4 MANAGING YOUR CLIENT

Who is your client? Depending on your circumstances, it

could be a customer, vendor, supplier, boss, CEO, shareholder,

or any combination thereof. If your business is to succeed,

you have to put the client first. This tenet lies at the heart of

McKinsey’s vision of itself as a professional service firm.

Dealing with clients can be a wonderful, enriching experience

(in both the monetary and psychic senses), a true win-win situation. More often than not, however, it is a challenging and frustrating

effort. If you’re in sales, you know just how difficult it is

to be on the constant hunt for new business. Even if you’re not in

sales, if you’re in the business world, then you have a client somewhere

whom you have to satisfy.

In this chapter we will look at three areas of client management:

obtaining, maintaining, and retaining. The concept of

obtaining clients is clear—to have clients to manage, you have to

get them in the first place. Client maintenance is the steps you take

to keep your client engaged in and happy with your progress during

the course of a project. We distinguish this from retention—the

fine art of getting follow-on work from a client after a project is

finished. As you will see, the experiences of McKinsey alumni in

these areas can help you build an expanding portfolio of happy

clients.

OBTAINING CLIENTS

This section focuses on the tools and techniques that will help you

win new client business. The lessons you will read here are unlikely

to show up in traditional sales books and journals for one fundamental

reason: we believe that the best selling is done by not

selling.

THE McKINSEY WAY

McKinsey has a unique approach to obtaining clients.

How to sell without selling. If you ask a McKinsey consultant

how the Firm sells its services, you will be told, in a slightly

haughty tone, that McKinsey doesn’t sell. That’s only partly true.

In fact, McKinsey sells, but it uses an indirect approach. Instead

of cold calls and mass mailings, the Firm relies almost exclusively

on existing relationships to generate new business. Many of

McKinsey’s engagements are follow-on work (a fancy term

describing an additional project for a client after one is finished).

To build relationships, the Firm markets: it publishes books and

articles; it performs extensive community service (which often has

the added benefit of allowing McKinsey consultants to rub elbows

with the corporate titans who populate so many charitable

boards); and it sponsors topical presentations and workshops. All

of these efforts serve to get McKinsey’s name out there—if its reputation

isn’t enough already—and broadens the Firm’s network of

corporate decision makers, any of whom might be in a position to

call their local McKinsey office with their business problems.

Be careful what you promise: structuring an engagement. In

the words of George W. Bush, “A promise made, is a promise

kept.” Over the years, McKinsey has learned how important it is to

make good on its promises. Unfortunately, even McKinsey sometimes

forgets that it can only fulfill a promise if the promise is reasonable.

Bear this in mind when laying down the boundaries of

your project—don’t overpromise because you’re bound to underdeliver,

which is no way to get follow-on business. Instead, balance

the demands of the client with the capabilities of your team. If the

client wants you to do more, you can always start a second project

once the first is done.

LESSONS LEARNED AND IMPLEMENTATION

ILLUSTRATIONS

At first glance, one may think that obtaining clients in a consulting

environment varies dramatically from other industries. Our alumni

who are now in other industries, however, claim that McKinsey

Managing Your Client 161

lessons also helped them. Based on our interviews with them, we

have isolated two particular considerations:

• Identify the client.

• Create a pull, rather than a push, demand.

Identify the client. Does this sound intuitive? Perhaps it is easier

said than done, especially at the level of understanding that is

necessary to ensure successful interaction. Take the government,

for example. You might think that in this traditionally hierarchical,

structured organization identifying your client and your client’s

needs would be simple. Not so says Sylvia Mathews, who culminated

eight years of public service as the Deputy Director of the

Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration:

This is a place where identifying your client is not always

that easy—it is by no means transparent. For example, I certainly

don’t have just one client. The president and vice president

are Client Number One. Then there are the different

cabinet departments, each with various individuals wanting

to be the point person. There are also interagency teams that

must be managed. Then there is Congress, which is a critical

client since it passes the laws that make things happen.

The challenge is not just identifying your client—you must then

go deeper. Each client has a particular agenda that you must consider

and balance. Mathews describes the best way to handle this

as “constant negotiation.” Knowledge of the true identity of your

clients and a strategy for handling competing sets of needs is not an

easy task but is one to which you should dedicate time and attention

up front.

Create a pull rather than a push demand. Bill Ross left

McKinsey as an engagement manager, just below the partner

ranks, and never had to spend too much time worrying about selling new engagements. When he moved to GE, even though he

didn’t have outside clients, he realized that he had to start selling:

My client is really the CEO of this business. I have more

clients as well—the managers of specific business units. We

have to sell. The products I’m selling are my ideas. In many

cases, I’m trying to get them to think differently and put my

thoughts into their thoughts—to get them engaged with my

ideas, so that when they have a problem, they turn to me.

This requires an up-front investment of resources and time.

That’s the secret—to create awareness of your offering so

that selling becomes less of a push and more of a pull.

This is the practical application of the McKinsey approach to

indirect selling. Rather than sticking a foot in the door and barging

in cold, build up a reputation and let it preceed you. Put the client

in a position to recognize that you’re the one who can fill her

need—then she’ll call you.

Effective selling, then, becomes the identification of client

needs and the building of expertise around them. Once you’ve

done that, you can begin the subtle art of indirect selling by making

people aware of what you know. Since you have done your

research up front, you don’t need to be explicit in your sales effort.

Just allow the potential client to make the connection between his

need and your expertise—as the voice said in the movie Field of

Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” Just make sure they can

find you.

IMPLEMENTATION GUIDANCE

It’s time to return to our team at Acme Widgets. Lukas, the newly

minted Grommets purchasing manager (you hired him in Chapter

6), has just finished his introductory training course and is ready to start work. Unfortunately, no one has told him exactly who his

client is. He knows that he reports to Madeleine, the vice president

of production, but he has a feeling he also answers to several more

people. To get a handle on the problem, he sits down and makes a

list of everyone with whom he interacts and updates this list over

time. He lists the specific demands they have of him and when. He

also identifies exactly how his efforts help them get their jobs done.

For kicks, he also lists two adjectives that describe the personality

of each person.

When he analyzes his own position, he sees that he does much

more than just order raw materials. For example, for Maddie, his

boss (Ms. Trott to him), he ensures that inventory is kept low so

that inventory costs and write-offs are kept to a minimum. Grace

and Zach, two production supervisors who use the majority of his

parts, look to Lukas to keep adequate stocks of both raw materials

and spare parts to avoid a break in their manufacturing schedules.

His administrative assistant, Mike, wants to grow in his job and do

much more than just answer the phone. Thinking strategically

about his clients and their needs, Lukas realizes that he has the

potential to add value for his organization through improved management

of inventory information; he decides to invest in a new

scheduling software package with terminal linkage to the production

supervisors and cost report generation on a daily basis to his

boss. He also sends Mike on a special training program to learn

how to run the software.

Lukas is off to a good start and he is quickly building a reputation

for innovative solutions. He did so by thinking carefully

about exactly who his clients are and what they need. He then

developed an innovative solution based on their needs and made

them aware of its capabilities. They began coming to him for additional

information, and it wasn’t long before Lukas was promoted

to the knowledge management department as a manufacturing

information liaison.

EXERCISES

• What is your sales offering? Identify an important issue

you have been working on that has faced internal resistance.

Next, think through the sources of resistance—

where are the roadblocks? Instead of trying to convince

people of the merits of your particular issue, identify an

opportunity to share something you know well to help

them with their current problem. Make it a credible, factbased

deliverable that increases your exposure and garners

general support.

MAINTAINING CLIENTS

Now that the client is in hand and established, we move to a new

stage in the relationship—maintenance. As with any relationship,

this requires careful consideration of the wants, needs, and desires

of all parties.

THE McKINSEY WAY

There are quite a few McKinsey lessons dedicated to this topic—

hardly surprising given their obsession with client service—and

rather than summarize them one-by-one, we will discuss their key

points all together:

• Engage the client in the process

• Always look over your shoulder

• Keep the client team on your side

• Learn to deal with liability client team members

• Pluck the low-hanging fruit

• Get buy-in throughout the organization

Two underlying themes emerge from these lessons. The first is

that proactive steps must be taken to manage client involvement:

keep them involved through active participation, not just periodic

updates; deal with troublesome team members in a direct, developmental

manner (or work around the worst cases); and rejoice

in small victories that help win the war. Like the management

lessons from the previous chapter, mediating client involvement is

best considered a separate task that requires special attention and

thinking on your part as the client manager. The other theme centers

on consideration of the clients: work around their schedule,

send agendas ahead of time, don’t take too much of their time,

appreciate what they have done, and keep client data strictly

confidential.

LESSONS LEARNED AND IMPLEMENTATION

ILLUSTRATIONS

The “client involvement” theme resonates with McKinsey alumni

as they move into their post-McKinsey positions. The primary lesson

from their implementation efforts simply focuses on becoming

creative and proactive: create involvement opportunities.

Create involvement opportunities. Shyam Giridharadas left

McKinsey to found and run his own consulting firm, Prism Consulting

International. He learned that delivering consistent highquality

work was not enough; client involvement was critical:

Fact-based, creative problem solving and objective, intellectually

honest recommendations are the hallmarks of an

excellent management consultant, but this is only half of the

equation. Consulting work is most effectively undertaken in

the client’s own backyard. It becomes extremely important

to integrate client team members at all levels within the organization and not just with the office of the CEO. It is vital for

the “McKinsey Mind” not to confine itself to brilliant problem

solving but to communicate incessantly throughout the

engagement process to integrate effectively and to create a

following.

Shyam pinpoints the locus of problem solving: it is best done in

the “client’s backyard.” For example, more and more manufacturing

companies’ research and development departments include

customers in the process, often sending scouts to witness how the

products are actually used and how they can be improved. Another

important element to successful integration is “incessant communication.”

Just as we favor overcommunication among team members,

so too do we recommend keeping your client well fed with

relevant information.

IMPLEMENTATION GUIDANCE

In company boardrooms and academic classrooms, the buzz today

is about changing organizational boundaries. Some believe that the

days of the massive organization may come to an end as “knowledge

workers” broker their services on an open, fluid market with

continually changing group lines. Two of the forces driving this

potentially seismic change are new technologies, especially in wired

and wireless communication, and globalization. Although we will

leave the forecasting to the experts—such as they are—it is clear

that assumptions about the role of customers are changing.

Today’s buyers are much more sophisticated and have greater

requirements. This is why many companies (including consulting

firms) have changed their approach to include them in the valuecreation

process, from initial design to final implementation. Are

there opportunities where you can go beyond the almost expected consideration of the client to the full team member view of the

client? Strive not to report or deliver to them but to jointly create

with them.

EXERCISES

• Create a client development plan. Think of your most

important client. How involved is this client in the design

and/or delivery of your product or service? Think creatively

about any opportunities that exist where the client

can actually come into your organization to assist in the

process. Be radical. Before you send an invitation, however,

make sure that you can articulate anticipated benefit of

their involvement (for you and the client).

RETAINING CLIENTS

The final section of this chapter is dedicated to finding ways to

keep your client for the long term. This has become a mainstay of

the McKinsey strategy as the Firm focuses on developing deep relationships

with the key players at the Fortune 100 companies and

megacorporations around the world.

THE McKINSEY WAY

The McKinsey client model is relationship driven and the key to

retention is ultimately meeting and exceeding client expectations.

Let’s review how they do it.

Be rigorous about implementation. This lesson took McKinsey

quite a while to fully understand and implement. For a long time, the Firm was known for outstanding idea generation but poor

implementation. Translation—lots of insight-laden reports gathering

dust on corporate bookshelves. To avoid the same fate for

your ideas, focus on the ability of the client to implement your

solution. In addition, before you head off to the next problem, present

a clear implementation plan that includes exactly what should

be done, by whom, and when. This applies not only to consulting

projects but also to internal projects that hinge on future activities

for eventual value generation.

LESSONS LEARNED AND IMPLEMENTATION

ILLUSTRATIONS

Focus your client retention efforts on the long term. Base every

decision on how it will affect the long-term relationship with your

client. In the case of McKinsey, one of the most important elements

of ensuring long-term successful relationships is the Firm’s ability

to generate lasting change. For some time, implementation was

considered McKinsey’s weak spot. As its clients became more

sophisticated, the Firm realized that this couldn’t last. They took

steps to improve not just their ability to devise a course of change

but to make change happen. Our alumni have taken those lessons

into the world beyond McKinsey and used them to build their new

organizations and businesses. Their recommendations:

• Share and then transfer responsibility

• Make the client a hero

Share and then transfer responsibility. At some point, you have

to learn to let go. When it comes to client involvement, one of the

common arguments holding back such efforts is a concern over

quality or efficiency. The problem with this orientation is that it

focuses too much on the short term. The first step is to take the risk of some inefficiency in order to involve the client in a greater role.

Bob Garda, now a faculty member of Duke University’s Fuqua

School of Business, elaborates on the benefit of sharing the decision-

making process:

When it comes to client management, I always remember a

phrase from McKinsey—“cover from behind.” That means,

when you get some analysis done, you go to the person who

gave you the data and let them help you interpret it. You

build a lot of friends and you build a lot of allies.

This also relates to previously discussed themes of client buyin.

The premise is that clients (internal or external) who were

involved in the problem-solving process make the best advocates.

This method also ensures that an eventual transfer takes

place, which was facilitated by the sharing of the overall process

throughout.

Make the client a hero. Jeff Sakaguchi, now a partner at Accenture,

learned a valuable lesson about the importance of including

clients in the problem-solving process so that they can share in the

glory:

One area where McKinsey and Accenture excel is matching

client structure. We recognize how important it is to have a

steering committee at the top, but you have also got to design

a complementary team that involves the client at all levels.

Clients are so much more capable than many people believe.

The key is to introduce accountability and exposure. They

will be just as committed to achieving success. They will take

ownership, and it is our job to help them get the job done.

If you view your job as a challenge to help clients win, rather

than focusing on how you win, good things will happen. This does not suggest that you should abandon all basic profitability considerations,

but it does suggest thinking of others first as you make

daily decisions. As Jeff described above, give your clients more

credit and give them opportunities to succeed—with you.

IMPLEMENTATION GUIDANCE

The tricky part in this section is not the goal of client involvement

but the specifics of where to include the client in the process—or,

perhaps more aptly, where to exclude him. For this we have two

suggestions.

First, pluck some low-hanging fruit with a pilot program. Pick

a particular product or division with a single meaningful client and

identify areas where the client can safely become involved in the

efforts designed to meet that particular client’s needs. Once you

have gained some momentum you can broaden the effort throughout

the organization. Second, control the process. Some clients

may take the proverbial inch and turn it into a mile. Be very clear

about the scope of the involvement—that includes goals, timing,

and exact expectations.

EXERCISES

• Benchmark client involvement activity. Pick an industry

different from your own. Identify the extent of client

involvement in the delivery portion of this industry. Where

are the opportunities for involvement and how many companies

are actively utilizing clients as described in this

chapter? How would you increase the involvement if you

were in that industry?

McKinsey works hard to involve its clients in the creation of

change in their organizations. Most industries can learn a valuable

lesson by considering how to more actively involve clients in

their delivery efforts as well. Moreover, we, as individuals, stand to

learn a lesson or two about the importance of putting others first.

In the next chapter, however, we will look at ways to put

another, very important person first—you.

MANAGING YOURSELF

Among themselves, McKinsey-ites often quip that the true Firm

hierarchy is Client, Firm, You. Notice that you come last—

some would say distantly so. It is therefore appropriate that in this

last chapter we discuss a few techniques for self-management, both

professional and personal, as practiced by McKinsey alumni.

The term self-management (along with its cousins self-help and

self-improvement) means different things to different people. The world’s bookstores bristle with titles purporting to help you get

ahead, get organized, get happy, get romance, and get thin. Some

of them may even come good on their promises.

Our goals are more modest. In the course of our research, we

have come across a few lessons that may help you be more successful

in your career or balance the competing demands of workplace

and home. We pass them on to you in the hope that they may

prove helpful. We make no promises.

More than any other topic in this book, this subject permits

no “one best way.” We are all, by definition, unique individuals,

and the strategy that helps Tom balance life and career may do

nothing at all for Dick—and may prove an absolute disaster for

Harriet. Having said that, the McKinsey alumni who have helped

us throughout this book have a wealth of life and professional

experience and are almost universally successful. They must know

a few things about getting ahead while maintaining one’s sanity.

YOUR PROFESSIONAL LIFE

We assume that anybody reading this book would like to get a little

closer to the top of the corporate ladder, if you have not already

reached it. In this section, we discuss a few techniques for making

that progression easier and, perhaps, quicker.

THE McKINSEY WAY

McKinsey-ites had a lot to say about climbing the Firm’s greasy

pole of success.

Find your own mentor. Take advantage of others’ experience

by finding someone senior in your organization to be your men-

tor. Even though some firms have formal mentoring programs, you

would still do well to take the initiative to find someone to steer

you through the twists and turns of corporate life.

Hit singles. This isn’t a call to commit battery on the unwed,

it’s a metaphor from baseball. You can’t do everything, so don’t try.

Just do what you’re supposed to do, and get it right. It’s impossible

to do everything yourself all the time. If you do manage that feat

once, you raise unrealistic expectations from those around you.

Then, when you fail to meet those expectations, you’ll have difficulty

regaining your credibility. Getting on base consistently is

much better than trying to hit a home run and striking out nine

times out of ten.

Make your boss look good. If you make your boss look good,

your boss will make you look good. You do that by doing your

job to the best of your ability and letting your boss know everything

you know when she needs to know it. Make sure she knows

where you are, what you are doing, and what problems you may

be having. However, don’t overload her with information. In

return for your efforts, she should praise your contributions to the

organization.

An aggressive strategy for managing hierarchy. Sometimes, to

get things done, you have to assert yourself. If you face a vacuum

in power or responsibility, fill it before someone else does. This

strategy can be risky; the more so, the more hierarchical your organization.

Be sensitive to the limits of others’ authority, and be ready

to retreat quickly if necessary.

A good assistant is a lifeline. Having someone to perform the

myriad support tasks required by a busy executive—typing, duplicating,

messaging, and filing, to name but a few—can be exceptionally

valuable. Whether the people who perform these tasks are

called secretaries, assistants, interns, or simply junior staff, treat

them well. Be clear about your wants and needs, and give them opportunities to grow in their responsibilities and careers, even if

they are not on the executive track.

LESSONS LEARNED AND IMPLEMENTATION

ILLUSTRATIONS

While many things change for McKinsey-ites when they leave the

Firm, the stresses of life in the business world remain, or even

increase, improbable as that may sound. McKinsey-ites are nothing

if not resourceful, however, and they’ve come up with ways to

survive and thrive despite the rigors of corporate life. Our alumni

were happy to share some of their career management techniques:

• Delegate around your limitations.

• Make the most of your network.

Delegate around your limitations. Throughout this book,

we’ve advocated understanding the limitations of others: your

client, your organization, your team, and even your organization’s

structure. Now we recommend that you turn that same understanding

inward and understand your own limitations. Know them

for what they are and respect them. In a modern organization, you

can’t last very long as a one-man band. Not even Tiger Woods

plays in every golf tournament.

Once you’ve recognized your limitations, you can go about circumventing

them. Sometimes this just means having an assistant

you can trust to handle your travel arrangements and messaging,

although, as Bill Ross observes, “In today’s world of ‘E-,’ it’s getting

tougher to rely on other people. As the role of the assistant

decreases, we increasingly have to leverage electronic and telecommunications

tools for mundane tasks.”

For problem solving, however, no one has yet devised a substitute

for the human brain. Because you can’t do everything yourself, you have to develop a group of people you can rely on to help

you shoulder the burden. That group might be your official team

or just an informal network you can call on for certain tasks. Once

you’ve found people whose ability you trust, don’t let them go—

they’re worth their weight in gold.

Depending on your position within the organization, you may

not be able to delegate. Sewage, after all, flows downhill. In that

case, you should become someone others can rely on. Eventually,

you’ll be able to move a bit upstream.

Make the most of your network. Beyond those in your inner

circle whom you rely on, chances are you know a lot of other people

with whom you share a set of experiences and values—a common

culture. These people may be friends and acquaintances from

earlier positions you held, fellow alumni from college or business

school, or members of your church or synagogue. Wherever they

come from, they are all part of your network, and they can help

you get ahead, sometimes in surprising ways.

The network of McKinsey alumni is far closer than that of

most other businesses—if anything, it resembles the alumni organization

of a small college—and the Firm goes to great lengths to

make it so. It might not surprise you to hear that a McKinsey associate

in New York can leave a message for another McKinsey consultant

in, say, Calcutta and expect a response within a day. What

might surprise you is that a McKinsey alumnus can expect a similar

level of response from other Firm alumni. This book is a prime

example of that responsiveness. We could not have written it without

the help of former McKinsey-ites who were willing to make

time in their busy schedules for a couple of writers who, in many

cases, they had never met before.

Chances are your current and former employers don’t go to the

same lengths as McKinsey in promoting their alumni organizations.

Even so, you can build your own network. Stay in touch with your school alumni associations. Don’t lose touch with former

colleagues, clients, or even competitors. You never know

where they’ll turn up or when they might be in a position to help

you.

Remember, too, that networking is a two-way street. If people

help you or you want them to help you at some point, you have

to be ready to help them when you can. Beyond that, make an

effort to cast your bread upon the waters. If one day you get a call

from, say, a younger alumnus of your alma mater, take the call and

do what you can for him. Who knows, one day, that person may

be in a position to help you.

YOUR PERSONAL LIFE

Life at McKinsey is a constant struggle between the professional

and the personal. McKinsey consultants often work long hours,

spend the entire workweek away from home, and come into the

office on the weekend. They don’t always get a chance to have dinner

with their spouses, put their kids to bed, or just take a relaxing

weekend to pore over the Sunday papers.

As a result, the ability to strike a balance between work and

personal life becomes extremely important to one’s success at the

Firm. Not everyone manages it. Many of our alumni stated frankly

that they left McKinsey because they couldn’t strike that balance or

didn’t like the balance they had struck. Sometimes, what worked

for single, twenty-something consultants stopped working when

they became married, thirty-something parents.

Even so, our alumni learned several lessons (even if sometimes

after the fact) about surviving the rigors of the high-pressure, executive

life with one’s sanity—and even one’s marriage—intact.

Obviously, even more than the lessons on advancing one’s career,

these lessons will work for some and not for others. We offer them

in the hope that they can help you.

THE McKINSEY WAY

McKinsey-ites often complain that they don’t have time for a personal

life. Even so, they had these two lessons on the subject.

Surviving on the road. Travel is part of modern business life.

Try to see the opportunities in business travel, rather than the

costs. If you’re traveling someplace interesting, take advantage of

it. If your destination is less than exotic, minimize the drudgery

with proper planning. Pack light, make sure your transportation

is reliably arranged, and find ways to entertain yourself when you

stop working for the day. Don’t let life on the road become an

uninterrupted cycle of working, eating, and sleeping.

If you want a life, lay down some rules. When you work 80

hours or more per week, there’s little time left over for anything

else. If you want a life, you have to do a little advance work. Make

one day a week off-limits. Keep work and home separate. Make

plans when you know you’ll have free time. Of course, sometimes

events force you to violate your own rules. Still, because you laid

down those rules in the first place, you and those around you—

your boss, colleagues, spouse, kids—will know what to expect

most of the time.

LESSONS LEARNED AND IMPLEMENTATION

ILLUSTRATIONS

When you’re on the fast track, you’re busy, pulled in several directions

at once, and can be under a lot of stress. To endure these pressures

with your sanity intact, you have to be able to strike a balance between work and everything else. Clearly, one person’s

balance point will be another one’s unendurable burden and someone

else’s half load. Wherever your balance point lies, the following

lessons from McKinsey alumni will help you find it and stay

on it:

• Respect your time.

• Perform sanity checks.

• Share the load.

Respect your time. Work is like a gas: it expands to fill the time

available. This is certainly the case at McKinsey. In the New York

office, one could easily log 100-hour weeks without stint yet still

find more to do. Even in less entrepreneurial environments, like

Europe, McKinsey puts heavy demands on its employees’ time. As

Heiner Kopperman, now with Change Works, joked, “At McKinsey’s

German offices, we liked the 35-hour workweek so much we

did it twice a week.”

When they leave the Firm, often in hopes of a better lifestyle,

McKinsey alumni are sometimes surprised to find that this principle

holds just as true for positions of responsibility in other organizations.

One alumnus summed it up quite well: “Work never

goes away. I come in at 6:00 every morning. I could stay until 8:00

every night and still not be finished.” In his next sentence, however,

he gives us the way out of this problem: “I could stay until 8:00

every night, but I choose not to. One thing I learned at McKinsey

was that if things are not falling apart, just go at 5:00. Take advantage

of the time.”

You have to decide, based on your personal ambitions, the

nature of your organization, and your place in the pecking order,

how much of your time you will devote to work. The number itself

matters only to you—it could be 40 hours per week or 90. Decide

whether that includes one or both days of the weekend.

Working backward from that number, arrange your schedule

accordingly. The start of your day is usually easiest to control: you

know how long it usually takes you to get into the office and can

set your alarm accordingly. The challenge comes at the end of the

day; resist the temptation to tack on one more meeting or work

that extra half hour. If you succumb, the meeting will drag on, and

the half hour will become an hour. Before you know it, you’re leaving

the office at 10:00 every night.

You will also have to get others to respect your time. The better

you are at your job or the higher up you go in your organization,

the more everyone wants a piece of you. There’s an old

saying, “Stress is the feeling you get when your gut says, ‘No,’

and your mouth says, ‘Yes, I’d be glad to.’” You have to train

your mouth to say, “No.” Learn to prioritize potential time commitments

according to their ability to help you get things done.

(You have to allow, of course, for drains on your time caused by

political necessity. If your boss says you have to go to a meeting

and you can’t get him to change his mind, you’re stuck.) You can

also make your colleagues understand that you are a finite

resource. Sometimes a little humor can help in this regard, as

Leah Niederstadt discovered during her time at Reading Is Fundamental

(RIF):

My position was such that I became the clearinghouse

for much of the information about our strategic plan. My

phone rang constantly, and people were always knocking

on my door for data that other people had. One day, a colleague

gave me a dainty little wooden sign decorated with

blue silk ribbons and bearing in delicately painted letters the

words GO AWAY! My colleagues laughed when I hung it

on my door, but the number of unnecessary interruptions

decreased.

However you do it, making sure that those around you appreciate

the value of your time will make you more productive and

less harried by the end of the day.

Perform sanity checks. In life, as in business, sometimes you

need to step back and look at the big picture. If your regular routine

consists of leaving for the office before your kids wake up and

seeing your spouse only when you crawl into bed at 1:00 a.m. after

the Tokyo conference call, it might make sense to ask yourself a

few pointed questions. Are you happy with your job? With your

boss? With your organization? If not, then do the likely future

rewards of your current situation justify the sacrifices you’re making?

If they don’t, then are you really in the right position and/or

career? If not, what should you do to change things? After working

long hours, traveling constantly, and never seeing their families

or even just the insides of their apartments, many McKinsey-ites

ask themselves these questions. Often, the answers lead them to

become McKinsey alumni.

Changing jobs is not the only answer, however, nor is it always

an option. Sometimes you can manage the expectations of those

around you—bring them closer to reality and reason—and

improve your situation. If your spouse chafes at your workload,

you need to demonstrate why what you’re doing is worth the cost.

If you can’t do so convincingly, then why are you doing what

you’re doing? If your boss expects you to perform like Superman,

you need to bring his expectations back to earth.

When work becomes an unreflective routine of long hours and

constant demands, it’s easy to lose sight of why you’re doing what

you’re doing. Take a step back and look at the big picture, at what

matters to you. After all, in the words of Socrates, “The unexamined

life isn’t worth living.”

Share the load. When we wanted to find out how to balance

the demands of work and family, we couldn’t have asked a better

person than Bob Garda. He spent 27 years at McKinsey and rose

to become a director of the Firm and the head of the Firm’s marketing

practice. More important, he built a marriage and raised a

family that survived the stresses of his demanding career both at

McKinsey and after it. His secret:

My wife. I have a very self-sufficient woman for a partner,

and she really is a partner. We decided early on how to share

the responsibilities of life. For instance, we figured out that

she was a heck of a lot better than I was at dealing with contractors,

such as plumbers and electricians, so she took care

of all that. Other McKinsey partners handled this differently.

As another example, I always discussed work and sought my

wife’s opinion and advice on client issues; she was an important

behind-the-scenes team member. She was my best counselor

and critic.

I never second-guessed the decisions my wife made in my

absence—I tried that once. I always supported her actions

to show a united front to the children.

As Bob learned, achieving this kind of balance requires a commitment

by both parties. Bob continues:

Early on, we realized that personal time together, just the

two of us, was important. After all, the children were going

to be with us for only a short time in our married life. Thus,

every year we’d take a week “honeymoon” that was tacked

on to one of my business trips. We took advantage of the fact

that grandparents love to baby-sit.

Over a time, I also grew to understand that, when it

comes to being with my family, it’s not just “quality time”

that matters, as I had been advised early on, but it’s also

“quantity time.” Children want their questions answered

now, not in three days when dad comes home. I could have

spent all my time on work if I let myself, but I needed to be

with my family. So I tried to manage my travel schedule to

get home more often and kept weekends sacred. If I had to

bring work home, I’d do it between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., after

everyone had gone to bed.

Bob knew, early in his career, that it’s just as tough to be a oneman

band at home as it is at the office. Having someone to share

the load with can make all the difference.

What if you are single, unattached (whether by choice or by

chance), or legally barred from entering into your preferred union?

We’ve no wish to alienate anyone by talking exclusively about

marriage. Though matrimony may be the most common way to

share the burdens of life, it is by no means the only method—nor

always the most successful. Friends and family can help share the

load, too. If you rely on them to help you, remember that you owe

them the same duty of honesty and reliability that you would a

spouse.

Sharing the load means, first and foremost, being up-front

about expectations. If you expect to work every weekend for the

next five years, make sure your spouse knows it and is happy with

it. If he’s not, be prepared to compromise. Furthermore, once you

make a commitment—“I won’t work on weekends” or “I’ll cook

dinner three nights a week”—stick to it, barring life-and-death

emergencies. If you seem to be having life-and-death emergencies

every week (and you’re not dealing with matters of real life and

death, as in a trauma ward), take a hard look at your priorities.

You might want to bear in mind the words of Shyam Giridharadas,

who left McKinsey to found Prism Consulting International: “I

loved the Firm, but I was wedded to my family.”

EXERCISES

We didn’t see the point of exercises for this section. Life is for living,

not for practice. Make the most of it.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, even more so than in the rest of this book, we don’t

purport to have all the answers. We hope that you found at least

something that can help you further your career and make your life

a little better. If that’s the case, then we’ve done our job.

One final point with regard to self-management: we believe

that many people in the business world would benefit from lightening

up a bit. Not that you shouldn’t take yourself seriously.

We’re not advocating that everyone walk around with a sense of

ironic detachment like the characters in “Seinfeld.” We simply

mean that there is, or ought to be, more to life than making the

next sale or finishing the next report. As we said earlier in this

chapter, it’s important to maintain perspective, and having a life

that extends beyond the confines of your office will help you in

that regard.

* * *

We’ve now finished our journey through the McKinsey Mind.

We hope that along the way you’ve learned something about how

to improve your decision making, how to manage the decisionmaking process, and how to get your ideas across to your audience

to help make change happen in your organization.

If there is one broad theme that connects all the elements of our

model of the McKinsey Mind—analyzing, presenting, and managing—

it is truth. The goal of problem solving is, after all, to

uncover the truth and communicate it. That is how correct decisions

get made and positive changes effected. But truth and the

search for truth are more than mere tools that increase shareholder

value. They are hallmarks of a free market and a free society, for

without truth we cannot control our individual destinies nor generate

the progress on which a dynamic society depends. As has

been said since before the days of the ancient Greeks, when truth

loses out to falsehood and superstition, freedom loses out to despotism

and barbarism.

Even beyond that, however, truth carries an even higher significance.

In the Talmud, the collection of rabbinic teachings on

Jewish law written down some 1,800 years ago, the sage Simon

ben Gamliel says, “Upon three things does the world rely: upon

justice, upon truth, and upon harmony.” And of these three, truth

is the most important, for without truth there can be no justice,

and a harmony based on falsehood will eventually collapse into

acrimony and strife.

This last discussion has taken us a long way from problemsolving

tools and management techniques. Compared to the

preservation of a just and free society, improving the profitability

of Acme Industry’s thrum-mat division might seem like small potatoes.

Maybe, but as individuals we have to start close to home,

within our own spheres of action. Find the truth wherever you can,

and the world will be a little bit better for it. We hope this book

helps you in your quest.

Who is your client? Depending on your circumstances, it

could be a customer, vendor, supplier, boss, CEO, shareholder,

or any combination thereof. If your business is to succeed,

you have to put the client first. This tenet lies at the heart of

McKinsey’s vision of itself as a professional service firm.

Dealing with clients can be a wonderful, enriching experience

(in both the monetary and psychic senses), a true win-win situation. More often than not, however, it is a challenging and frustrating

effort. If you’re in sales, you know just how difficult it is

to be on the constant hunt for new business. Even if you’re not in

sales, if you’re in the business world, then you have a client somewhere

whom you have to satisfy.

In this chapter we will look at three areas of client management:

obtaining, maintaining, and retaining. The concept of

obtaining clients is clear—to have clients to manage, you have to

get them in the first place. Client maintenance is the steps you take

to keep your client engaged in and happy with your progress during

the course of a project. We distinguish this from retention—the

fine art of getting follow-on work from a client after a project is

finished. As you will see, the experiences of McKinsey alumni in

these areas can help you build an expanding portfolio of happy

clients.

OBTAINING CLIENTS

This section focuses on the tools and techniques that will help you

win new client business. The lessons you will read here are unlikely

to show up in traditional sales books and journals for one fundamental

reason: we believe that the best selling is done by not

selling.

THE McKINSEY WAY

McKinsey has a unique approach to obtaining clients.

How to sell without selling. If you ask a McKinsey consultant

how the Firm sells its services, you will be told, in a slightly

haughty tone, that McKinsey doesn’t sell. That’s only partly true.

In fact, McKinsey sells, but it uses an indirect approach. Instead

of cold calls and mass mailings, the Firm relies almost exclusively

on existing relationships to generate new business. Many of

McKinsey’s engagements are follow-on work (a fancy term

describing an additional project for a client after one is finished).

To build relationships, the Firm markets: it publishes books and

articles; it performs extensive community service (which often has

the added benefit of allowing McKinsey consultants to rub elbows

with the corporate titans who populate so many charitable

boards); and it sponsors topical presentations and workshops. All

of these efforts serve to get McKinsey’s name out there—if its reputation

isn’t enough already—and broadens the Firm’s network of

corporate decision makers, any of whom might be in a position to

call their local McKinsey office with their business problems.

Be careful what you promise: structuring an engagement. In

the words of George W. Bush, “A promise made, is a promise

kept.” Over the years, McKinsey has learned how important it is to

make good on its promises. Unfortunately, even McKinsey sometimes

forgets that it can only fulfill a promise if the promise is reasonable.

Bear this in mind when laying down the boundaries of

your project—don’t overpromise because you’re bound to underdeliver,

which is no way to get follow-on business. Instead, balance

the demands of the client with the capabilities of your team. If the

client wants you to do more, you can always start a second project

once the first is done.

LESSONS LEARNED AND IMPLEMENTATION

ILLUSTRATIONS

At first glance, one may think that obtaining clients in a consulting

environment varies dramatically from other industries. Our alumni

who are now in other industries, however, claim that McKinsey

Managing Your Client 161

lessons also helped them. Based on our interviews with them, we

have isolated two particular considerations:

• Identify the client.

• Create a pull, rather than a push, demand.

Identify the client. Does this sound intuitive? Perhaps it is easier

said than done, especially at the level of understanding that is

necessary to ensure successful interaction. Take the government,

for example. You might think that in this traditionally hierarchical,

structured organization identifying your client and your client’s

needs would be simple. Not so says Sylvia Mathews, who culminated

eight years of public service as the Deputy Director of the

Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration:

This is a place where identifying your client is not always

that easy—it is by no means transparent. For example, I certainly

don’t have just one client. The president and vice president

are Client Number One. Then there are the different

cabinet departments, each with various individuals wanting

to be the point person. There are also interagency teams that

must be managed. Then there is Congress, which is a critical

client since it passes the laws that make things happen.

The challenge is not just identifying your client—you must then

go deeper. Each client has a particular agenda that you must consider

and balance. Mathews describes the best way to handle this

as “constant negotiation.” Knowledge of the true identity of your

clients and a strategy for handling competing sets of needs is not an

easy task but is one to which you should dedicate time and attention

up front.

Create a pull rather than a push demand. Bill Ross left

McKinsey as an engagement manager, just below the partner

ranks, and never had to spend too much time worrying about selling new engagements. When he moved to GE, even though he

didn’t have outside clients, he realized that he had to start selling:

My client is really the CEO of this business. I have more

clients as well—the managers of specific business units. We

have to sell. The products I’m selling are my ideas. In many

cases, I’m trying to get them to think differently and put my

thoughts into their thoughts—to get them engaged with my

ideas, so that when they have a problem, they turn to me.

This requires an up-front investment of resources and time.

That’s the secret—to create awareness of your offering so

that selling becomes less of a push and more of a pull.

This is the practical application of the McKinsey approach to

indirect selling. Rather than sticking a foot in the door and barging

in cold, build up a reputation and let it preceed you. Put the client

in a position to recognize that you’re the one who can fill her

need—then she’ll call you.

Effective selling, then, becomes the identification of client

needs and the building of expertise around them. Once you’ve

done that, you can begin the subtle art of indirect selling by making

people aware of what you know. Since you have done your

research up front, you don’t need to be explicit in your sales effort.

Just allow the potential client to make the connection between his

need and your expertise—as the voice said in the movie Field of

Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” Just make sure they can

find you.

IMPLEMENTATION GUIDANCE

It’s time to return to our team at Acme Widgets. Lukas, the newly

minted Grommets purchasing manager (you hired him in Chapter

6), has just finished his introductory training course and is ready to start work. Unfortunately, no one has told him exactly who his

client is. He knows that he reports to Madeleine, the vice president

of production, but he has a feeling he also answers to several more

people. To get a handle on the problem, he sits down and makes a

list of everyone with whom he interacts and updates this list over

time. He lists the specific demands they have of him and when. He

also identifies exactly how his efforts help them get their jobs done.

For kicks, he also lists two adjectives that describe the personality

of each person.

When he analyzes his own position, he sees that he does much

more than just order raw materials. For example, for Maddie, his

boss (Ms. Trott to him), he ensures that inventory is kept low so

that inventory costs and write-offs are kept to a minimum. Grace

and Zach, two production supervisors who use the majority of his

parts, look to Lukas to keep adequate stocks of both raw materials

and spare parts to avoid a break in their manufacturing schedules.

His administrative assistant, Mike, wants to grow in his job and do

much more than just answer the phone. Thinking strategically

about his clients and their needs, Lukas realizes that he has the

potential to add value for his organization through improved management

of inventory information; he decides to invest in a new

scheduling software package with terminal linkage to the production

supervisors and cost report generation on a daily basis to his

boss. He also sends Mike on a special training program to learn

how to run the software.

Lukas is off to a good start and he is quickly building a reputation

for innovative solutions. He did so by thinking carefully

about exactly who his clients are and what they need. He then

developed an innovative solution based on their needs and made

them aware of its capabilities. They began coming to him for additional

information, and it wasn’t long before Lukas was promoted

to the knowledge management department as a manufacturing

information liaison.

EXERCISES

• What is your sales offering? Identify an important issue

you have been working on that has faced internal resistance.

Next, think through the sources of resistance—

where are the roadblocks? Instead of trying to convince

people of the merits of your particular issue, identify an

opportunity to share something you know well to help

them with their current problem. Make it a credible, factbased

deliverable that increases your exposure and garners

general support.

MAINTAINING CLIENTS

Now that the client is in hand and established, we move to a new

stage in the relationship—maintenance. As with any relationship,

this requires careful consideration of the wants, needs, and desires

of all parties.

THE McKINSEY WAY

There are quite a few McKinsey lessons dedicated to this topic—

hardly surprising given their obsession with client service—and

rather than summarize them one-by-one, we will discuss their key

points all together:

• Engage the client in the process

• Always look over your shoulder

• Keep the client team on your side

• Learn to deal with liability client team members

• Pluck the low-hanging fruit

• Get buy-in throughout the organization

Two underlying themes emerge from these lessons. The first is

that proactive steps must be taken to manage client involvement:

keep them involved through active participation, not just periodic

updates; deal with troublesome team members in a direct, developmental

manner (or work around the worst cases); and rejoice

in small victories that help win the war. Like the management

lessons from the previous chapter, mediating client involvement is

best considered a separate task that requires special attention and

thinking on your part as the client manager. The other theme centers

on consideration of the clients: work around their schedule,

send agendas ahead of time, don’t take too much of their time,

appreciate what they have done, and keep client data strictly

confidential.

LESSONS LEARNED AND IMPLEMENTATION

ILLUSTRATIONS

The “client involvement” theme resonates with McKinsey alumni

as they move into their post-McKinsey positions. The primary lesson

from their implementation efforts simply focuses on becoming

creative and proactive: create involvement opportunities.

Create involvement opportunities. Shyam Giridharadas left

McKinsey to found and run his own consulting firm, Prism Consulting

International. He learned that delivering consistent highquality

work was not enough; client involvement was critical:

Fact-based, creative problem solving and objective, intellectually

honest recommendations are the hallmarks of an

excellent management consultant, but this is only half of the

equation. Consulting work is most effectively undertaken in

the client’s own backyard. It becomes extremely important

to integrate client team members at all levels within the organization and not just with the office of the CEO. It is vital for

the “McKinsey Mind” not to confine itself to brilliant problem

solving but to communicate incessantly throughout the

engagement process to integrate effectively and to create a

following.

Shyam pinpoints the locus of problem solving: it is best done in

the “client’s backyard.” For example, more and more manufacturing

companies’ research and development departments include

customers in the process, often sending scouts to witness how the

products are actually used and how they can be improved. Another

important element to successful integration is “incessant communication.”

Just as we favor overcommunication among team members,

so too do we recommend keeping your client well fed with

relevant information.

IMPLEMENTATION GUIDANCE

In company boardrooms and academic classrooms, the buzz today

is about changing organizational boundaries. Some believe that the

days of the massive organization may come to an end as “knowledge

workers” broker their services on an open, fluid market with

continually changing group lines. Two of the forces driving this

potentially seismic change are new technologies, especially in wired

and wireless communication, and globalization. Although we will

leave the forecasting to the experts—such as they are—it is clear

that assumptions about the role of customers are changing.

Today’s buyers are much more sophisticated and have greater

requirements. This is why many companies (including consulting

firms) have changed their approach to include them in the valuecreation

process, from initial design to final implementation. Are

there opportunities where you can go beyond the almost expected consideration of the client to the full team member view of the

client? Strive not to report or deliver to them but to jointly create

with them.

EXERCISES

• Create a client development plan. Think of your most

important client. How involved is this client in the design

and/or delivery of your product or service? Think creatively

about any opportunities that exist where the client

can actually come into your organization to assist in the

process. Be radical. Before you send an invitation, however,

make sure that you can articulate anticipated benefit of

their involvement (for you and the client).

RETAINING CLIENTS

The final section of this chapter is dedicated to finding ways to

keep your client for the long term. This has become a mainstay of

the McKinsey strategy as the Firm focuses on developing deep relationships

with the key players at the Fortune 100 companies and

megacorporations around the world.

THE McKINSEY WAY

The McKinsey client model is relationship driven and the key to

retention is ultimately meeting and exceeding client expectations.

Let’s review how they do it.

Be rigorous about implementation. This lesson took McKinsey

quite a while to fully understand and implement. For a long time, the Firm was known for outstanding idea generation but poor

implementation. Translation—lots of insight-laden reports gathering

dust on corporate bookshelves. To avoid the same fate for

your ideas, focus on the ability of the client to implement your

solution. In addition, before you head off to the next problem, present

a clear implementation plan that includes exactly what should

be done, by whom, and when. This applies not only to consulting

projects but also to internal projects that hinge on future activities

for eventual value generation.

LESSONS LEARNED AND IMPLEMENTATION

ILLUSTRATIONS

Focus your client retention efforts on the long term. Base every

decision on how it will affect the long-term relationship with your

client. In the case of McKinsey, one of the most important elements

of ensuring long-term successful relationships is the Firm’s ability

to generate lasting change. For some time, implementation was

considered McKinsey’s weak spot. As its clients became more

sophisticated, the Firm realized that this couldn’t last. They took

steps to improve not just their ability to devise a course of change

but to make change happen. Our alumni have taken those lessons

into the world beyond McKinsey and used them to build their new

organizations and businesses. Their recommendations:

• Share and then transfer responsibility

• Make the client a hero

Share and then transfer responsibility. At some point, you have

to learn to let go. When it comes to client involvement, one of the

common arguments holding back such efforts is a concern over

quality or efficiency. The problem with this orientation is that it

focuses too much on the short term. The first step is to take the risk of some inefficiency in order to involve the client in a greater role.

Bob Garda, now a faculty member of Duke University’s Fuqua

School of Business, elaborates on the benefit of sharing the decision-

making process:

When it comes to client management, I always remember a

phrase from McKinsey—“cover from behind.” That means,

when you get some analysis done, you go to the person who

gave you the data and let them help you interpret it. You

build a lot of friends and you build a lot of allies.

This also relates to previously discussed themes of client buyin.

The premise is that clients (internal or external) who were

involved in the problem-solving process make the best advocates.

This method also ensures that an eventual transfer takes

place, which was facilitated by the sharing of the overall process

throughout.

Make the client a hero. Jeff Sakaguchi, now a partner at Accenture,

learned a valuable lesson about the importance of including

clients in the problem-solving process so that they can share in the

glory:

One area where McKinsey and Accenture excel is matching

client structure. We recognize how important it is to have a

steering committee at the top, but you have also got to design

a complementary team that involves the client at all levels.

Clients are so much more capable than many people believe.

The key is to introduce accountability and exposure. They

will be just as committed to achieving success. They will take

ownership, and it is our job to help them get the job done.

If you view your job as a challenge to help clients win, rather

than focusing on how you win, good things will happen. This does not suggest that you should abandon all basic profitability considerations,

but it does suggest thinking of others first as you make

daily decisions. As Jeff described above, give your clients more

credit and give them opportunities to succeed—with you.

IMPLEMENTATION GUIDANCE

The tricky part in this section is not the goal of client involvement

but the specifics of where to include the client in the process—or,

perhaps more aptly, where to exclude him. For this we have two

suggestions.

First, pluck some low-hanging fruit with a pilot program. Pick

a particular product or division with a single meaningful client and

identify areas where the client can safely become involved in the

efforts designed to meet that particular client’s needs. Once you

have gained some momentum you can broaden the effort throughout

the organization. Second, control the process. Some clients

may take the proverbial inch and turn it into a mile. Be very clear

about the scope of the involvement—that includes goals, timing,

and exact expectations.

EXERCISES

• Benchmark client involvement activity. Pick an industry

different from your own. Identify the extent of client

involvement in the delivery portion of this industry. Where

are the opportunities for involvement and how many companies

are actively utilizing clients as described in this

chapter? How would you increase the involvement if you

were in that industry?

McKinsey works hard to involve its clients in the creation of

change in their organizations. Most industries can learn a valuable

lesson by considering how to more actively involve clients in

their delivery efforts as well. Moreover, we, as individuals, stand to

learn a lesson or two about the importance of putting others first.

In the next chapter, however, we will look at ways to put

another, very important person first—you.

MANAGING YOURSELF

Among themselves, McKinsey-ites often quip that the true Firm

hierarchy is Client, Firm, You. Notice that you come last—

some would say distantly so. It is therefore appropriate that in this

last chapter we discuss a few techniques for self-management, both

professional and personal, as practiced by McKinsey alumni.

The term self-management (along with its cousins self-help and

self-improvement) means different things to different people. The world’s bookstores bristle with titles purporting to help you get

ahead, get organized, get happy, get romance, and get thin. Some

of them may even come good on their promises.

Our goals are more modest. In the course of our research, we

have come across a few lessons that may help you be more successful

in your career or balance the competing demands of workplace

and home. We pass them on to you in the hope that they may

prove helpful. We make no promises.

More than any other topic in this book, this subject permits

no “one best way.” We are all, by definition, unique individuals,

and the strategy that helps Tom balance life and career may do

nothing at all for Dick—and may prove an absolute disaster for

Harriet. Having said that, the McKinsey alumni who have helped

us throughout this book have a wealth of life and professional

experience and are almost universally successful. They must know

a few things about getting ahead while maintaining one’s sanity.

YOUR PROFESSIONAL LIFE

We assume that anybody reading this book would like to get a little

closer to the top of the corporate ladder, if you have not already

reached it. In this section, we discuss a few techniques for making

that progression easier and, perhaps, quicker.

THE McKINSEY WAY

McKinsey-ites had a lot to say about climbing the Firm’s greasy

pole of success.

Find your own mentor. Take advantage of others’ experience

by finding someone senior in your organization to be your men-

tor. Even though some firms have formal mentoring programs, you

would still do well to take the initiative to find someone to steer

you through the twists and turns of corporate life.

Hit singles. This isn’t a call to commit battery on the unwed,

it’s a metaphor from baseball. You can’t do everything, so don’t try.

Just do what you’re supposed to do, and get it right. It’s impossible

to do everything yourself all the time. If you do manage that feat

once, you raise unrealistic expectations from those around you.

Then, when you fail to meet those expectations, you’ll have difficulty

regaining your credibility. Getting on base consistently is

much better than trying to hit a home run and striking out nine

times out of ten.

Make your boss look good. If you make your boss look good,

your boss will make you look good. You do that by doing your

job to the best of your ability and letting your boss know everything

you know when she needs to know it. Make sure she knows

where you are, what you are doing, and what problems you may

be having. However, don’t overload her with information. In

return for your efforts, she should praise your contributions to the

organization.

An aggressive strategy for managing hierarchy. Sometimes, to

get things done, you have to assert yourself. If you face a vacuum

in power or responsibility, fill it before someone else does. This

strategy can be risky; the more so, the more hierarchical your organization.

Be sensitive to the limits of others’ authority, and be ready

to retreat quickly if necessary.

A good assistant is a lifeline. Having someone to perform the

myriad support tasks required by a busy executive—typing, duplicating,

messaging, and filing, to name but a few—can be exceptionally

valuable. Whether the people who perform these tasks are

called secretaries, assistants, interns, or simply junior staff, treat

them well. Be clear about your wants and needs, and give them opportunities to grow in their responsibilities and careers, even if

they are not on the executive track.

LESSONS LEARNED AND IMPLEMENTATION

ILLUSTRATIONS

While many things change for McKinsey-ites when they leave the

Firm, the stresses of life in the business world remain, or even

increase, improbable as that may sound. McKinsey-ites are nothing

if not resourceful, however, and they’ve come up with ways to

survive and thrive despite the rigors of corporate life. Our alumni

were happy to share some of their career management techniques:

• Delegate around your limitations.

• Make the most of your network.

Delegate around your limitations. Throughout this book,

we’ve advocated understanding the limitations of others: your

client, your organization, your team, and even your organization’s

structure. Now we recommend that you turn that same understanding

inward and understand your own limitations. Know them

for what they are and respect them. In a modern organization, you

can’t last very long as a one-man band. Not even Tiger Woods

plays in every golf tournament.

Once you’ve recognized your limitations, you can go about circumventing

them. Sometimes this just means having an assistant

you can trust to handle your travel arrangements and messaging,

although, as Bill Ross observes, “In today’s world of ‘E-,’ it’s getting

tougher to rely on other people. As the role of the assistant

decreases, we increasingly have to leverage electronic and telecommunications

tools for mundane tasks.”

For problem solving, however, no one has yet devised a substitute

for the human brain. Because you can’t do everything yourself, you have to develop a group of people you can rely on to help

you shoulder the burden. That group might be your official team

or just an informal network you can call on for certain tasks. Once

you’ve found people whose ability you trust, don’t let them go—

they’re worth their weight in gold.

Depending on your position within the organization, you may

not be able to delegate. Sewage, after all, flows downhill. In that

case, you should become someone others can rely on. Eventually,

you’ll be able to move a bit upstream.

Make the most of your network. Beyond those in your inner

circle whom you rely on, chances are you know a lot of other people

with whom you share a set of experiences and values—a common

culture. These people may be friends and acquaintances from

earlier positions you held, fellow alumni from college or business

school, or members of your church or synagogue. Wherever they

come from, they are all part of your network, and they can help

you get ahead, sometimes in surprising ways.

The network of McKinsey alumni is far closer than that of

most other businesses—if anything, it resembles the alumni organization

of a small college—and the Firm goes to great lengths to

make it so. It might not surprise you to hear that a McKinsey associate

in New York can leave a message for another McKinsey consultant

in, say, Calcutta and expect a response within a day. What

might surprise you is that a McKinsey alumnus can expect a similar

level of response from other Firm alumni. This book is a prime

example of that responsiveness. We could not have written it without

the help of former McKinsey-ites who were willing to make

time in their busy schedules for a couple of writers who, in many

cases, they had never met before.

Chances are your current and former employers don’t go to the

same lengths as McKinsey in promoting their alumni organizations.

Even so, you can build your own network. Stay in touch with your school alumni associations. Don’t lose touch with former

colleagues, clients, or even competitors. You never know

where they’ll turn up or when they might be in a position to help

you.

Remember, too, that networking is a two-way street. If people

help you or you want them to help you at some point, you have

to be ready to help them when you can. Beyond that, make an

effort to cast your bread upon the waters. If one day you get a call

from, say, a younger alumnus of your alma mater, take the call and

do what you can for him. Who knows, one day, that person may

be in a position to help you.

YOUR PERSONAL LIFE

Life at McKinsey is a constant struggle between the professional

and the personal. McKinsey consultants often work long hours,

spend the entire workweek away from home, and come into the

office on the weekend. They don’t always get a chance to have dinner

with their spouses, put their kids to bed, or just take a relaxing

weekend to pore over the Sunday papers.

As a result, the ability to strike a balance between work and

personal life becomes extremely important to one’s success at the

Firm. Not everyone manages it. Many of our alumni stated frankly

that they left McKinsey because they couldn’t strike that balance or

didn’t like the balance they had struck. Sometimes, what worked

for single, twenty-something consultants stopped working when

they became married, thirty-something parents.

Even so, our alumni learned several lessons (even if sometimes

after the fact) about surviving the rigors of the high-pressure, executive

life with one’s sanity—and even one’s marriage—intact.

Obviously, even more than the lessons on advancing one’s career,

these lessons will work for some and not for others. We offer them

in the hope that they can help you.

THE McKINSEY WAY

McKinsey-ites often complain that they don’t have time for a personal

life. Even so, they had these two lessons on the subject.

Surviving on the road. Travel is part of modern business life.

Try to see the opportunities in business travel, rather than the

costs. If you’re traveling someplace interesting, take advantage of

it. If your destination is less than exotic, minimize the drudgery

with proper planning. Pack light, make sure your transportation

is reliably arranged, and find ways to entertain yourself when you

stop working for the day. Don’t let life on the road become an

uninterrupted cycle of working, eating, and sleeping.

If you want a life, lay down some rules. When you work 80

hours or more per week, there’s little time left over for anything

else. If you want a life, you have to do a little advance work. Make

one day a week off-limits. Keep work and home separate. Make

plans when you know you’ll have free time. Of course, sometimes

events force you to violate your own rules. Still, because you laid

down those rules in the first place, you and those around you—

your boss, colleagues, spouse, kids—will know what to expect

most of the time.

LESSONS LEARNED AND IMPLEMENTATION

ILLUSTRATIONS

When you’re on the fast track, you’re busy, pulled in several directions

at once, and can be under a lot of stress. To endure these pressures

with your sanity intact, you have to be able to strike a balance between work and everything else. Clearly, one person’s

balance point will be another one’s unendurable burden and someone

else’s half load. Wherever your balance point lies, the following

lessons from McKinsey alumni will help you find it and stay

on it:

• Respect your time.

• Perform sanity checks.

• Share the load.

Respect your time. Work is like a gas: it expands to fill the time

available. This is certainly the case at McKinsey. In the New York

office, one could easily log 100-hour weeks without stint yet still

find more to do. Even in less entrepreneurial environments, like

Europe, McKinsey puts heavy demands on its employees’ time. As

Heiner Kopperman, now with Change Works, joked, “At McKinsey’s

German offices, we liked the 35-hour workweek so much we

did it twice a week.”

When they leave the Firm, often in hopes of a better lifestyle,

McKinsey alumni are sometimes surprised to find that this principle

holds just as true for positions of responsibility in other organizations.

One alumnus summed it up quite well: “Work never

goes away. I come in at 6:00 every morning. I could stay until 8:00

every night and still not be finished.” In his next sentence, however,

he gives us the way out of this problem: “I could stay until 8:00

every night, but I choose not to. One thing I learned at McKinsey

was that if things are not falling apart, just go at 5:00. Take advantage

of the time.”

You have to decide, based on your personal ambitions, the

nature of your organization, and your place in the pecking order,

how much of your time you will devote to work. The number itself

matters only to you—it could be 40 hours per week or 90. Decide

whether that includes one or both days of the weekend.

Working backward from that number, arrange your schedule

accordingly. The start of your day is usually easiest to control: you

know how long it usually takes you to get into the office and can

set your alarm accordingly. The challenge comes at the end of the

day; resist the temptation to tack on one more meeting or work

that extra half hour. If you succumb, the meeting will drag on, and

the half hour will become an hour. Before you know it, you’re leaving

the office at 10:00 every night.

You will also have to get others to respect your time. The better

you are at your job or the higher up you go in your organization,

the more everyone wants a piece of you. There’s an old

saying, “Stress is the feeling you get when your gut says, ‘No,’

and your mouth says, ‘Yes, I’d be glad to.’” You have to train

your mouth to say, “No.” Learn to prioritize potential time commitments

according to their ability to help you get things done.

(You have to allow, of course, for drains on your time caused by

political necessity. If your boss says you have to go to a meeting

and you can’t get him to change his mind, you’re stuck.) You can

also make your colleagues understand that you are a finite

resource. Sometimes a little humor can help in this regard, as

Leah Niederstadt discovered during her time at Reading Is Fundamental

(RIF):

My position was such that I became the clearinghouse

for much of the information about our strategic plan. My

phone rang constantly, and people were always knocking

on my door for data that other people had. One day, a colleague

gave me a dainty little wooden sign decorated with

blue silk ribbons and bearing in delicately painted letters the

words GO AWAY! My colleagues laughed when I hung it

on my door, but the number of unnecessary interruptions

decreased.

However you do it, making sure that those around you appreciate

the value of your time will make you more productive and

less harried by the end of the day.

Perform sanity checks. In life, as in business, sometimes you

need to step back and look at the big picture. If your regular routine

consists of leaving for the office before your kids wake up and

seeing your spouse only when you crawl into bed at 1:00 a.m. after

the Tokyo conference call, it might make sense to ask yourself a

few pointed questions. Are you happy with your job? With your

boss? With your organization? If not, then do the likely future

rewards of your current situation justify the sacrifices you’re making?

If they don’t, then are you really in the right position and/or

career? If not, what should you do to change things? After working

long hours, traveling constantly, and never seeing their families

or even just the insides of their apartments, many McKinsey-ites

ask themselves these questions. Often, the answers lead them to

become McKinsey alumni.

Changing jobs is not the only answer, however, nor is it always

an option. Sometimes you can manage the expectations of those

around you—bring them closer to reality and reason—and

improve your situation. If your spouse chafes at your workload,

you need to demonstrate why what you’re doing is worth the cost.

If you can’t do so convincingly, then why are you doing what

you’re doing? If your boss expects you to perform like Superman,

you need to bring his expectations back to earth.

When work becomes an unreflective routine of long hours and

constant demands, it’s easy to lose sight of why you’re doing what

you’re doing. Take a step back and look at the big picture, at what

matters to you. After all, in the words of Socrates, “The unexamined

life isn’t worth living.”

Share the load. When we wanted to find out how to balance

the demands of work and family, we couldn’t have asked a better

person than Bob Garda. He spent 27 years at McKinsey and rose

to become a director of the Firm and the head of the Firm’s marketing

practice. More important, he built a marriage and raised a

family that survived the stresses of his demanding career both at

McKinsey and after it. His secret:

My wife. I have a very self-sufficient woman for a partner,

and she really is a partner. We decided early on how to share

the responsibilities of life. For instance, we figured out that

she was a heck of a lot better than I was at dealing with contractors,

such as plumbers and electricians, so she took care

of all that. Other McKinsey partners handled this differently.

As another example, I always discussed work and sought my

wife’s opinion and advice on client issues; she was an important

behind-the-scenes team member. She was my best counselor

and critic.

I never second-guessed the decisions my wife made in my

absence—I tried that once. I always supported her actions

to show a united front to the children.

As Bob learned, achieving this kind of balance requires a commitment

by both parties. Bob continues:

Early on, we realized that personal time together, just the

two of us, was important. After all, the children were going

to be with us for only a short time in our married life. Thus,

every year we’d take a week “honeymoon” that was tacked

on to one of my business trips. We took advantage of the fact

that grandparents love to baby-sit.

Over a time, I also grew to understand that, when it

comes to being with my family, it’s not just “quality time”

that matters, as I had been advised early on, but it’s also

“quantity time.” Children want their questions answered

now, not in three days when dad comes home. I could have

spent all my time on work if I let myself, but I needed to be

with my family. So I tried to manage my travel schedule to

get home more often and kept weekends sacred. If I had to

bring work home, I’d do it between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., after

everyone had gone to bed.

Bob knew, early in his career, that it’s just as tough to be a oneman

band at home as it is at the office. Having someone to share

the load with can make all the difference.

What if you are single, unattached (whether by choice or by

chance), or legally barred from entering into your preferred union?

We’ve no wish to alienate anyone by talking exclusively about

marriage. Though matrimony may be the most common way to

share the burdens of life, it is by no means the only method—nor

always the most successful. Friends and family can help share the

load, too. If you rely on them to help you, remember that you owe

them the same duty of honesty and reliability that you would a

spouse.

Sharing the load means, first and foremost, being up-front

about expectations. If you expect to work every weekend for the

next five years, make sure your spouse knows it and is happy with

it. If he’s not, be prepared to compromise. Furthermore, once you

make a commitment—“I won’t work on weekends” or “I’ll cook

dinner three nights a week”—stick to it, barring life-and-death

emergencies. If you seem to be having life-and-death emergencies

every week (and you’re not dealing with matters of real life and

death, as in a trauma ward), take a hard look at your priorities.

You might want to bear in mind the words of Shyam Giridharadas,

who left McKinsey to found Prism Consulting International: “I

loved the Firm, but I was wedded to my family.”

EXERCISES

We didn’t see the point of exercises for this section. Life is for living,

not for practice. Make the most of it.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, even more so than in the rest of this book, we don’t

purport to have all the answers. We hope that you found at least

something that can help you further your career and make your life

a little better. If that’s the case, then we’ve done our job.

One final point with regard to self-management: we believe

that many people in the business world would benefit from lightening

up a bit. Not that you shouldn’t take yourself seriously.

We’re not advocating that everyone walk around with a sense of

ironic detachment like the characters in “Seinfeld.” We simply

mean that there is, or ought to be, more to life than making the

next sale or finishing the next report. As we said earlier in this

chapter, it’s important to maintain perspective, and having a life

that extends beyond the confines of your office will help you in

that regard.

* * *

We’ve now finished our journey through the McKinsey Mind.

We hope that along the way you’ve learned something about how

to improve your decision making, how to manage the decisionmaking process, and how to get your ideas across to your audience

to help make change happen in your organization.

If there is one broad theme that connects all the elements of our

model of the McKinsey Mind—analyzing, presenting, and managing—

it is truth. The goal of problem solving is, after all, to

uncover the truth and communicate it. That is how correct decisions

get made and positive changes effected. But truth and the

search for truth are more than mere tools that increase shareholder

value. They are hallmarks of a free market and a free society, for

without truth we cannot control our individual destinies nor generate

the progress on which a dynamic society depends. As has

been said since before the days of the ancient Greeks, when truth

loses out to falsehood and superstition, freedom loses out to despotism

and barbarism.

Even beyond that, however, truth carries an even higher significance.

In the Talmud, the collection of rabbinic teachings on

Jewish law written down some 1,800 years ago, the sage Simon

ben Gamliel says, “Upon three things does the world rely: upon

justice, upon truth, and upon harmony.” And of these three, truth

is the most important, for without truth there can be no justice,

and a harmony based on falsehood will eventually collapse into

acrimony and strife.

This last discussion has taken us a long way from problemsolving

tools and management techniques. Compared to the

preservation of a just and free society, improving the profitability

of Acme Industry’s thrum-mat division might seem like small potatoes.

Maybe, but as individuals we have to start close to home,

within our own spheres of action. Find the truth wherever you can,

and the world will be a little bit better for it. We hope this book

helps you in your quest.