned a regular spot on business-school curricula and executive bookshelves. What accounts for Valuation’s popularity and longevity? The book, whose sixth edition came out in August, not only explains in simple language how companies create value for shareholders but also links those principles to strategy creation, portfolio management, and capital structure. Less a textbook than a handbook, it uses real-world examples to show how growth and return on capital drive cash flows, which in turn drive value creation. more August 18, 2015 Generation update: connecting graduates with jobs on three continents When more than 75 million young adults are out of work globally and three times as many are underemployed, it can feel like a triumph every time a young person is hired into a skilled job. Generation, a program spearheaded by the McKinsey Social Initiative, is addressing youth employment one small triumph at a time by helping young people build the skills they need to land good jobs in their local economies. Generation began with pilots in Spain and the United States and now has additional programs up and running in India, Kenya, and Mexico. more August 10, 2015 Food for thought There are close to 100 McKinsey consultants who could be described as being obsessed with food. As members of our Agriculture Practice, they spend their time thinking about ways to make food taste better, cost less, last longer, and be healthier. They research and identify opportunities for investment, including the 20-plus global agriculture hot spots outlined in our latest report. They help feed the ever increasing global population by advising farmers, food processors, and others on how to make land more productive and food more available. Among their numbers are meteorologists, chemists, veterinarians, financial analysts, data geeks—and even foodies. more July 24, 2015 Made in Brazil: smarter, leaner businesses What can manufacturing steel cylinders teach you about making granola? Quite a bit, it turns out. Employees of a natural foods company in Salvador, Brazil recently completed a month-long transformation program at our newest model factory, Fabrica Modelo Brasil (FMB). This hands-on learning environment teaches the principles of lean manufacturing. Through a series of live scenarios and interactive exercises, the food company employees developed skills such as mapping a work stream, balancing a line, identifying waste, measuring cycle times, and creating relevant performance metrics. more July 15, 2015 Announcing the Organizational Science Initiative The winds of change are blowing through organization, the branch of management concerned with the human side of the enterprise—topics such as employee engagement, change, culture, and leadership. While quantification and measurement have always been part of the toolkit, there is a growing imperative to collect and analyze hard data about what are sometimes seen as ‘soft’ management issues. Such is the context for our new collaboration with Gallup, the analytics and advice firm that has 80 years of experience measuring engagement, talent, and management. The Organizational Science Initiative, backed by McKinsey and Gallup, is a joint effort to develop next-generation org analytics. more July 1, 2015 Dominic Barton's summer reading list The dog days are upon us in the northern hemisphere, as the United States celebrates the Fourth of July and we welcome a new intake of summer associates and business analysts to many of our offices. In addition to enjoying some downtime with family and friends, I hope to use some of my vacation to make a dent in my ever-growing reading list. Clients and colleagues have given me many great suggestions of books to read, podcasts to listen to, and summer events to go to—many more than I suspect I will be able to get through. The list below is not exhaustive, but it includes recommendations that have come up a few times or with very high praise and are at the top of my reading list this summer. more June 19, 2015 Giving companies a second chance “My wife is a doctor. She fixes people. I think of myself as helping to fix organizations,” says Richard Hudson, a London-based McKinsey partner and one of our growing team of corporate-recovery experts. “Often I’m the last stop before a business fails, and I help it get back on its feet.” Our Recovery & Transformation Services (RTS) group was created five years ago to address the unique business, financial, and legal needs of companies in distress. While helping clients turn around businesses has always been a part of McKinsey’s work, recovery situations sometimes require specialist skills and capabilities. more June 10, 2015 From paper to pixels Sometimes, the simple ideas are the most revolutionary. Way back when, in 1961, a senior partner named Arch Patton proposed that McKinsey should publish a quarterly journal as a vehicle for its best thinking. Some colleagues worried that self-publishing would be perceived as self-promotional or even (the worst sin of all) commercial. It took Patton three years to convince his fellow partners. When it finally launched, the McKinsey Quarterly turned out to be highly effective. The firm already had a strong publishing tradition. James O. McKinsey, our founder, wrote some of the first books on budgeting and management accounting, and Arch Patton was a fecund writer of articles and books on executive compensation. The discipline of producing a regular journal spurred many more McKinsey consultants to research and write. It also necessitated the hiring of professional editors, which helped set new standards of consistency and clarity. more June 1, 2015 Landing LUNAR It’s no secret that design is increasingly a source of competitive advantage and business value. In a world of fierce competition, products and services that are well designed—working better as well as looking better—have a critical edge. So more than 10 years ago we set out to build a bench of talent and tools to help clients launch new ideas, reengineer products and shape product portfolios. Today McKinsey is the world’s leading product development advisory firm. The recent acquisition of design firm LUNAR adds a final, critical component to this thriving practice area. “Until now we couldn’t help clients with design execution,” says Derrick Kiker, a McKinsey partner who led the acquisition. “Bringing together top design, engineering, and business thinking in one holistic approach is going to be very powerful.” more May 19, 2015 No ordinary business book This month marks the publication of No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All The Trends (PublicAffairs, May 2015), a book by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) directors Richard Dobbs, James Manyika, and Jonathan Woetzel. As the title suggests, the book surveys powerful forces that are transforming the global economy, and argues that we all need to reset the intuitions and assumptions that drive our decision-making on everything from corporate strategy to personal investment. Publication coincides with the 25th anniversary of MGI and brings together many of the big ideas that our in-house think tank has developed and refined over the past quarter century. Inspiration for the book came at a resort on the Malaysian island of Langkawi, recalls Richard. The Malaysian prime minister and the board members of Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the nation’s strategic investment fund, were holding a management retreat. more May 8, 2015 Out and proud at McKinsey The appearance of a poster in an office dining hall in Poznan, Poland, might not seem like the bellwether of progress. But for Lukasz Kozanowski and Maciej Moder, team assistants at our Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) service center, the posters represented a monumental step in their personal and professional lives: they were publicly coming out and starting the office’s first chapter of GLAM, McKinsey’s affinity group for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) people. The posters Lukasz and Maciej hung in their office cafeterias in January 2013 invited colleagues to the kickoff event. more April 28, 2015 Video games grow up In 1973, Atari sold 2,500 units of its coin-operated arcade game Pong. Each unit cost $1,200. Last year, the video game industry topped $100 billion. For Jayson Chi, a McKinsey partner in Hong Kong, what started as small-time hobby has turned into a large-scale professional passion. The head of our burgeoning video games practice remembers playing Pong at the age of four and, when he was six, cajoling his parents into buying an early Nintendo console. Later he would sneak into arcades to play Street Fighter. As an only child growing up in Hong Kong, video games were a good way to make friends. He recalls: “All my school friends wanted to come over because I had the coolest games.” more April 17, 2015 Thirty thousand leaders Forbes once described McKinsey as a “CEO launch pad.” At the last count, about 450 former McKinsey consultants were running billion-dollar-plus organizations around the world. Moreover, a quick look at the headlines underlines that the leadership qualities we look for and nurture in our consultants are equally valuable in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. The list is, indeed, striking. Many of the world’s largest and best-known companies—including Aon, Boeing, Deutsche Post, Morgan Stanley, and Vodafone—are currently headed by McKinsey alumni. In the social sector, alumni lead organizations including African Leadership Academy, Ashoka, Cancer Research UK, Hybrid Social Solutions, Joint U.S.–China Cooperation on Clean Energy, Teach First, The Conference Board, and Walmart Foundation and also serve in cabinet-level roles in national and state governments worldwide. more April 6, 2015 Innovation immersion in Silicon Valley If you want to understand how technology is driving innovation and reshaping industries, there’s one place you have to visit: Silicon Valley. The 40-mile stretch of office parks and sun-drenched suburbia boasts the world’s densest concentration of technology giants, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs. “We get eight to ten calls a month from executives around the world who want to experience the valley,” says Eric Kutcher, who leads McKinsey’s US West Coast region from our Palo Alto office. Our Silicon Valley Innovation Boot Camps are intensive 2- to 3-day sessions that bring these executives face-to-face with innovators who are at once potential business partners and potential formidable foes. Each boot camp typically comprises up to half a dozen executives and board members from a single client company. The McKinsey team puts together a custom itinerary of visits, workshops, and debriefs based on the client’s industry and what they are trying to achieve. more March 23, 2015 | by Dominic Barton A report from the Long-Term Value Summit As part of our initiative to help shift capital markets to a more long-term focus, earlier this month we helped pull together a one-day summit in New York. The event drew 120 chairmen and chief executives, chief investment officers, and government leaders. I cochaired the summit alongside Mark Wiseman (president and CEO of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, one of the largest pension funds in the world) and Larry Fink (chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.) I’ll say more about the event in a moment, but first, some background may be helpful. The road to the summit began six years ago, when I moved from Asia to London. I was amazed by the different pressures faced by CEOs in each region. To oversimplify, Western European and North American CEOs appeared to be much more pressured (and measured) by quarterly earnings-per-share performance, while their Asian counterparts appeared to be focused (and measured) more on the value and prosperity they generated over the course of a decade or more. There are clear exceptions in both regions, but the sentiment was clear. more March 19, 2015 A new CEO for McKinsey Social Initiative McKinsey Social Initiative (MSI) today announced that Helene D. Gayle will be its first CEO. Helene is currently finishing her nearly decade-long tenure as president and CEO of CARE USA and will join MSI, the independent not-for-profit organization founded by McKinsey, in July. MSI was founded to develop innovative approaches to global problems. Its unique model leverages relationships across the public and private sectors to create, test, and scale new ways to address the world’s most pressing issues. Generation, MSI’s first program, is a global youth-employment program that aims to connect 1 million young people with jobs over the next five years in India, Kenya, Mexico, Spain, and the United States. more March 17, 2015 McKinsey Award winner Corporate profits are at record levels, the stock market is booming, and American workers are at their most productive—but who is enjoying prosperity and why? That’s the provocative question William Lazonick considers in “Profits Without Prosperity,” winner of the 56th annual McKinsey Award for the most influential article in the Harvard Business Review. Since 1959, the McKinsey Awards have recognized the Harvard Business Review articles most likely to have a major influence on managers around the world, based on the judgment of an independent panel of business leaders and academics. (McKinsey does not take part in the judging process.) Award winners have touched on every aspect of management. more March 3, 2015 Celebrating 20 years in South Africa South Africa in 1995 was going through one of the most profound transitions of the century. President Nelson Mandela had been swept to power in an election that ended centuries of racial segregation. But his government had inherited a stagnant economy with high levels of unemployment and public debt. In business, South African companies finally had access to international markets after decades of isolation. Yet they also faced an influx of global competitors, making modernization essential. It was in this eventful context that McKinsey opened in Johannesburg—our first permanent presence in Africa—with a handful of consultants drawn from our European and North American offices. “We were crammed into a single office—experienced partners and newly minted associates alike,” says David Fine, the first South African to join the new operation. “The sense of possibility was palpable. We were the only top management consulting firm in the country, and we went knocking on CEOs’ doors. Before long, we were helping several of the largest companies rethink their strategies and reshape their operations.” more February 19, 2015 A sea change in how we use plastics Many environmental issues are so big that no single institution can tackle them. Take the leakage of plastics into the world’s oceans. By 2025, a staggering 250 million metric tons of plastic are projected to be in the ocean unless action is taken. That is one ton of plastic for every three tons of fish. Plastic not only harms wildlife and habitats through entanglement with larger pieces of refuse, it also fragments into particles that find their way into living organisms in ways we are only beginning to understand. The plastics found in the ocean come from thousands of sources across multiple countries, so no international organization, government, or company has the authority, expertise, or resources to address this environmental threat on its own. more February 10, 2015 Who do you call in a crisis? Meet our experts David Chia is not excitable. “I have a deadpan delivery—which does not work so well in video or presentations,” he admits. “And I’ll never be the cheerleader type.” But he is the man you want in a crisis. “I believe this work plays to my strengths—I am methodical, and remain steady and calm when people are overwhelmed and unsure of what to do next. I work with them to regain control,” he says. Over the past 5 years, McKinsey’s team of crisis experts has helped corporate, government, and not-for-profit clients through 50 high-profile crises including epidemics, natural disasters, and catastrophic operational accidents. While the timing of a crisis is not predictable, the way it unfolds is. David and other colleagues help clients understand what may happen next, what issues they need to be ahead of, and, equally important, what they can deprioritize as they struggle with limited time and resources. more February 4, 2015 McKinsey Academy McKinsey is widely known for the quality of its training and professional development—it’s part of what motivates accomplished individuals to join our firm. But what if McKinsey-style training could be shared more widely? What if we could offer clients the same courses that help our consultants develop their skills? Welcome to McKinsey Academy. Over the years, clients had frequently requested access to McKinsey training, says Andre Dua, the McKinsey director who helped create McKinsey Academy. The rise of online learning made it feasible to respond in a systematic way. Andre assembled a multidisciplinary team—including designers, technologists, and adult-learning specialists—to create our very own digital education platform. more January 28, 2015 McKinsey partners re-elect Dominic Barton as managing director McKinsey & Company is a professional services firm, owned and governed by partners spread across Europe, the Americas, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa. It’s not a conventional organization. Every three years, the firm’s senior partners elect a managing director from among their ranks to serve as ‘first among equals.’ The results of the latest election: Dominic Barton will serve a third term. As you might expect, the office of managing director is significantly different from the role of CEO at a large corporation. “Our firm is full of leaders,” says Dominic “As managing director I set themes, make connections, and drive forward initiatives that will advance our ability to serve our clients, strengthen our firm, and develop our people.” more January 26, 2015 The many faces of diversity Our ground-breaking Diversity Matters report shows a significant link between corporate performance and the gender and ethnic diversity of company leadership. Fittingly, the team behind the study—London-based partners Vivian Hunt and Dennis Layton, and Atlanta-based partner Sara Prince—brought an incredibly diverse set of personal experiences and professional interests to the research. Recalls Sara: “When I first started work, as a 20-something year old on a Wall Street trading floor, I was the only person who looked like me.” The experience sparked an interest in organizational dynamics that later led her to McKinsey. “As a black female in America, I fundamentally believe in equal opportunity, at an inherently moral level. But I started to really question what is the business value of diversity and how do you actually achieve it?” more January 16, 2015 Doctors at McKinsey The road to becoming a doctor is long and arduous: years of study, exhausting training, and, in many countries, significant cost. So why would a doctor change fields and become a management consultant? And why would a management-consulting firm need doctors? More than 150 medical doctors work in our teams around the world, and the number of medical professionals is even higher if you count nurses, researchers, and other trained medical personnel. So why join McKinsey? For most of our doctors, it’s a combination of the desire to help at scale and an interest in institutional change. more January 9, 2015 A sabbatical to shape the climate debate Encouraging people to follow their passions is one of the things that make McKinsey special. Jeremy Oppenheim, a director in our London office, spent 2014 on sabbatical, serving as program director for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. The year-long assignment culminated in September with the publication of Better Growth, Better Climate: The New Climate Economy, a report that sets out to answer one of the biggest questions facing the world today: Is it possible to combine growing the economy with tackling climate change? The report received widespread media attention—and a shout-out on Twitter from Barack Obama. more December 15, 2014 Have factory, will travel We have model factories in 11 cities around the globe. These learning environments help us help our clients build skills through hands-on experience. Now, it doesn't matter where your company is located—with 3-D game technology, our model factories can come to you. “When we were exploring the idea of building a model factory in New Delhi, India last year, clients were skeptical, saying it would be difficult to send employees en mass for training to the north of India,” recalls Anil Sikka, master expert. “Also, would our factory be related to their particular process and industry? We realized we had to find a way to extend our physical model factories to benefit a wider set of clients.” more December 1, 2014 Digital Labs wins tech challenge with 'people' design Most people know McKinsey has analysts. Strategists. Experts of all kinds. But did you know we also have hackers? McKinsey’s Digital Labs sent a team of four twentysomething digital analysts to participate in the first hackathon sponsored by the City of Boston. The challenge? Streamlining the online permitting process for consumers and small businesses. The city processes almost 100,000 permit applications a year—permits to put up walls, to install plumbing, to serve alcohol, to claim a parking space, just to name a few. Each permit application can include up to 40 questions. The hackathon was a way for Boston to tap the tech community for innovative solutions to one its biggest “pain points” for small businesses. more November 24, 2014 A clock and a key Real estate projects are measured in months and years, not minutes and seconds. But for Sangeeth Ram, a partner in our Middle East office, the ticking clock is a reminder of the urgent need to provide affordable housing at scale in every region in the world. Every day, thousands of families migrate to different cities in search of a better life. Many struggle to find secure or affordable homes. By 2025, one in three people living in cities globally could lack an affordable home. The clock is indeed ticking. more November 11, 2014 A win for the women in the Muslim world We recently partnered with the Financial Times to support two book awards: the Business Book of the Year award and the Bracken Bower Prize for business authors under the age of 35. Thomas Piketty won Business Book of the Year for Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Shortlisted for the Bracken Bower Prize were three inspiring, business-savvy women with their fingers on the pulse of global business. The two runners up were Alysia Garmulewicz for 3-D Printing, Anything, Anywhere and Jenny Palmer for One Level Up. The winning entry demonstrated a deep understanding of global economics and gender in a Muslim environment: Saadia Zahidi’s Womenomics in the Muslim World. Zahidi points to a disconnect in many Muslim communities between the high enrollment rates of women in higher education, which currently surpass those of men, and a culture that dictates that women must focus on the home. more Connect with us Stay current with our latest insights and what’s happening at our firm via e-mail, social media, or by downloading our app. Email alerts Twitter LinkedIn McKinsey Insights app Contact us Frequently asked questions Site map Terms of use Local language information Privacy policy © 1996-2015 McKinsey & Company