Two hundred thousand of the world’s brightest graduates apply for jobs at McKinsey & Company every year. Each of them, perhaps, does so in the belief that not only will a successful application guarantee a shed-load of cash – those with MBAs might earn $195,000 in their first year – it will also allow them to create, as the PowerPoint slides declare, “change that matters”.
The world’s original and most successful management consultancy has, for a century, wanted to sell itself to clients and employees as a “values-driven organisation”. This detailed account of the firm’s activities – the result of a five-year investigation by two senior New York Times reporters – provides an often devastating insiders’ story of the ways in which McKinsey fails in that mission.
