I generally agree with this takeaway. The same can be said for all (big 5) management consultancies.

On a related but unrelated note, the structured McKinsey methods of thinking and analysis have been my go-to for decades now.

Notable frameworks I recommend looking into are: The Pyramid Principle, MECE, 7s, SPC, to mention a few.

^ this ^

It's up to the client to (choose to) implement the guidance, and, as a consequence, to realize the consequences, good, bad, or a combination of both.

It is, but it's so much more convenient when an external bunch of talking suits with an outrageous hourly-rate tell you what you already know but are afraid to implement.

This is exactly the thing

Capitalism is the system out of which these problems have sprung. People keep shouting about "real" or "pure" capitalism being better but that's all a lie spread by the capital owners through their think-tanks. Its propaganda

If we organize corporations to be owned by the workers instead of shareholders, the few with real capital, then the interest of the corporation will shift to that of the workers instead of driving profits to shareholders. A corporation with the interest of workers won't hire consultants like McKinsey

There's always going to be "management", especially if ownership is diffuse. Where there is management, there will be management consultants (of one style or another).

Decisions will no longer be hidden if the workers all have a say in decision making, that changes the information power asymmetry to being more symmetrical and gives people the power to speak out to regulators.

If managers start hiding things, workers could easily remove the managers. We also should remember that managers are workers too, almost never are they the capital owners

> There's always going to be "management",

Fuck crypto, but the concept of a DAO may change this.

I’m not convinced that worker ownership is necessarily better either, not in a global sense at least, not when we emit into the same beleaguered environment.

Consider a worker-owned coal mining operation. It will have the same self-preservation drive that works to the detriment of all the rest of us.

I understand that, but when the decisions are made by more people there is a greater chance of some of them speaking up and saying "hey, maybe we shouldn't destroy the environment" instead of when decisions are made by a few behind closed doors with consultants being paid to provide cover

It also allows the workers to have the knowledge of what's going on, in the case that the organization does decide to destroy the environment we then have more people who know the facts behind the decisions and can speak out to regulators

The big issue is "stakeholder mismatch".

A worker-owned coal mine has workers who are going to say "keep the place open forever to pay our rent", but also workers who will say "I'm dying of black lung" or "the river my kids like to swim in is purple from runoff" which will help moderate the decision making process. Maybe they stay open, but do a better job of managing emissions, because they're accountable to people who are directly impacted. Maybe they are more directly aware that there's N years of viability left in the coal business and start looking to bootstrap alternatives sooner.

When the stakeholders are predominantly outside investors, there's no reason for them to ask about mitigration or the long term. If they realize that coal is dead in ten years, they personally aren't impacted, they just have to hype the price long enough to sell the asset to some other sucker. Their kids aren't swimming in waste products, so go ahead, funnel it directly into the river.

I always figured the strongest mix was to find a way to manage that represented the worker stakeholders and the consumer stakeholders (the ones who are going to walk away after you shrinkflated the product to death). Solve their needs, and capital will get its money back.

Fair point. At least some kinds of awful corporate decision-making would surely be much less likely under worker ownership.

For example, 3M and PFAS contamination. It’s a stretch to imagine workers local to the factories and very directly bearing the brunt of it, would go along with it.

> If we organize corporations to be owned by the workers instead of shareholders

That model isn't a good solution either - it would require for workers to "buy in" into the cooperative in order to have a job. Most cooperatives are founded by a group of people pooling together their individual assets to start operations.

Workers already "buy in" with their labor

> A corporation with the interest of workers won't hire consultants like McKinsey

Consultancy might still exist as it provides value, it's just that some kind of suggestions would be completely unacceptable if your priorities are worker welfare and prosperity and you are not allowed to externalize costs on society.

That's a good point. My assumption is that with a more democratic structure governing corporation decisions, those decisions will likely be less aligned with the ideology of "profit at the expense of all else" which can lead to some of the projects that McKinsey has worked on. Of course its not foolproof and the organizations could still make those decisions, but I think it would still mitigate a good portion which would be a step in the right direction.

I think that is too simplistic. I believe the "McKinsey problem" is that of higher management (including the board) whos interest do not align with the owners or workers.

This is the result of centralization of power, and nothing more.

People are people, regardless of what faction you've been brainwashed to believe supports the greater good

Capitalism, when left unregulated, allows and actively encourages consolidation and centralization of corporate power in the form of monopolies and oligopolies.

Changing the structure and incentives can alter that, it's a systemic effect

Capitalism existed for centuries before the McKinsey, which is an outgrowth of the 20th century movement of “scientific management.”

Not as such it did not.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=capitalism&yea...