BCG hires McKinsey to advise it on how to become number 1
McK will use the BCG matrix to slot BCG consultants as dogs and cows
Strategy consulting major Boston Consulting Group (BCG) announced today that it has hired the services of the world’s number 1 strategy consulting firm McKinsey to advise BCG on how to replace McKinsey as the number 1 strategy consulting firm.
“We are sick of being second best. After a rigorous year long internal analysis session that involved 35 BCG consultants (editor – this translates to roughly over 2.9 lakh manhours assuming each consultant put in 18 hours a day,7 days a week), 45 proprietary BCG frameworks, and over 900 Powerpoint slides, we came to the firm conclusion that the best strategy would be to hire McKinsey to advise us on becoming #1,” said Vijayendra ‘Baba’ Haryal, Global Head, BCG.
McKinsey has readily agreed to serve its new client as professionally as possible. “In normal times, we’d have asked them go climb a tree. But with another looming recession, we can’t afford to be choosy. Hopefully we should be able to retain BCG as an anchor client for at least 5 years,” said Achal Nath, Senior Partner, McKinsey.
Achal pooh-poohed the idea of a potential conflict of interest. “As long as they are paying us, we are happy to advise them. One of the firm’s core values is to place the client’s interest above everything else, so there is no question of a conflict of interest” said Achal. The Senior Partner however did concede that in theory BCG can replace McKinsey as the number 1 firm at the end of the engagement. “Yeah, in theory they should. But the cool thing about consulting is that we are not required to put our money where our mouths are, so I am not gonna lose sleep over it,” he shrugged.
The McKinsey team deployed for this prestigious assignment has been persuaded by BCG to use the famous BCG Growth-Share Matrix for some of the analysis. “Yeah, we have our own tools but these guys seem quite sentimental about this stuff and insisted that we use it. So in the first phase of the engagement, we are gonna slot BCG consultants into dogs, cows, question marks, and stars so that the dogs can be kicked out and the stars can be promoted. We will then see what to do with the question marks,” said team lead and rising McKinsey star, Raghib Ahmed.
Pundits think BCG’s move is a master-stroke. “If McK indeed helps them become #1, great! If not, BCG can then tell prospective clients that Mck’s advice does not always produce results,” said Li Chin, a Hong Kong based business journalist. “Hmm… that’s an interesting line of thought. To be honest, we just want to get hold of some nice Mck slides, but that will help too,” said ‘Baba’ Haryal, Global Head, BCG to The UnReal Times.
| |
41 Responses to BCG hires McKinsey to advise it on how to become number 1
Leave a Reply
About Author
 | |
I agree with Victoria…
Aditya
August 17, 2011 at 10:09 am
hmm, indeed looks like a good case for some integration advisory :)
Andrew Afanasiev
August 17, 2011 at 8:20 pm
Then we would require eg Accenture to integrate them))
anna
August 18, 2011 at 5:55 pm
a due diligence in disguise?
amr
August 19, 2011 at 9:37 am
Why would McK merge with BCG? This will bring the avergae intelligence at McKinsey down by a factor of 2.
North American
August 19, 2011 at 7:41 pm
even by an X factor where you can choose the X value. As every X will give you back your full potential: 0
bainrules
August 24, 2011 at 6:38 am
Interesting – McKinsey is being paid to get the inside scoop on a key competitor and to steer them away from being any really threat. Probably not going to end well!
But who should consulting firms go to for advice?
Jenny Sutton
August 20, 2011 at 2:38 am
Seems this is one of the winning strategy of BCG, If Mckency succeed BCG will be No1 if not Mckency will be proven to be failed int his assignement… At end.. BCG will be in Safe place…….. Is it correct ?
Naveen
August 21, 2011 at 4:11 pm
Great point!
Charlotte
August 25, 2011 at 4:40 am
BCG may be acting smart :If McK indeed helps them become #1, great! If not, BCG can then tell prospective clients that Mck’s advice does not always produce results!!
but on the other hand they don’t realize, taking advice from McK is providing them with BCG’s insights and loop holes!!
Vaishali Gupta
August 22, 2011 at 8:27 pm
on the other side, BCG is telling its client that McK is superior to them. So go and take the services of McK.
Nik
December 19, 2011 at 10:13 pm
I love the number of people who think this is real.
Joe O'Mahoney
August 23, 2011 at 8:10 am
Especially the former McBain consultant (maybe that’s why he’s a “former”). Just goes to show why a lot of people don’t trust consultants. If they’re that gullible then it’s a wonder that they’re even employed…
Casper
August 24, 2011 at 8:55 am
Haha.. Absolutely! :-)
Arvind
August 25, 2011 at 7:50 pm
Wait…this isn’t real?
Gullible
August 27, 2011 at 6:05 pm
That only means that BCG will unavoidably go in the direction of AOL telephony and Terra…
Ivan
August 23, 2011 at 3:08 pm
Folks,
As a former Bain & Company consultant, I can tell you that this is a clever move by BCG to trim down their partnership by using McKinsey to identify partners who are ‘dogs’. This ‘we want to be #1!” is just a smoke screen at the best. Deep down, BCG realizes they need to rationalize their firm and make the overall firm more profitable, and it is very difficult to tell their own that it’s time to go. McKinsey will deliver the bad news!! Nice work!
McBain Consulting
August 23, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Good ! sensible comment here !
Well, this way BCG can use McK to put a question mark (via BCG matrix) on its own employees !!
No wonder that though this deal sounds ironical, it would be win-win for both BCG and McK
Ankit Arora
August 25, 2011 at 10:01 am
McKinsey being a very professional and intelligent company would definitely have a reason for every steps they make and every clients they adopt. McK is not in the game of numbers, they will remain the Source to the key ingredients of success, and the clients will consume a certain amount of each and get themselves occupy a number in the numeric game of Ranks!
Asha
August 23, 2011 at 4:45 pm
Yes, Joe, zero is a beautiful number. I love it, too. It’s so round, but usually not a circle …
Bernd..
August 23, 2011 at 5:04 pm
I would ‘advice’ UT Correspondent to consult a dictionary.
IronM@sk
August 24, 2011 at 4:32 am
This is hilarious… Even more funny is the people who posted serious comments below it… rofl…
NNNiiiXXX
August 24, 2011 at 7:27 am
Irony/satire is at its best when it’s not such much of a no-sense.
Geo
August 24, 2011 at 11:49 am
beautiful way to achieve BCG’s objectives:reorganize its company and get inside of main competitor work… in any case the strategy is winning!
Anna Bataeva
August 24, 2011 at 1:03 pm
.
FrontRunner
August 25, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Absolutely Hilarious !!
MKumar
August 26, 2011 at 10:22 pm
This is too funny…ROFL!! Unreal indeed…
Prashanth
August 27, 2011 at 2:56 pm
This is the perfect example of Paradox. If Mckinsey reveals the secret of being no1, then BCG will grow as no. 1, if this dosent happen then BCG can claim that sub advisorsof Mckinsey didnt work properly!!! hahahaha… Super…
Aparna
October 7, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Ha~BCG is so smart, and Mckinsey is so brave. For Mckinsey, this game seems to be lose-lose. Interesting…
Lili
October 20, 2011 at 4:46 pm
very good
AHAMED
January 19, 2012 at 5:44 am
I think the “unreal times” should merge with “times of india” since neither of them offers real news of any value. It will be all satire, spoof and parody…
Jay
February 9, 2012 at 5:32 pm
Pingback: Celebrities celebrate first birth anniversary of The UnReal Times | The UnReal Times
Interesting conundrum. However, to become the new nr. 1, they’d have to be better than McKinsey. And how can McKinsey advise them to do that? They can make them, theoretically, as good as themselves, but to make them better they’d themselves have to be better than themselves, which is a theoretical impossibility. :-)
Misacek
April 18, 2012 at 12:12 pm
Good one!
Mockery by BCG….The irony is McK using BCG’s model to advise them!
lol!
Mudasir Naik
May 25, 2012 at 8:18 am
What enthralls me the most is that Mck commitment..
This is wait and watch game if one has to analyse the competitive part of it!!
Rayees Qurayshi
May 25, 2012 at 8:28 am
What an idea !It almost sounds like a joke.
M.Messaoudi
July 22, 2012 at 9:22 am
Test comment
temp
August 14, 2012 at 5:14 pm
Remarkable things here. I’m very glad to see your post. Thank you so much and I’m taking a look ahead to contact you. Will you please drop me a e-mail?
A consult
October 17, 2012 at 2:07 pm
While interacting with some of the best mba students in the best business school in India I found they are interested in joining either top class investment banks or top consulting firms like mbb and finally the very best of them join inv.banks like Goldman sacs etc and next group join consulting firms.This is primarily for the much higher pay that these banks offer.If BCG wants to be no .1 it should offer significantly higher salary compared to mackinsey .A slightly higher pay will not make any difference as mackinsey will be favoured for it’s prestige.BCG should match the pay offered by inv. Banks and recruit the best MBA s from the best business schools in each region (USA ,Asia ,Europe etc) for three years in running.And this should be brought to the notice of client organizations .At the end of five years BCG will almost match mackinsey and by seventh year it will become no.1
Dr.sarkar
October 19, 2012 at 1:49 pm
That’s funny, I love BCG and McKinsey and got offers from boths but we are so far from this situation :)
Haim from http://www.etudedecas.fr – coaching for getting offers from McKinsey and BCG
etudedecas
February 22, 2013 at 2:02 am
Unbelievably well written – more of the same please!
VK
March 17, 2013 at 12:17 am