My first engagement was setting up a new team within McKinsey to help clients create rapid application prototypes. What started out as a team of two developers, one manager and one product owner (myself), grew to almost 60 people with roles from design to development, architecture and product management within two years. It was like being in a start-up within a large organization. We worked on more than 200 projects during those first two years.
What made us tick?
Our team was an eclectic mix of recent graduates and experienced professionals who wanted success for each other. The less-tenured members brought fresh perspectives, while the more seasoned folks provided wisdom and guidance. We spent our time solving problems, finding smarter ways of working, and learning from one another.
Working alone would have made life monotonous. We mixed things up regularly to keep our morale high. We created superhero alter-egos for each other and formed Spotify-like squads we called “realms.rdquo; We hit the badminton court and played in an indoor cricket tournament. We celebrated every birthday and project milestone.
My proudest moment
During it all, I got an opportunity to expand our team by helping establish our operations in Costa Rica. I spent several months there, on-boarding our new hires. Introducing these new colleagues to McKinsey and planning and delivering their training curriculum was amazing. I was the one who learned the most. To be given such an opportunity within a year of joining the firm was a tremendous boost to my self-confidence and self-belief.
About Mukul
Mukul is a McKinsey product manager based in Bangaluru. Prior to joining McKinsey. he was an engineer at Bosch and a consultant at Accenture. Mukul has an MBA from the Management Development Institute in India.
For more information on McKinsey's product management career paths, visit mckinsey.com/TechCareers.