Arjay
Associate Principal
My choice: to focus widely or deeply?
“McKinsey’s dedication to its values continues to be the thing that makes me happiest—and feel strongest—about being a member of the firm.”
At the end of each client study, I would look for a new study that was completely different from the previous one, in terms of industry, client, study topic, and location. Then my interest started to focus on banking. I thought, if I like this field so much, why not work in it all the time? So at the end of one project, I told my development group leader, “For the foreseeable future, I only want to do banking work.” And he said, “I have a project starting next week.” Since then, I’ve done nothing but banking, and I’ve had a phenomenal time doing exactly what I want to do.
The obligation to dissent
On one engagement, the McKinsey partner gathered the team together and asked us if we could have an impact on a particular project—and what the barriers were. The CFO at the client had been unwilling to make some critical changes we recommended, and we spoke frankly about why we felt his behavior and attitude went against some core things which would help his company. But the CFO was the CEO’s best friend—they had built the company together—so we thought nobody would go to the CEO and say, “Your best friend isn’t listening.” But that’s exactly what the partner did. She told the CEO, “We are going to stop work, and to show you that we really believe this is the right thing to do, we’re not going to take any payment for work completed. You can take it further, but we don’t believe we can have an impact.” A month later, the CFO himself asked us to continue, accepted our recommendations, and we completed the project successfully. The obligation to dissent is one of our core values and, in practice, our values really work.
Combining client service and people development
A key to my growth has been the balance McKinsey strikes between the two foremost things we do here: serving clients and developing our people. The engagement manager on the second client study I worked on was a great example of that. Whenever I was doing fine, he stayed out of my way. He’d let me stretch to solve a problem on my own, but if I was really struggling, he was right there to help. Now that I’m an engagement manager myself, I try to practice that. My first priority is to serve the client, so I can’t allow people to flounder just for the sake of development. It’s a careful combination that lets you grow very fast without detracting from the success of the project.