How McKinsey infiltrated the world of global public health

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/12/13/21004456/bill-gates-mckinsey-global-public-health-bcg

by stopads • 7 years ago

88 41 7 years ago

_2d30• 7 years ago

I can’t believe this article was written and now published in a relatively well known publication. It basically starts with the premise that consultants are evil and then writes as though they are doing terrible, nefarious things by existing in a particular industry without ever really spelling out any nefarious doings in that industry. What a rag.

corporate_shi11• 7 years ago

I can believe it. Most "journalism" today is glorified blogging, the venting of emotion laden opinion, griping, etc. And all the "mainstream" pseudo-journalists seem to be of one mind.

tvanantwerp• 7 years ago

It's Vox, so I find this scenario very believable.

thinkingkong• 7 years ago

Genuine question. I get the world is turning against management consulting but what is up with all these mckinsey articles? Knowing how PR works Im having a tough time believing about a dozen outlets all decided to write and release investigative articles within the same month.

vernie• 7 years ago

It's just the news cycle. I think McKinsey in particular is in the spotlight because of Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign and his former employment there.

atlasunshrugged• 7 years ago

I doubt it's specifically a Dem play, I think more likely they had a couple of negative pieces, it established a trend, and more and more journo's are jumping on it

BitwiseFool• 7 years ago

In my own anecdotal experience - having worked with McKinsey consultants closely - I'm more than happy to upvote criticisms of them and how they operate.

sho• 7 years ago

Please include Deloitte in that animus. And even worse, Bain.

They are kids doing school projects. Nothing more, nothing less. And you know what - they're smart kids! But still kids.

The more sinister aspect is that management consultancies are the equivalent of basic training for the elite. It's a club, an extension of elite university, which by now is basically just a club too [1]. It's simply the next level in the game.

The truly rich don't need to pass this level but the general managerial class does. After that, they're loosed on the world, with predictable results.

[1] Which is more desirable, a Harvard degree without the education, or a Harvard education without the degree?

JSeymourATL• 7 years ago

what is up with all these mckinsey articles?

Democrat politics at play.

A significant progressive faction is trying to take down Buttigieg, tarnishing his good guy image. Lazy Journos buy-in.

It has all the elements of a great story-- an Elite, Secretive Consulting firm doing the dirty work of evil Corporate America. Classic Fear, Greed, and Power stuff.

dls2016• 7 years ago

So NYTimes started an investigative process a year prior to Buttigieg's exploratory committee? Amazing... and doubly so since the NYTimes isn't exactly a champion of progressive democrats.

The less nefarious answer is that these big investigative pieces follow a pattern. The original journalists publish a series of articles, then start writing a book. Meanwhile, other journalists pick up the thread. Sometimes this happens simultaneously because other journalists hear about the investigation and talk to the same sources.

naravara• 7 years ago

We're in the middle of a big cultural reckoning with the "business friendly" or "win/win economics" ethos of management consulting having been the guiding star for most large public service and non-profit organizations for the past few decades.

Anand G's "Winners Take All" summarizes the problems with this approach and his arguments in that book are slowly becoming more mainstream. On top of that, Pete Buttigieg's status as a McKinsey alum running for President makes it particularly salient.

supercanuck• 7 years ago

Comeuppance.

refurb2• 7 years ago

It is a little odd.

Some organization hires a consulting firm, no coercion or anything. Organization gets output and either acts on it or not.

Some consulting firms produce great work, some produce terrible work.

How is this news?

danso3• 7 years ago

Those organizations include governments and global corporations. Why wouldn't the aspects of their decision making process be news?

danso3• 7 years ago

The first major investigation into McKinsey ran a year ago. Here's the NYT's explainer about it:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/reader-center/mckinsey-he...

*The most basic question we set out to answer was this: Did McKinsey’s pristine reputation as the foremost purveyor of “best practices” match its record? After nearly a year of reporting, we found that the answer was often no.

Every recent ICE investigation is related to an ongoing major story:

- Chinese global economic policy: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/world/asia/mckinsey-china...

- The opioid crisis: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/business/purdue-pharma-mc...

- ICE: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/us/mckinsey-ICE-immigrati...

- Rikers Island prison: https://twitter.com/i_m_m/status/1204793794975141890

The more recent spate of McKinsey articles are related to the fact that Pete Buttigieg has entered the top tier of presidential candidates, and McKinsey is his third other job on the resume.

It's not tough to believe if the investigative hypothesis is correct: that McKinsey is the goto consulting firm trusted by the world's most powerful governments and companies when it comes to decisionmaking.

droopyEyelids• 7 years ago

And even in the specific random example of Buttigieg:

He was at McKinsey working for Loblaws (canadian grocery store) on pricing strategies, and afterwards Loblaws was convicted of price fixing.

Of course Mayor Pete wasn't responsible, but it's still not a good look for McKinsey.

peruvian• 7 years ago

Probably because Pete Buttigieg used to work there.

sailfast2• 7 years ago

The title of this article is "How McKinsey infiltrated the world of Global Public Health" and the straight answer is: "The WHO hired them, and sometimes the Gates foundation prefers their money is used to hire consultancies" Because management consultancy = conspiracy is the new fad I guess? Hell, they even mention Accenture as one of these "secretive" orgs. Clearly they don't understand the business.

The article continues to talk about how WHO hires consultants to do jobs that consultants are typically hired to do, and then states "how these secretive businesses, which mostly profit from serving corporate interests, are shaping global public health is an open question — and one that’s hard to answer."

Next breaking story on Vox: "How are these shadowy, secretive [insert private held company in any industry] typically profiting from corporations impacting [other big thing they also do work in]." Hard pass.

EDIT: None of the above is saying that consultancies are the best use of this money to achieve impact, of course, or that this model yields out-sized results, or an endorsement. It's on the person that hires them as to what they do with the advice and let them do within your org. My comments are rather an indictment of the tone of the argument for click bait and distraction from the main issues that are really important, like how to effectively eradicate disease with a pile of money.

kyleblarson• 7 years ago

This is Vox after all, not a news source.

o09rdk• 7 years ago

So, I shared some of your impressions, but also some of what Vox is conveying.

Speaking from personal experience, the problem with large public institutions (maybe any institution?) hiring these consultancies is that there's enormous intrinsic pressure to accept their recommendations.

Say, public institution X spends exorbitant fees on consultancy Y. Now they're going to choose to ignore the recommendations?

If the recommendations are bogus, there will be hellfire about why the public institution is transferring huge quantities of funds to a private organization that is incompetent or sketchy. If the recommendations are not, then there will be hellfire about why the public institution is ignoring the recommendations.

As a result, a lot of times there's suspicion that these consultancies are just cover for administration or management making decisions that would be unpopular, controversial, or self-serving. At least in my experience, they're seen as a power grab for those already in positions of power. That is, the consultancy comes in, asks management/admin what they would like to see, and then they put it in the recommendations. Then admin can say "look, we didn't tell ourselves to [do incredibly controversial thing Z, like cut basic staff and give administration big raises], this fully independent third party said to do this."

As a result, I think hard questions about what you're getting from consultancies are actually apropos of the Vox article, and relevant to the perception that shady constituencies are somehow hijacking public services for their own benefit. When you pay large sums of money to a consultancy, whose methods are unclear, and have unclear scientific support, and assumes that, e.g., management of publicly traded for-profit companies and management of non-profit government organizations can be treated similarly, it leads to legitimate questions about whose motives are being served.

The WHO would have been better off imho convening a special strategy or reform committee made of inside and outside members than something like McKinsey.

darawk3• 7 years ago

I think a more fair characterization of that process might be: Controversial decisions require extra convincing to get done. If you know your organization is bloated and you need to downsize by 20%, you could just do it yourself, but then you run the risk of your organization revolting against you for it. If, on the other hand, you hire a consultancy, and they come to the same conclusion, that represents corroborative evidence for your view.

That is to say, another way of looking at this is that tough decisions require extraordinary evidence. If a neutral third party comes to the same conclusion, a cynical way to characterize that is it gives you "cover" to do what you wanted to do anyway. But an equally true way to characterize it is that if you weren't sure before, it allows you to be more confident that that was really the right decision.

If I were going to say, fire 20% of my staff, i'd want a neutral third party to come in and evaluate that decision before I just went off and did it too.

haecceity• 7 years ago

Ya they should spend more money and hire multiple consultants and have fight it out then implement some of their ideas.

sailfast2• 7 years ago

Agreed, however the idea that because [expensive boutique firm] was consulted on X means that now the organization has no choice but to defer to their [insert maniacal conspiracy purpose here] recommendation doesn't pass the sniff test.

I agree that there is pressure because rates are high and there is a social penalty for being wrong at high expense in public organizations, but that does not mean that by being in the door suddenly the only responsible party is the consultancy because "who could ever say no to a Harvard MBA!"

I also agree with the article's thrust about transparency and accounting for such a global org to provide a good check on what is happening. I also agree that to manage successfully you have to have enough people on staff to adequately advise these efforts and help sort the good ideas from the bad. That said, the article didn't dive into WHO operations, just the fact that they hired consultants.

molszanski• 7 years ago

enormous intrinsic pressure to accept their recommendations.

I have a different personal experience. Roughly ten consulting hires for big public orgs. Small stuff and a big one: a dozen of researches working for months to produce the best result.

It was shaped to produce the result they wanted to hear. Or simply ignored.

- Healthwise, should I drink Coke or Pepsi.

- Neither, they have too much sugar to be regularly consumed.

- I am asking which of two options I should stick to?

ryanobjc2• 7 years ago

Also important to remember that "hijacking public services for their own benefit" is hardly an abstract charge. There has been many examples of public goods being transformed into private goods for huge benefits to a select few. This is basically the history of Russia in the 90s.

It happened in Canada as well, privatization of public monopoly corporations did not return fair gains, and instead increased costs. Ditto in the US in various places, for example look at private prison with guaranteed profit-performance clauses (originally secured under the seemingly 'reasonable' concept that private companies wouldnt take a risk if there was no backstop/floor to financial performance).

All of these extremely shady transactions are seemingly greased by a whole army of well paid business consultants. At a certain level, if you aren't skeptical of their history, isn't you who are being naive?

blablabla123• 7 years ago

The public health sector is a complete vacuum when it comes to innovation. Of course any big company entering it can have a big influence. Especially on a global scale some of the most influentual actors are WHO, NGOs and church bodies.

I'd also add that most traditional businesses rely on some sort of "secret recipe"... The other question is whether these recipes are so interesting anyways

crazygringo• 7 years ago

The word "infiltrated" in the headline is inflammatory clickbait.

It's just a company going after a market, same as their competitors are. You might as well say "Apple infiltrated the world of cell phones" or "Warren infiltrated the presidential race".

Totally irresponsible. Shame on Vox.

rayiner• 7 years ago

Always interesting to see Gell-Mann at work. My knowledge of public health is indirect, but my dad spent his entire career in that sector. The article's portrayal of the public sector versus the private sector is slanted.

Here is a fact that many people don't want to admit but is widely acknowledged within the public health sector: UN organizations like the WHO are indispensable, but also among the most bureaucratic, ineffective, and inefficient entities on the planet. There is a reason that the impetus for hiring McKinsey came from inside the WHO itself. Private-sector organizations like Gates Foundation have been welcomed into the field not only because of their resources, but because of their effectiveness and organizational capabilities.

The second point is that governments in developing countries are corrupt and direct aid money is quickly siphoned off and dissipated.

The third point, following from the first two, is that the United States' foreign aid efforts have always relied heavily on consultants and public-private partnerships, and have been extremely effective. Say, for example, USAID wants to address infant mortality in Bangladesh. It doesn't give money directly to Bangladesh. It gives money to a consulting firm, which hires "boots on the ground" (doctors, etc.) and secures supplies. USAID and the consulting firm then work closely with the health ministry in Bangladesh to execute the vaccine program. This structure works quite well: in Bangladesh, for example, it has been instrumental in reducing infant mortality and improving family planning.

The issue with McKinsey, etc., is not that they're "secretive" or "for-profit entities." It's that they have little experience in the sector compared to specialized consulting companies who have been doing that sort of work for decades.

sct202• 7 years ago

I don't know if I've been desensitized to large numbers but a large organization like the WHO spending a few million dollars per year on consulting services seems pretty minor.

jshaqaw2• 7 years ago

The surge of negative articles about McKinsey lately seems to suspiciously benefit a certain Democrat running for President at the expense of another. Call me suspicious but this all seems like a politically coordinated hit job.

jshaqaw2• 7 years ago

I expected the downvotes. I am no McKinsey apologist. I worked there for a short time. I didn't like it and left. I have no illusions about the place. But if you don't know what it looks like when a political campaign generates astroturf coverage of an issue in the press then you are naive.

How McKinsey infiltrated the world of global public health

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