knowledge in a system that

McKinsey & allows them to learn from

it.
Company:
Managing
Knowledge
and Forces of
Resistance
By: Wasim AlSayegh

McKinsey & Company, the

firm that governments and large
companies consult when facing
growing pains, is
facing difficulties with handling
its own rapid growth. The case
"McKinsey & Company: Managing
Knowledge and
Learning" chronicles the
evolution of McKinsey's attempts
to capture its
associates knowledge to effectively
apply it to clients' problems. At the
core of the case is a simple
problem definition: How can
McKinsey & Company develop,
capture and leverage knowledge
in service of
its clients worldwide? After
all, knowledge is the single
most important asset McKinsey &
Company has.

There are two components to

this challenge:

1- Establishing a team
structure to better
leverage the captured
knowledge in delivering
better service to
customers.
2- Capturing consultants’
Through every iteration or 1971 McKinsey's philosophy
step in its knowledge system's emphasized
evolution McKinsey & Company the need for "T-Shaped"
faced resistance forces. consultants – those who
supplemented a broad generalist
Rajat Gupta, the managing perspective with an in-depth
director of McKinsey industry or functional specialty.
& Company, enumerated all This philosophy was later
the forces resisting McKinsey's reviewed in 1987 when
latest evolutionary step as: the McKinsey
sheer amount of information,
higher client's expectation
and McKinsey's distributed
global presence. These forces
may well be hurdles for change,
though I believe that Mr. Rajat
Gupta disregards the most
important force: McKinsey's
inability to change its internal
culture, and properly create a
compensation structure that
rewards specialists
and information
sharing.

The Specialists:
McKinsey's
Second Class
Citizens
McKinsey'steam structure has
been evolving ever
since its establishment. In
realized the need for a new stored in Practice
breed of consultants – the Development Network. After all,
“Specialist”. Fast forward a decade writing documents and articles
later, one can clearly state that requires major time investments
McKinsey did not successfully that very few consultants had.
change its Besides, when it came time to
1971 philosophy to address its promotion there was no emphasis
needs as prescribed in 1987. put on the number of documents
published by a consultants.
While the need for specialists was
felt by McKinsey’s
partnership,
McKinsey’s consultants
saw specialists as “second-class
citizens.” This point of view is
directly influenced by McKinsey’s
culture which emphasizes “an
internal status hierarchy based
largely on the size and importance
of one’s client base.” After all,
McKinsey is an outward looking
consulting firm that puts a lot of
emphasis on helping and serving
its clients. No wonder that with
this mindset specialists who only
interact with internal consultants
are seen as “overhead.”

Furthermore, the partnership made

matters worse since it did not have
an effective and successful plan to
evaluate, compensate or promote
specialists. Specialist’s tasks and
responsibilities were different than
that of a
“T-shaped” consultant, yet they
were both evaluated in the same
fashion.

Sharing is Caring.
Sharing Knowledge
at McKinsey: What's
in it for me?
A lot of “begging and cajoling”
had to go
into getting documents from
McKinsey’s consultants to be
Furthermore with the responsibilities. Furthermore,
establishment of client service McKinsey needs to develop the
team (CST), CSTs successfully right incentives to award associates
focused on clients’ long-term that effectively share their
need, though they failed to give knowledge.
back as they were more “insular,
guarding proprietary concepts.”
This isolation further harms
McKinsey’s knowledge sharing
process.

McKinsey put in a system that

facilitated knowledge sharing, but
overlooked having theright
incentives to
encourage knowledge
sharing. If the incentives were
right, no begging or cajoling
would have been needed.

Making Things
Work at
McKins
ey
Gupta put it best when he
described knowledge as “the
lifeblood of McKinsey.” The core
existence of McKinsey relies
heavily on capturing and
utilizing knowledge to
serve its customers.

As previously stated, both

specialists and sharing information
are an important
components of knowledge
management at McKinsey.

To bring about more specialists

McKinsey needs to change its
culture and elevate the importance
of specialists in its associates’
perspective. Since McKinsey is an
outward looking firm that prides
itself on helping customers,
specialists should also be given
some customerfacing