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80 Years Later: A Remembrance of James O. McKinseyMcKinsey News
Tuesday, November 28, 2006In October, Directors from across the Firm gathered on the campus of the University of Chicago to celebrate the 80th anniversary of McKinsey & Company. The location was chosen specifically to honor the contributions of the Firm’s founder, James O. McKinsey.Most of us understand the guiding hand Marvin Bower had on the Firm, but not many of us know the depth and breadth of our legacy from James “Mac” McKinsey himself.
The host for the event, Director Brian Hanessian (CHI), acknowledged the situation directly. “Our purpose tonight is to do something I have never been a part of in my 20 years with the Firm, and that is to celebrate James O. McKinsey himself.”
It is an overdue celebration. While Mac’s involvement with the Firm was brief and his sudden death occurred only a decade after he founded the Firm, much of what it is and what it does today can be traced to him – and some even to the educational institution where he taught.
If it weren’t for Marvin Bower there may not be a McKinsey & Company today – at least not as we know it – and the consulting profession itself would be profoundly different. But Marvin himself always reminded us, “Let’s not forget that we adopted everything that Mac stood for … we embraced them.”
Our legacy from James O. McKinseyhttps://alumni.mckinsey.com/alumni/default/private/content/images/firm_news/James_O_McKinsey_final_2.jpg">
James O. McKinsey
in the 1930sJames McKinsey brought many of his own concepts to shaping the firm named “James O. McKinsey and Company, Accountants and Engineers,” founded in 1926.
An accounting professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, Mac held an established position in finance and budgeting and was gaining a reputation in organization and general management.
Among his several ground-breaking textbooks was Budgetary Control, in which he was the first to articulate the benefit of accounting as a management tool to aid decision making rather than merely a technique for financial record keeping. His Managerial Accounting is still the basis for most accounting texts used in business schools today.
In the 1920s, when consultants were known as management engineers and efficiency experts, McKinsey attempted to persuade clients that his firm could not only help inefficient companies but also assist healthy companies thrive in changing business environments.
In doing so, he initiated several innovative and bold concepts to consulting: the top management approach, working with chief executives, and the desirability of working with large companies in order to make the consulting field credible. In 1931 he drafted the General Survey Outline to give young, inexperienced consultants a model to follow when asked to prepare a complete study of a company in financial difficulties. Consultants at McKinsey & Company used it, in modified form, until 1962.
Mac’s legacy extends much deeperAt the Directors Conference in Chicago, Directors learned even more about what they owe James O. McKinsey. It turns out that the debt is not only to him but to the University of Chicago as well.
The event was, appropriately enough, held at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. Mac did more than simply launch his career and the Firm from his position at the business school. In fact, McKinsey borrowed many of the school’s distinctive features to shape the Firm, even as we know it today.
There are three things in particular:
The rigorous analytical approach to problem solving that has always been a hallmark of the firm’s client work. McKinsey learned this at the University of Chicago.
McKinsey’s career- and life-long dedication to training and education. Mac’s experience as a teacher and an academic clearly influenced McKinsey & Company’s learning culture. Mac conducted the first Saturday-morning training sessions of the Firm, and turned every opportunity into a training session. Learning and professional development are major investments of the Firm in its working environment.
An open and collaborative meritocracy where ideas are what matters, not who has them. Collaboration and meritocracy are values at the business school in Chicago, and it is clear that McKinsey followed their lead. The school catalogue states, “our learning environment is collaborative and without hierarchy. You are expected to voice your questions and dissent, whether the idea is presented by a peer or a professor.” As the Directors in Chicago noted, this sounds a lot like McKinsey’s values handbook.
But who was Mac?Mac’s relationship with the Firm was tragically cut short. He left his young firm in 1935 to join Marshall Field & Co., then the leading corporation in Chicago, as CEO. According to Marvin Bower, then a young partner, McKinsey planned to return to resume leadership of his own firm. Before that could happen, he died suddenly of pneumonia at the age of 48. Unlike Marvin Bower, who led the Firm for so long, Mac was known personally only to our earliest colleagues.
But we do know some things about him, from interviews and other accounts. We know for example, that Mac was honest and candid with clients and willing to tell them the truth. Colleagues described him as “poised,” “self-assured,” and “articulate.”
He was an imposing figure, nearly six feet four inches tall. He also had a good sense of humor. When Mac became the father of twin boys, one of his friends at the University teased him, saying, ‘Mac, that’s carrying efficiency a little far, don’t you think?'"
Mac’s son Robert, also a graduate of the University of Chicago, later became a Firm member; he was hired as an associate in Chicago in the 1940s.
Robert, who lives in Florida, was interviewed earlier this month at the age of 85.
