An ode to my awesome team

By Jane

Jane is a business analyst in our Chicago office. After graduating from Northwestern University in 2017 with an environmental engineering degree, Jane decided to join McKinsey for the limitless opportunity to work in various industries and face different challenges every day. She is passionate about clean tech and the education sector. Outside of work, Jane loves to explore coffee and tea shops and hole-in-the-wall restaurants in new cities.

Connectivity Fun Client Work

November 16, 2018Hi all! I'm back to my favorite city (for a third time)—Columbus, Ohio. This is in no way a sarcastic comment—anyone close to me knows this is truly a city that I love and where the hotel staff have become my friends.

One of topics that I've been wanting to write at length about is my team. The part that excited me the most about McKinsey was the amazing people I'd be working with, and how much I'd get to spend time being part of a team (instead of sitting alone in front of a computer from 9am-5pm).

A team to a project is like the soup to a Xiao long bao (soup dumpling)—it's the best and most important piece. And a great team by my definition usually exhibits the following (which my current team fulfills 180%):

Hanging out in the team room during work and exercising together outside of work (top of page)

1. We respect team norms
a. We kick off projects starting with a "team learning" where we share what we'd like to get out of the project and certain norms we’d like team to adhere to (e.g., time off in the evening for workout, a clean team room, direct feedback)
b. The most important thing for me is to have meals on time. Between back-to-back client meetings and tight deadlines, sometimes it's hard to always eat on time, but this team has made it a priority and made sure to always schedule around lunch, or cover each other

2. We care for and seek out opportunities to develop each other
a. We genuinely care for each other (in our personal and professional lives). We know each other's favorite coffee/tea and food orders to the point we are making each other overly caffeinated and fed all the time..
b. In additional to giving each other formal and informal feedback on working with clients and our paths at the firm, I've also received advice on relationships and optimizing retirement savings from my team!

With my team at the Armin Van Buuren show

3. We can joke with each other with zero filter, have intellectual debates, and make each other laugh, think, and think after laughing
a. Being able to joke and have interesting conversations outside of work is a huge factor of happiness for me, especially when I spend more than 80% of the time with my team
b. We have a wide range of conversations from how to solve climate change, how to build settlements on Mars, what's driving drug prices up, what made religion what it is today, whether celery has calories, and the best city to live in (so far in the running: Columbus, Seattle, LA, Dubai, and Charlotte…)

4. We do fun things
a. We went to a EDM concert, on a Tuesday night (also to celebrate our EM becoming AP!)

5. For bonus points—we love eating together (as if spending all day in the team room wasn't enough!). My team eats dinner together almost every single day (mostly to have the type of conversations mentioned above)

There are still many more things that makes a great team and gives me joy in a team room.

Looking forward to sharing more next time!
Jane