“There are two common narratives about McKinsey. The first imagines the firm as some sort of hallowed place where future leaders go to test their mettle and learn the ways of the Force. Books like The McKinsey Way and The Lords of Strategy depict McKinsey consultants as heroes who rescue moribund businesses. The second narrative depicts McKinsey as a villain, driven primarily by greed. In their 2022 book When McKinsey Comes to Town, the journalists Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe made the case that the firm is to blame for—or at least complicit in—all sorts of modern-day evils: skyrocketing CEO pay, the Great Recession, the opioid crisis, the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, China’s surveillance state, even the Houston Astros’ cheating scandal.
The truth is that McKinsey is a quintessential institution of the post-World War II era. As such, the firm reflects all the successes of that era, as well as its blind spots, moral failings, and excesses. McKinsey was a key contributor to—and beneficiary of—the economic forces of globalization and financialization, trends that raised living standards around the world. But those same trends have been culturally destructive and politically destabilizing, which is why they are now often seen in a negative light by many on both the right and the left.“




