Page 153 - The McKinsey Mind

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128 The McKinsey Mind

You would be hard-pressed to find an organization with more
team-based activity than McKinsey. When it comes to managing
those teams, depending upon whom you ask, the Firm is an excel-
lent example of either what to do or what not to do. We will
discuss both in this chapter. On the positive side, the Firm dedi-
cates a lot of time and energy to training its team leaders with spe-
cial training modules, conferences, and mentoring programs. Ciara
Burnham of Evercore Partners elaborates: “One obvious lesson
from McKinsey is that managing the team is a separate, distinct,
and important task. This is not widely appreciated in other
organizations.”
Although McKinsey works very hard at building teams and
team leaders, some say that the training comes too late in the game.
One alumna, now with another strategy consulting firm, com-
plains that some of the best team training came only at the higher
ranks in McKinsey. “Managing the team was one of the areas in
which I learned the least at McKinsey,” he says. “There was some
great material as you moved up, but in the early stages, it was
mostly on-the-job training.” He is not alone in his disappointment
with some of the ways McKinsey handled teamwork and leader-
ship training, as we will see in this chapter. Still, as evidenced by
the Firm’s great success over the past 75 years, it also knows how
to do some things right.
We will cover four major elements of team management in this
chapter: team selection, internal communication, bonding activi-
ties, and individual development.

SELECTION

You can’t have a team without team members. That being the case,
the first step to building a great team is selecting the right people.