Why is a bankrupt Puerto Rico spending more than a billion dollars on expert advice?
“I mean, it’s basically a management crisis,” Bertil Chappuis said one afternoon, as we sat at a Cuban luncheonette in San Juan. “Set aside the politics. Set aside policy. Set aside all of that. There was a true management crisis that had come to a head because of the debt.”
Nail, meet hammer: Chappuis is a senior partner at McKinsey & Company, perhaps the world’s most influential management consulting firm. McKinsey prides itself on tackling the world’s most important and intractable problems. Over its century-long existence, the firm—or
“The Firm,” as its employees refer to it—has conceived and propagated many of the ideas that now rule American business, which is to say, American life. Its influence can be seen in corporate suites (a disproportionate number of Fortune 500 CEOs are ex-McKinsey consultants) and grocery stores (the bar code is a McKinsey innovation), in banks, universities, and hospitals. All the while, the firm has maintained an air of mystery, seldom disclosing the details of its work, deflecting credit when its efforts are successful, dodging blame when they blow up or inflict pain on those on the receiving end of its efficiencies.
This story is from the April 15, 2019 edition of New York magazine.
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This story is from the April 15, 2019 edition of New York magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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