Daniel

Careers

I was born and raised in Hong Kong, and I have always been the type of person that likes to try new things. I am passionate about linguistics and I’ve studied English and Japanese to a high level. I am also a black belt in Judo and the lead singer of an amateur band.

Exposure and support from day one

Early on in my McKinsey career I could see the value of meritocracy at the firm. My teams consisted of very friendly people and they taught me how to be a consultant. Only a few months after I joined I was already running an entire workstream and interacting with senior clients. And my work brought me to various locations in mainland China, Macau, Hong Kong, Korea, and the U.S. This gave me a huge sense of responsibility and accomplishment. The thing I really enjoyed during my first year was the fact that people cared a lot about my satisfaction and development: more experienced consultants are very committed to coaching and developing junior consultants.

Working in a fast-evolving economy

Working in Asia is very exciting because the economy is evolving quickly. The scale of projects we do, and the level of involvement with our clients, is unrivalled. In Asia we have a very strong Operations Practice and we do a lot of front line work hand-in-hand with our clients. For example, I once helped an insurance company to design a program to improve their productivity. Over a 10-month period we were traveling all over China. We handpicked 100 brilliant staff to be part of our client team, and we collected insurance sales best practices. We designed a training program, and we helped our client to launch it to more than 100,000 agents nationwide. In Asia, we often have the chance to launch projects of this scale, and we work very closely with the most senior client management. I believe that this is helping to shape the evolution of the economy, and it makes me very excited and very proud.

Why I stay at McKinsey

One special thing about McKinsey is that we put a lot of emphasis on our values. Our values penetrate into our daily lives as consultants - we evaluate ourselves using our values, and when there are disputes we resort to our values to resolve the problems. Never have I seen an organization with such emphasis on values.

What I do in my free time

I am a lead vocalist of a local amateur band. We entered competitions and got a few prizes, and we were on TV and in magazines. I also practice judo. I have been a black belt since high school and had coached for a few years. I grew up in a modest family and through numerous scholarships I finished my university education, so I feel obliged to give back to my university. I go back there often and give talks to younger students, sharing with them my experiences in my studies and in my career.