Skeletons in McKinsey's Closet | Walt Bogdanich & Michael Forsythe | TMR

Sam and Emma host Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe, investigative reporters with the New York Times, to discuss their recent book When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm. Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe join as they dive right into their investigative reporting on the massive global management and consulting firm McKinsey & Company, advisors to Fortune 500s, Governments, Dictators, and those all the way down the global power structure with little to no public knowledge of their work. Then, they unpack the “values” of McKinsey, ranging from their primary concern of putting their client’s interests above those of the firm, to the more obscure values of “act with integrity” and “an obligation to dissent,” and how their reporting seemingly undermined these elements. Next, Walt and Michael walk through the greater history of consulting work, with McKinsey’s work with GM beginning in the 1950s and instigating the shift of capitalism towards ephemeral and hyper-financialized practices, bolstering the income of the C-Suite while workers became forced to rely on safety nets, all while the firm acted as a cover for any bad decisions or accountability coming back to hurt the upper echelon of the company. Wrapping up, they unpack the myriad conflicts of interest in McKinsey’s work, including advising Big Pharma, every element of the insurance and medical industry, tobacco companies, and then also the FDA that supposedly regulates them, and explores how anti-trust and other regulation can begin to reign in these monopolists of power.

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I want to Welcome the program Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe. They are investigative reporters at the New York Times. And they have written a book when Mackenzie Comes to Town the hidden influence of the world's most powerful consulting firm. Gentlemen welcome to the program. Walt, let me start with you. you guys spent basically five years working on this book. Your investigative reporters why was that important when you're talking about something like McKinsey. Because they seem to be everywhere but there also turn out to be incredibly secretive. Well, they're very big and very powerful and as you pointed out and we pointed out very secretive. but even more important there is no accountability with McKinsey or with Consultants because there's no regulation. Now that wouldn't matter if they were some small-town outfit. But they advise most of the major 500 companies. They advise governments around the world. dictators all on down. and the public doesn't know anything about them. And when we started looking at them we knew it was a tall order because their entire business model is based on secrecy. They really know the brand in the brains of every recruit. You don't talk about your clients, you don't say who they are and you don't say how much they're paying them. so we knew we were up against it. But you know we thought we were up to the challenge. and you know investigative reporters are supposed to look at Power centers that have no accountability and we did. Michael the other sort of I guess part of the brand of McKinsey maybe the fundamental brand of McKinsey at least in terms of like what it's forward-facing is that they have morals or values that they're you know almost like values first company. Talk about what those values are and how the existence of those values ultimately allowed you guys to pierce this sort of veil of secrecy that they have.