The Firm, Duff McDonald
The Firm, Duff McDonald
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The Firm
The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business

Author: Duff McDonald

Narrator: Tom Weiner

Unabridged: 11 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/10/2013


Synopsis

A behind-the-scenes, revelatory history of McKinsey & Company, Americas most influential and controversial business consulting firm, told by one of the nations leading financial journalists Founded in 1926, McKinsey & Company has become one of the worlds leading management consulting firms, helping to invent American business and shaping its course for decades. Ushering in the age of American industrial dominance, McKinsey remapped the power structure in the White House, helped create the bar code, revolutionized business schools, and introduced the idea of budgeting as a management tool. McKinsey consultants have created the corporate behaviors that shaped our worldreinventing our idea of American capitalism and exporting it across the globe. At the same time, however, McKinsey can also be associated with a list of striking failures. Its consultants were on the scene when General Motors drove itself into the ground, and they played a critical role in building the bomb known as Enron. Yet they are rarely blamed for the failuresat least not publicly. McKinsey employees are trusted and distrusted, loved and despised. And far from prying eyes, they are doing behind-the-scenes work for the most powerful people in the world. In The Firm, star financial journalist Duff McDonald uncovers how these high-powered, high-priced business savants have ushered in waves of structural, financial, and technological shifts to the biggest and best American organizations. With unrivaled access to company documents and current and former employees, McDonald reveals the inner workings of what just might be the most influential private organization in America.

About Duff McDonald

Duff McDonald is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase, and The Golden Passport and the coauthor of The CEO, a satire. A contributing editor at the New York Observer, he has also written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, New York, Esquire, Fortune, Businessweek, GQ, Wired, Time, Newsweek, and other publications. He lives in New York.


Reviews

Goodreads review by ☘Misericordia☘ on July 03, 2018

Q: Any chief executive who hires a consultant to give them strategy should be fired. (c) Q: You can forecast anything. Delivering actual results is a different story. (c) Q: “And McKinsey never really left the building. A decade later, when John Birt, then director-general of the BBC, stepped down from h......more

Goodreads review by Jay on October 25, 2013

I'll be the first to admit that the audience for this book is pretty narrow. In addition to McKinsey alums looking for a shout out, the folks like me who are intrigued by the art of management and those folks interested in the (I'd argue contradictory) impulse to contract management's accountability......more

Goodreads review by Marks54 on October 12, 2013

This is an updated company history of McKinsey, the strategic consulting firm that has been so successful that it has come to define the standard for providing management advice. The story follows the firm from its inception to the recent insider trading scandal involving former managing director Ra......more

Goodreads review by Holly Weston on December 27, 2022

Wow, what a tour de force of business/financial reporting. For anyone interested in the “black box” of McKinsey, I can’t recommend this book strongly enough (caveat that you have to have a real interest in the subject - this isn’t a book for those with a casual or passing interest in McKinsey - it’s......more

Goodreads review by Sana on July 31, 2017

Well written and researched book, but highly misleading. The tagline of the book is click bait. It's not a tale of a controversial firm. It's a promotional book, massively in favour of them. All of the "gotcha" moments weren't compelling enough for me to be suspicious of McKinsey. In fact I finished......more