McKinsey & Company is a world-class leading global management consulting company. Since the establishment of 1926, the company's mission is to help leading enterprises achieve significant and lasting improvement in their business performance and build an excellent organization that can attract, train and motivate outstanding talents.
McKinsey adopts the "integrated company" partnership system, with more than 80 branches and more than 7,000 consultants in 44 countries around the world. McKinsey Greater China Branch includes four branches in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Taipei, with more than 40 directors and more than 250 consultants. In the past ten years, McKinsey has completed more than 800 projects in Greater China, covering the whole company and business unit strategy, corporate finance, marketing/sales and channels, organizational structure, manufacturing/procurement/supply chain, technology, product research and development and other fields.
Mckinsey's experience is that the key is to find the leaders of those enterprises, who can realize that the company must constantly change to adapt to the changes in the environment and are willing to accept external suggestions, which is of great benefit to help them decide what changes to make and how to make them. Companies in many foreign industries have long known that they cannot be at the advanced level in the world in all fields involved, so there is no need for experts who can only use them occasionally.
The history of McKinsey & Company
In its long development process, McKinsey & Company has not been smooth sailing. During this period, it has been under competitive pressure from other powerful competitors in the industry, such as Boston Consulting Group. However, McKinsey & Company cultivates its core competitiveness through effective knowledge management and excellent learning mechanism, keeps pace with the times and is invincible in the face of pressure and challenges.
The establishment and early development of the company
From 65438 to 0926, Professor James McKinsey of the University of Chicago founded McKinsey Consulting Company. Subsequently, this accounting and management consulting company named after his surname developed rapidly. By the 1930s, McKinsey had gradually shaped its corporate image into a "corporate doctor" with "elite gathering", and described its vision as a consulting company dedicated to solving major management problems of enterprises, gathering the best young people, adhering to strict ethical standards, providing first-class services to customers with the highest professional standards and the best technology, and constantly improving the company's position in the industry.
In the next 10 year, McKinsey passed on the company concept to every partner and colleague, organized all branches into a close cooperative whole, broke the geographical division within the company, and emphasized that all employees worked for the whole company no matter where they were; And every customer, no matter which branch provides services to him, the whole company is responsible for it; Profits are distributed throughout the company, not borne by local branches, so as to ensure the unity of the company and enhance its cohesion.
McKinsey & Company achieved rapid development in 1950s and became the leading consulting industry in the United States, and made full preparations for its subsequent expansion in the international market in 1960s. By the end of 1960s, McKinsey & Company had become a large consulting company with a high reputation in European and North American markets.
Difficulties and challenges in the company's development
10 crisis
Since the early 1970s, changes in the internal and external environment have led to difficulties for McKinsey & Company. During 65,438+00 years, there were many unfavorable factors in the external environment and the company. For example, the oil crisis in the early 1970s led to the economic recession in Europe and America, which also brought about a sharp drop in the company's business volume. The company's management of customers is becoming more and more complicated; New competitors such as Boston Consulting Group continue to compete for McKinsey customers from their locked market segments, and so on. Many internal and external troubles make McKinsey's self-confidence and satisfaction seem to disappear overnight, replaced by self-blame, self-doubt and denial.
Only then did McKinsey's top management realize that the economic recession in Europe and North America is not just a cyclical economic crisis, and it is useless to passively hope for economic recovery. We must actively get rid of the influence of depression on the company's business. In this situation, McKinsey & Company convened the company's most elite consulting experts to form a special research committee to analyze the macroeconomic problems at that time and the company's way out. 197 1 in April, the Committee studying the company's goals and missions pointed out in an analysis report that the current predicament of McKinsey & Company was largely due to the rapid development of the company in the early stage. In their view, the previous stage of the company's geographical expansion was too fast, and it continued to expand into new business areas, which made the company unable to improve its business level, resulting in the company's lack of development potential now. The report also pointed out that McKinsey & Company used to accept too many routine consulting services and wasted time on many trivial tasks, so it was difficult to learn more new experiences and skills from each new customer. Lack of consulting tasks that are difficult to improve the company's level and strength.
In addition, the report also pointed out that the professional structure of McKinsey & Company is not reasonable. Although most consultants are effective problem solvers, most of them are just "generalists"; In the process of solving practical problems, customers often need very professional knowledge in this field, and there are very few "expert" consulting expert companies that can adapt to this demand and have in-depth, comprehensive and specific professional knowledge in a certain field. This leads to the company's lack of pertinence in solving customer problems in specific fields, and it is difficult to put forward in-depth and professional research, analysis and consulting programs. This defect points out the adjustment direction for McKinsey & Company in talent reserve and development. The company began to attract some professional experts with specific industry background knowledge, and together with the generalist consulting experts, formed the company's "T" talent structure.
The competition with Boston Consulting Group stimulated the change of company management mode.
In the nine years since the report on the company's goals and strategic adjustment direction was put forward, five company leaders have worked hard to achieve the goals set forth in the report. During this period, the competition between McKinsey and two consulting companies in Boston became increasingly fierce. Their business methods are very different: McKinsey relies on local offices or branches to develop good customer relationships to expand its business. Usually, the consulting service of this kind of business is also done locally. On the other hand, Boston Consulting Group has established a highly centralized intellectual resource center at its headquarters, and is committed to becoming the founder of many representative advanced concepts and technologies in the consulting industry and becoming the "thought leader" in this industry. Under the guidance of this concept, Boston Consulting Group has developed some simple but effective consulting and analysis tools in practice, such as the famous experience curve; Growth-share matrix analysis model, namely Boston matrix, etc. The extensive application of these analytical tools in practice has greatly improved the reputation of Boston Consulting Group. Moreover, Boston Consulting Group has firmly occupied the market segment of strategic management consulting. These effective strategies have enabled Boston to gain the upper hand in the competition with McKinsey, while McKinsey's customers and employees are constantly losing and turning to Boston.
The loss of competition made McKinsey executives realize that the original business model of the company can no longer meet the development trend and competitive requirements of the consulting industry, and it is imperative to adjust the company's strategy and organizational structure. McKinsey first reformed its new york branch, and after the successful pilot, it quickly promoted the reform plan throughout the company. The main reform measure is to implement the industry classification business division system for customers in different industries on the basis of the original branches established by regions, so as to make up for McKinsey's weakness in professional knowledge and strengthen industry background analysis. Industries by industry include consumer goods, industrial products, banking and insurance. This reform changed the company's original model of solving specific customer problems into a product (service)-driven model, which weakened the close relationship between local branches and customers under the original zoning system, so it was criticized and opposed by former leaders within the company. However, under the firm promotion of the current leaders of the company, this business division system based on industry division has been successfully implemented, and their respective customer groups have developed rapidly.
At the same time, the company pays more attention to management function experts. In terms of management functions, strategic formulation, organizational planning and policy implementation all require flexible and diverse knowledge and experience. McKinsey & Company strengthens the training of experts in this field and sets up a special team of experts in each field. Mckinsey regards strategy and organization as the strategic focus of the company's business development, and has appointed leading experts in this field to take charge of its development respectively. After a series of reforms and adjustments, McKinsey & Company finally came out of the trough in the early 1980s and resumed its revival and prosperity.
Building a learning organization through a perfect learning mechanism
Since 1980, McKinsey & Company has taken the learning and accumulation of knowledge as an important task to gain and maintain competitive advantage, and created an environment of equal competition and stimulating wisdom within the company. After successfully overcoming the initial resistance from within the company; A new core idea has finally taken root in the company, that is, the accumulation and promotion of knowledge must become the central task of the company; The learning process of knowledge must be continuous, not temporary work linked to specific consulting projects; The process of continuous learning must be guaranteed and regulated by a perfect and strict system. After the company fixed the task of continuous full-time learning as a system, it gradually became a fine tradition of McKinsey & Company, which laid a solid foundation for strengthening the company's knowledge reserve and enhancing the company's core competitiveness.
Effective learning mechanism has brought McKinsey two benefits: first, it helps to train a group of consulting experts with good knowledge reserves and experience; The other is to constantly enrich and update the company's knowledge and information resources, provide convenient conditions for future work, and adapt to the changing external environment. McKinsey & Company has not only established a scientific learning promotion system, but also ensured it through a special organization: many experts who have made outstanding contributions in various fields are selected from within the company as the heads of the learning promotion mechanism in each department, and they are responsible for selecting six or seven people with rich experience and enthusiasm in practical fields and knowledge management from each department to form a core team.
Mckinsey's leaders also realize that the most successful employees in the company often have a huge personal network. Therefore, the original knowledge transfer method based on informal interpersonal relationship within the company can not be simply prohibited, but should be a useful supplement to the formal learning mechanism. The core learning leading group explores and uses this internal relationship network as a channel for information and knowledge dissemination in regional branches to realize knowledge sharing throughout the company.
In order to further promote the full circulation of knowledge and information within the organization, McKinsey & Company has also broken the previous internal bureaucratic organization system based on the size and importance of customers and replaced it with an evaluation system based on the contribution rate of knowledge. In this way, every department and member of the organization is under the pressure of knowledge contribution, not just focusing on developing customers.
Through excellent knowledge management, establish the knowledge reserve foundation of the company.
Knowledge management is a hot topic in current business circles. According to the survey of Business Weekly, 80% of 158 multinational companies are establishing formal knowledge management procedures. McKinsey & Company is recognized as a leader in knowledge management. McKinsey focuses on the exploration, dissemination and utilization of tacit knowledge in knowledge management. Although many creative opinions and ideas put forward by many consulting experts in the company have been written and published in academic journals, magazines and newspapers with wide influence, such as Harvard Business Review, and even some bestsellers have been published, such as The Pursuit of Excellence, co-authored by Peters and wortmann, experts in charge of enterprise organization development in McKinsey & Company; Kenichi Ohmae, an expert in strategic management development, wrote The Strategist's Thought, which was greatly welcomed by the academic and practical circles. However, compared with a lot of valuable experience and profound academic ideas in the company, these papers are just the tip of the iceberg. As tacit knowledge, more knowledge and experience exist in the minds of experts and are not written, let alone exchanged and enjoyed within the company.
In order to solve this problem, McKinsey has established an internal publication (McKinsey Senior Management Series), which is specially aimed at those experts who have valuable experience but have no time and energy to organize these experiences into formal papers or works, and simply summarize their thoughts and share them with colleagues. This informal way lowers the threshold of knowledge exchange and dissemination, so that many important and practical new ideas and experiences can be saved in a one-or two-page abstract and used for dissemination. At the end of each such essay, the author's detailed information is attached, and interested readers can follow the picture to find experts who can consult. This flexible way of communication not only makes useful knowledge and experience spread effectively in the company, encourages innovation and frank communication, but also helps to improve the personal reputation of knowledge providers and provide them with a good environment and opportunities for their development in the company. This method of free choice also helps to choose truly valuable ideas and creativity.
In order to communicate and spread the above information more effectively in the company, McKinsey & Company has also established a special database for storing experience and knowledge, which is used to store all kinds of information resources accumulated in the process of working for customers, and has also appointed full-time professional information management technicians to maintain the database to ensure the update of the data in the database; When consulting experts need to find information from the database, they will provide corresponding retrieval help to improve the efficiency of use. In the content management of the database, we pay special attention to the professional experts in charge of the professional field in the company's "T" expert team structure, gain knowledge and experience in the professional field, strengthen the perfection of professional knowledge in the database, and make the database a more comprehensive information resource. After several months' efforts, this database has collected more than 2,000 documents, providing sufficient data reserves for the formal operation of this database named "McKinsey Practice Development Network" (PDNet).
Since the 1990s, human society has entered the era of knowledge economy. The change of environment and the development of organizations have posed new challenges to every company, especially for a large knowledge-intensive international famous consulting company like McKinsey. 1April 1996, Rajat Gupta, the leader of McKinsey & Company, asserted that with the progress of science and technology and the development of the times, McKinsey & Company will face more severe challenges: how to manage more than 7,000 consulting experts in 84 branches of McKinsey & Company around the world, effectively integrate knowledge resources, and make the organization meet the needs of customers efficiently and better has become increasingly complicated.
Therefore, McKinsey & Company must constantly improve its learning mechanism and knowledge management in order to adapt to the severe test faced by the era of knowledge economy and remain invincible in the fierce competition.
Mckinsey's working principles
Mckinsey can serve different competitors, but all personnel, information and materials have extremely strict management measures, so that consultants can abide by company policies and working procedures and ensure the interests of all customers.
1. Before undertaking any project, McKinsey will try its best to ensure that: 1. The project can really provide customers with opportunities to obtain significant benefits; 2. There are no major obstacles in implementation. However, in view of the fact that it is usually impossible to determine the above conditions in advance, McKinsey agrees that customers can decide to terminate the partnership at any time when they think that the expected benefits may not be realized during the project. In the same situation, McKinsey also wants to keep the option, that is, when the company judges that changes in the external environment will make the project unable to achieve the expected goals, it can freely withdraw from the cooperative project.
Second, in the consultation process, the company tries its best to cooperate closely with the members of the customer organization. Always establish an understanding of the expected project effect as soon as possible, and often hold formal or informal talks with the senior management of the client company on the project progress during the project. In view of the nature and importance of the topics discussed in the project, various feasible methods and the time schedule for realizing the changes, the company will strive to establish an understanding of these views at all levels of the customer organization. This practice makes it possible for all levels of the company to understand, accept and support the suggestions made at the end of the project. Therefore, the contents of the written report put forward by the company are all suggestions that have been communicated and discussed with customers, and there will be no surprises for customers.
Third, McKinsey solves problems with customers, not for customers. According to this policy, the project work completely adopts the way of cooperation with customers, using customers' business knowledge and McKinsey's problem-solving skills and knowledge. When appropriate, ask the customer to assign personnel to participate in the project research full-time or part-time. This arrangement can bring very important benefits. First of all, this method can greatly improve the efficiency of project consultants and reduce the cost of customers, especially in the stage of collecting factual data; Secondly, the determination and commitment established by the client personnel in the actual project work will contribute to the effective implementation of the program. In addition, this cooperation mode can also enable McKinsey to impart modern management skills to customers.
If we don't help our customers to take necessary and cost-effective steps to ensure real change and impact, we think our work is not finished. The first step to participate in project implementation is to assist customers to make detailed plans and schedules. Whether we will participate in the implementation plan more widely in the future depends on the needs of customers. For example, McKinsey's participation in project implementation may be limited to monitoring the progress and results of plans implemented by client personnel, that is, part-time project support. Or, sometimes customers need more input from McKinsey, so we can help train customers' personnel or help establish and support customers' plan execution teams. In addition, we can assist customers to carry out pilot projects, conduct tests, build models, or simulate new schemes, new procedures and new organizational adjustments.
5. The principle that McKinsey & Company should keep all information of customers confidential. At the same time, it also keeps confidential the sensitive opinions expressed by any individual. Employees in the company must receive special training to ensure that customer information will not be leaked on any occasion; A project team serving a specific customer can't serve this customer's competitors within two years; Project data in the company are blocked from each other, and the transfer of data must be approved by the directors.
The Scope and Projects of McKinsey Consulting Services
1. customers of the company: presidents, executives, ministers, management committees of large companies, non-profit organizations and senior government leaders, and provide suggestions on management issues they care about.
2. Main business scope: designing and formulating overall solutions, strategic development, operation and organizational structure for customers, especially enterprises.
3. Pay attention to customers' quantifiable performance improvement, such as increasing sales revenue, profit cost, delivery time and quality. Mckinsey's consulting focuses on issues of concern to senior management. The work content belongs to the fields of strategy, overall organization and related policies, accounting for 1/3 respectively. However, in China, the design of strategy and organizational structure is more important.
Goals and Mission of McKinsey & Company
1. Comprehensively study and solve management problems for senior management.
2. Provide comprehensive suggestions on the various choices faced by senior executives.
3. Predict new problems and opportunities that may arise in the future development, and formulate timely and pragmatic countermeasures.
In short, McKinsey is to help customers make positive, lasting and substantial improvements in their business and build an excellent company that can attract, develop, motivate and retain outstanding talents.
Mckinsey's values
1, guiding principles
Serve customers: keep professional level; Serve senior leaders; Help customers establish operational efficiency; Save customer resources.
Company construction: global integration; Choose the best people; People who really care about themselves; Cultivate an open and non-hierarchical working atmosphere; Effectively manage company resources.
Become a professional worker: serve customers; The pursuit of quality is endless; Develop scientific management skills; Establish team spirit; Self-management and self-discipline; It is your responsibility to raise an objection.
2. Implement the relevant regulations of the company.
The interests of customers are higher than those of the company.
Be true, honest and credible.
Win the trust of customers with professional water.
Maintain independence, professionalism and professional ethics.
Do what you are capable and experienced, and some projects would rather be left to more professional small companies.
Expert team of McKinsey service enterprises
McKinsey currently has more than 4,500 consultants from 78 countries, all of whom have advanced degrees from world-renowned universities. According to the statistics at the beginning of 1997, MBA students accounted for 49% and doctoral students accounted for 16%. When recruiting consultants, McKinsey pays attention to outstanding character and problem-solving ability, excellent wisdom and the ability to communicate effectively with people at all levels. Most consultants of McKinsey had considerable business experience before joining McKinsey. In McKinsey, the position is directly linked to performance. During the consultant's career, McKinsey evaluates the consultant's performance, the quality of problem solving and the impact on customers.
Property right system and management system of McKinsey & Company
McKinsey is a private partnership company, and its internal management style also extends to partnership. The ownership and management of the company are completely in the hands of nearly 600 incumbent senior directors (senior partner directors) and directors (partner leaders). All directors are assistants when they join the company, and they are distributed in different countries and regions as employees. Company ownership ensures independence and objectivity, so the company is only responsible for customers and the company itself. The executive director of the company is elected by senior directors for a term of three years. The company strictly abides by the personnel principle of not rising but falling. Anyone who can't meet the company's promotion standards will be properly dismissed from the company. Almost all senior directors and directors of the company have been carefully selected from consultants after 6-7 years of strict training and exercise. The probability of becoming a director is about one in every 5-6 consultants may be promoted to a director. Many directors will eventually decide to leave McKinsey and join other big companies to hold important positions. For example, the current presidents of IBM, Westinghouse Electric and American Express are all former directors of McKinsey.
Mckinsey's service to customers
Most of McKinsey's clients are outstanding big companies all over the world, such as the Fortune 500 magazine. These companies are located in automobile, banking, energy, health care, insurance, manufacturing, public utilities, retail, telecommunications and transportation. About 70% of the global 100 companies are McKinsey customers, including AT & amp； T Company, Citibank, Kodak Company, Shell Company, Siemens Company, Nestle Company and Mercedes-Benz Automobile Company. In China, there are Guangdong Today Group and China Ping An Insurance Group. The company follows a principle that unless the customer reveals his relationship with McKinsey, the company will keep it strictly confidential. The project will be guided by the client steering committee and the McKinsey project leading group, and the specific work will be carried out by a full-time project team composed of McKinsey and the client.
Working methods and approaches of McKinsey & Company
First, establish a consulting project team for joint work with enterprises.
The project will be guided by the customer's steering committee and project leading group, and the specific work will be carried out by a full-time project team composed of McKinsey, company personnel and customer personnel.
Second, consult through the consulting project team.
McKinsey & Company consults in the form of a project team and makes the best combination of personnel for a given task. Branches often send consultants to each other. Almost 20% of the work is done by consultants from other branches of McKinsey. Each project team is led by a director of McKinsey & Company, who is responsible for planning the project tasks, maintaining a close working relationship with the customer management, and being responsible for the quality of the final results. As the project team leader, go deep into the enterprise and participate in every stage of project research: collect and analyze information; Forming and evaluating hypothetical schemes; Formulate and exchange suggestions; And prepare for concrete implementation. In the process of consultation, any suggestion is made on the basis of having a large number of data facts and rigorous logical reasoning, and it is strictly forbidden to make non-quantitative analysis by feeling.
The company knows that no matter how perfect the advice is, if customers don't implement the advice and gradually realize the benefits, then the consulting work will not be truly successful. Therefore, when we carry out every consulting work, we strive to create all conditions that can be put into practice and promote change.