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152 The McKinsey Mind

each consultant is evaluated by anyone who comes in contact with
the consultant, including subordinates, peers, supervisors, and
even administrative personnel. Many teams at McKinsey also use
Team Evaluation Performance Reviews where they explicitly eval-
uate their performance working together. There is no shortage of
feedback at McKinsey; in fact, some may argue that there is too
much (as we discuss at the end of this section).
McKinsey alumni found these techniques very effective. Some
of them miss that feedback in their current organizations. Ron
O’Hanley, now the president of Mellon Institutional Asset Man-
agement, reflects on his attempts to develop similarly intense feed-
back channels in his organization:

Real teams have open, unimpaired feedback loops. This is
very hard in a traditional corporate hierarchy. Open feed-
back, particularly about me, has become a way of life
around here.

Barbara Goose, now the vice president and associate marketing
director at Digitas, brought some of the specific tools with her:

I have used tools similar to the Team Evaluation Perfor-
mance Review effectively with my teams. Other organiza-
tions that I have been a part of tend not to be as thorough
with team selection, evaluation, and development. The
Development Group Leader (at McKinsey) played a large
role in this—and that is often missing at other places. You
really felt at McKinsey like you had an advocate.

This hard-hitting, constant evaluation and development advice
is not for everyone. Even though we are all on a developmental
journey, the bumps along the road can be uncomfortable at times.
One of the areas that some say McKinsey misses is the balance.
When it comes to comments, there are two considerations: quan-
tity and type (i.e., positive or negative).