After I completed my MSc in electrical engineering in Zurich I couldn’t decide which PhD program to do. While weighing up two or three options, I thought I’d check out what the big consulting firms were looking for, so I went for a few interviews. When the funding for my best PhD offer fell through, I accepted an offer from McKinsey.
An education in business
Doing a PhD would have meant studying one topic in great depth, but another part of me wanted to get broad experience of business and learn about how the world works. That’s why I liked the idea of consultancy.
Some of the interviews I had put me under a lot of pressure, but my McKinsey interview was the opposite: people seemed to be trying to get the best out of me. The culture was open and hands-on, and the engineers I spoke to made me feel comfortable about joining. Originally I planned on staying for a year. Now it’s been eight years and I’ve stopped counting.
A different professional culture
I spent my first three years at McKinsey in Zurich, doing projects across the board: insurance, high tech, banking, automotive. The office knew I’d always wanted to work in other countries, and when I applied for a transfer to Scandinavia, they made it happen. I was keen to get more experience with industrial clients, and I’d heard the professional culture was different from what I was used to, and wanted to see how it worked.
I spent five months in Finland and a year in Sweden working with media and telecom companies. The biggest cultural difference I found was that people have an intense focus on essentials—a pragmatic outlook that concentrates on doing what is truly necessary, fresh, and creative.
Transferring to San Francisco
After I returned to Zurich and high-tech work, I was eventually promoted to engagement manager. In October 2009 I transferred to San Francisco for a year. I’d wanted to make another move once I was more established, and as my girlfriend had a master’s place at Berkeley, California was the obvious choice.
My timing wasn’t great because of the difficult economic situation. I spent hours calling partners in California to introduce myself, and I was fortunate in having a supporter. Finally the firm agreed to let me move on condition that I’d commute to the east coast if I had to. Luckily I didn’t have to travel that far. Because I’d spent so much time building relationships in the office, I was staffed on a project as soon as I arrived, and I never looked back.
Getting results
One of my recent projects presented an unusual challenge: optimizing operations at a chemical plant that already followed lean principles and best practices. The client thought the scope for improvement was unlikely to exceed €0.5 million a year. They were amazed when we found opportunities for saving €10 million.
What we had to do was identify the optimum balance between throughput, yield, use of resources, and energy consumption. Just as driving a car flat out uses extra fuel, maximizing throughput consumes more energy, so finding the right balance between 150 parameters was complex. We found a solution that would deliver benefits all round: not just lower cost, higher revenues, and better plant performance, but better working conditions and a smaller environmental footprint as well.
Time out
A few years ago the Swiss office introduced flexible career programs. I decided to apply for the 80 percent program, and now I work about 42 weeks a year. That gives me space for my other role, teaching ski instructors for the German ski association. As long as I’m flexible about dates, working on a part-time program gives me the freedom to take off when I need to.
For me, this is what makes working here sustainable: I have three months a year where I can completely recharge. I’ve recently been made an associate principal, which means I will be working on more client studies at a time, so my next challenge is to figure out how I can reconcile this broader workload with my 80 percent program.