Few leaders look back to a chaotic beginning, under the high pressure of the pandemic with nostalgia, but Kevin Sneader is perhaps one of them.
At this time last year, cat-loving global managing partner McKinsey demonstrated his soft leadership skills by joining online forums for the pet owners of the consultation. , as they supported each other through the first weeks of remote enforcement work.
A year later, the man nicknamed the “purr-tner manager” can be forgiven for kicking a cat or two to relieve his harassment. The other Glasgow partners missed a similar but managed and second term that has been largely given to the owner since the 1970s.
Even by McKinsey ‘s standards, who are fond of talking about how any organization should run but himself, the reasons for Sneader’ s re – election are unclear, complex and against each other.
They include: how he had to carry the can for work that had done notorious damage before it began – specifically on the rise in opioid sales in the U.S., which led to a lawsuit and massive settlement; pushing back from partners against a stricter process for scrutinizing messengers; and concern among others that it did not go far enough.
Surprisingly, the pandemic did not seem to play any part, although I cannot help asking whether the Scotsman would have gained more support if he had been able to spend more time. spent face-to-face with partners.
Screenshots of McKinsey staff working from home during the Dogs blog come together. Above left is global managing partner Kevin Sneader, with his daughter and cat Duke © McKinsey & Company
What upsets it, however, is just how difficult it is to manage partnerships – including those like McKinsey that are formally organized as private companies – even in good times. That doesn’t happen well for Bob Sternfels – or Sven Smit, the partners they left in the run for Sneader’s work.
Running any organization requires a combination of authority and power, among other leadership skills, according to Ian Davis, who directed McKinsey from 2003 to 2009. Interview for a recent podcast with Laura Empson of City University and David Morley, a senior partner at Allen & Overy’s law firm, said “if you used power in a partnership, you would fail miserably because people would not accept it. [it]. But if you do not use any power in physical. . . you would fail too ”.
Sneader’s challenge was to put more of a physical structure on the expanding company without throwing its weight around. That challenge will remain after his retirement, and not least because McKinsey is unlikely to decline.
Complexity is inherent in the industry. Davis thinks McKinsey was the last boss who knew each individual participant; there are now 2,500. According to one former partner, the best way to understand the company is to think of it as 2,000 or more businesses generating revenue. The difficult-to-manage matrix seems to contain the debris and greed that pollutes any human body. Even if councilors bring home more than $ 3m- $ 5m a year, some look with envy on messengers whose senior executives are paid at least 10 times.
“I don’t believe scale is the enemy of partnership,” Sneader said shortly after his inauguration in 2018. But with the introduction of new processes to accelerate its growth rule, it seems to have made enemies of some partners who enjoyed their independence. Sneader was just about the need for structure when he spoke to me two weeks ago, before the results of the leadership vote came. “We are at a scale and scale where the interests of the partnership must come first [over individual partners’ interests]. And that’s a trend. ”
How to square the circle between growth and quality is a legacy that will put a dog on the next McKinsey leader. Smit will look at the old-school option and may try to bring the company back to basics. Sternfels is an innovator who helped develop some of the new products that spurred growth under Dominic Barton, formerly of Sneader. Both lead a company full of uncertain performers at a time when consensus on the way forward looks as clear as it can ever be in this century. “Our clients are as thick-skinned and tougher as we are,” said another former partner this week. “Is throwing out Kevin something [partners] going to regret it later? Because neither of these people solves the problems. ”
In a conversation in 2013 with the late Clay Christensen, Harvard Business School’s most innovative riot archive, Barton thought about how McKinsey was not free of change tearing through the physical world. With the short duration of US companies shortened, participants needed to remember that “we have no right to be here with God”.
According to Christensen, the main threat would come from fast-growing riot competitors. Eight years later, it’s worth considering whether an internal split could pose a bigger problem to McKinsey’s next director.
Twitter: @andrewtghill