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176 The McKinsey Mind

opportunities to grow in their responsibilities and careers, even if
they are not on the executive track.

LESSONS LEARNED AND IMPLEMENTATION
ILLUSTRATIONS
While many things change for McKinsey-ites when they leave the
Firm, the stresses of life in the business world remain, or even
increase, improbable as that may sound. McKinsey-ites are noth-
ing if not resourceful, however, and they’ve come up with ways to
survive and thrive despite the rigors of corporate life. Our alumni
were happy to share some of their career management techniques:

• Delegate around your limitations.
• Make the most of your network.

Delegate around your limitations. Throughout this book,
we’ve advocated understanding the limitations of others: your
client, your organization, your team, and even your organization’s
structure. Now we recommend that you turn that same under-
standing inward and understand your own limitations. Know them
for what they are and respect them. In a modern organization, you
can’t last very long as a one-man band. Not even Tiger Woods
plays in every golf tournament.
Once you’ve recognized your limitations, you can go about cir-
cumventing them. Sometimes this just means having an assistant
you can trust to handle your travel arrangements and messaging,
although, as Bill Ross observes, “In today’s world of ‘E-,’ it’s get-
ting tougher to rely on other people. As the role of the assistant
decreases, we increasingly have to leverage electronic and telecom-
munications tools for mundane tasks.”
For problem solving, however, no one has yet devised a sub-
stitute for the human brain. Because you can’t do everything your-