Professionalism
“He wants
to build an ongoing institution. Because it’s value based, we think it really
has value.” (Gogel in Edersheim, 2004, p.219). “Business properly conducted
could be as high a calling as anything.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.25).
And that
means:
“1. Put the
client’s interest first and separate yourself from the job. (…) “Always take
your job seriously, never yourself.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.39).
“3. Center
problem solving on the facts and on the front line.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.40).
“4. View
problems and decisions in the context of the whole and in terms of immediate
actions to be taken.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.41).
“5. Inspire
and require people to be their best.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.41).
“6.
Communicate the value of the company over and over again to ensure that people
in the firm will understand them, embrace them, and translate them into
action.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.41).
“Think of
the value of the doctor who establishes a reputation that he is never going to
operate unless it’s necessary.” (Bower in Edersheim, 2004, p.265). “But think
of the value to him when people recognize that he meets that kind of standard,
and they can go to him in confidence and put themselves in his hands. This is
the reason for professional standards. It is a selfish thing although it looks
unselfish at the outset.” (Bower in Edersheim, 2004, p.266). “because the thing
that will cause people to come to us is because, like the doctor, they can put
themselves in our hands and know we are going to treat them in their interest.”
(Bower in Edersheim, 2004, p.266).
The key is creating
value for the client. And the money will follow: “If you were to put down $25,000, we’d say we’ll
never serve you again, but if you put down something you think is fair in your
opinion, we’ll accept it and no question asked because we want our clients to
be satisfied with their charges, to believe that we’re giving them value.” (Edersheim quoting Bower, 2004, p.58). “And the value we
deliver, of course, is greater the lower the total cost the client pays.” (Edersheim quoting Gogel, 2004,
p.59).
“He said that any
service business that gave higher priority to profits than to serving clients
deserved to fail.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.60).
Leadership
In
achieving this professionalism, Bower always wanted “to become an intellectual
venture capitalist.” (McArthur in Edersheim, 2004, p.ix).
Because the
people in the frontline mattered. “The fundamental problem, Marvin learned, was
not that the presidents of the failed companies were stupid; in fact, all 11 of
them were very smart men. (…) Marvin was convinced that the chief executives
had been shielded from information that could have saved them. (…) The culprit,
Marvin believed, was deference to hierarchy.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.16).
“The
authority that each superior has over subordinates imposes those constraints on
subordinates: (1) reluctance to disagree with the boss, (2) reluctance to
provide information or offer opinions unless asked for and (3) unwillingness to
take independent initiatives.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.135).
“The first delightful experience I had (upon joining McKinsey) was that
I had no boss, that I was not a boss. (…) And this obligation to dissent.” (Edersheim quoting Stewart, 2004,
p.49).
“Within the
limits of meeting (their) responsibility to clients and the firm, our
consultants have freedom of action, independence of thought, and an opportunity
to pursue activities of personal professional interest. This contrasts with the
typical corporate or governmental position.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.66). “retain
these basic freedoms of a professional person.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.66).
“All
leaders have three responsibilities: instill self-confidence and self-esteem in
constitents and make them feel good about themselves; keep up constituents’
spirit and morale; and develop constituents by helping them learn their
responsibilities and grow and develop as individuals.” (Edersheim quoting Bower,
2004, p.123).
“leadership
is providing opportunities for other people to succeed.” (Gogel quoting Bower
in Edersheim, 2004, p.218).
Solving major problems:
“If the CEO
were not involved in the issue, it was not important enough.” (Edersheim, 2004,
p.20). (…) “The chief executive is the integrative force in organizations; if
we take his point of view, then we are solving problems with an integrating
point of view.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.27). “In fact, one of the primary reasons
the partner was fired was for doing an excessive amount of work for Mead
Johnson, much of which did not meet the “major problem” standard. (…) Typically
in a service firm, firings would be for the opposite reason – namely, failure
to bring in enough business or revenue.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.30).
Common
problem solving approach:“We make an overall diagnosis before we decide on the
specific problem to be solved.
1. We determine the
order in which problems to be solved. We try to persuade the client to let us
put first things first.
2. In the solutions
of problems, we take an integrating approach and recognize that: (a) external
factors are usually important in the solution of internal problems; (b) very
few problems can be solved in any single department or section of the business
or government agency.” (Edersheim,
2004, p.44).
“The most frequent cause of failures in business is not people who
answered the right questions incorrectly, but people who answered the wrong
question correctly.” (Edersheim,
2004, p.45).
“We can’t
advertise our services or solicit clients without making implied promises of
what we can do for clients. Since we don’t, at the outset, know what we can
accomplish, such promises do not meet high professional standards.” (Edersheim
quoting Bower, 2004, p.32).
“If we were
asked to help (…) then the client feels some responsibility to aid us in our
work and to act on our recommendations. There is a psychological but real
difference in attitude between the client who has asked for our help and the
one who has been “sold” and hence has a “show me” attitude.” (Edersheim quoting
Bower, 2004, p.32).
“Getting clients to adopt recommendations requires client ownership of
recommendations. From this, the notion of working in partnership with the
client was born. If the effort were perceived as being isolated from the
client, no matter how right or applicable the recommendations were, they would
likely be viewed as threatening or not relevant.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.47).
Obligation
to dissent: “the obligation to have an independent point of view based on
analysis, and to bring that to the forefront.” (Ferguson in Edersheim, 2004,
p.228). “there is obviously a hierarchy in McKinsey. But there is no hierarchy
when it comes to McKinsey problem solving.” (Ferguson in Edersheim, 2004, p.229).
“”What are the charateristics of our
problem-solving process? The way we do it is that we swarm all over the
problem.” And it’s not a bad thought. We have all kinds of approaches to it and
we don’t accept the client’s statement of what the problem is.” (Bower in Edersheim,
2004, p.266).
Analyse forward
“So we have
I this group some inertia. I suppose inertia comes because we’re so analytical
and so critical that we’re always finding the things that are wrong.” (Bower in
Edersheim, 2004, p.271). “And I’m afraid that we spend too much time analyzing
and not enough on imagination. We can’t really shape things without
imagination.” (Bower in Edersheim, 2004, p.87). “One of the deepest needs is to
apply his (human) skills, wherever they may be, to challenging tasks – to feel
the exhilaration of the well-struck ball or the well-solved problem.”
(Edersheim, quoting Simon, 2004, p.15).
So the
focus of Bower is not on expertise: “the advice they (clients) would receive from
these bright young associates who had been educated in business analysis and
still maintained the imagination of youth was likely to be more valuable than
that coming from some experienced “expert” who operated on the basis of
experience rather than analysis.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.80). “It’s guys like Dick
Neuschel who would be willing to change a lifetime of habit on a dime.” (Edersheim,
2004, p.109).
And every
critique is a chance to move forward: “Not being complacent or static also
meant a willingness and ability to respond to criticism without adopting a
defensive posture.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.60). “rather than proceed to
completely defang the article, in a defensive fashion, he took all the
allegations very seriously.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.61).
In short: “Marvin valued imagination more than experience.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.49).
Monday morning vision
But all
that moving forward and finding a vision was grounded: “Success is based on a
few simple things. The challenge is that you have to do them.” (Edersheim,
2004, p.137).
And there
are many hints on how to increase recommendations’ chances to actually happen:
“our
philosopby is to never approach an issue with an adversarial stance, but to
find solutions for all interested parties.” (Sawhill in Edersheim, 2004, p.234).
“From then
on, I tried always to ask myself what the other person would think about my
contemplated action, how it would look to him, how it would affect his
position.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.132).
“Fact-based visioning and a
pragmatic “Monday Morning” path to turn vision into reality.” (Edersheim, 2004, p.126).
And to me,
the best example is simply this: Learning form Marvin I spent “30 minutes each
month in my office, writing short notes to five or ten junior people
congratulating them for some accomplishment.” (Fleischer in Edersheim, 2004,
p.231).
