Jonathan

Principal

Why did you decide to investigate a career in consulting and become a Business Analyst?

I had worked in several investment banks in my gap year and summer breaks whilst at university and realised that I quite enjoyed looking at firms, figuring out how to restructure their industries and thinking through transactions to name a few. However, after doing my masters degree it became clearer that variety was really important to me and I switched my focus towards consulting.

I have to confess that I went to the university careers service and applied to every firm listed as a management or strategy consultant. I spent most of my middle term either preparing for or doing interviews, role plays or tests and had made friends with a series of other candidates who I kept meeting at the different firms.

You have been with McKinsey for over 7 years now what makes you stay?

Whilst I have spent 7 years with McKinsey, I have also spent 7 years working outside of McKinsey in a variety of general management and business development roles. During this time out, I realised that there are two types of people: those who like projects and those who like line management. I discovered I was better at projects than line management as I like the variety and the challenge of projects. Each project is something new and I like that freshness. The other thing making me stay is the people – there is a great group in our healthcare practice and I am increasingly working with teams where I have built relationships in Denmark, Israel and India.

What have you gained from working at McKinsey? What training and support have you received?

I have gained two stone in weight and a distressing amount of grey hair – but I think I would have gained both of those working anywhere! Mostly, I have gained skills and experiences which allow me to talk to a range of CEOs about their organisations and to help them think through how to tackle their challenges and improve. There has been an array of training and support – lots of informal support from colleagues and more senior mentors, and a suite of training programmes.

What has been your greatest moment of satisfaction whilst at McKinsey?

Being made (or as we call it elected) a partner must be my best moment. The feeling is a mixture of joy and relief, but it is the best feeling as the McKinsey partners from around the world literally elect you to become their peer. That’s a great feeling of acceptance and satisfaction.

Describe the impact your team had on a clients problem? How were you able to arrive at a solution that providing the most impact?

In healthcare, we tend to work with really smart clients who understand their organisation and the problems that they face. They also tend to find that hospitals or other health systems are difficult to change as there are many people, established ways of working and patients who are resistant to change. I probably had most impact when I worked with a team in a hospital and we applied lean techniques used in manufacturing to their emergency department. This project enabled us to treat 20% more patients safely and guarantee that a senior clinician would see a patient within 30 minutes of them arriving at the hospital. The toolkit we developed has gone on to be used in multiple hospitals in the UK, France and Canada.

The critical step in arriving at a solution was having the client team – the doctors, nurses, administrative teams, understand the problem from multiple viewpoints, collect and understand the facts, and then for them to come up with the solutions. McKinsey helped them along the journey to move quicker, be more radical and achieve more than they would be able to do without our support.

What are your long term goals?

Really simple – to get out of bed feeling excited about my work and to have sufficient time in mornings, evenings, weekends and holidays to balance my somewhat crazy lifestyle with time to see my family.

As a new partner, I am encouraged to think about what will motivate me in the next 2-4 years, but I haven’t figured that one out yet!