Anything is easy when you don’t have to do it
A recent tweet by Rob Campbell (@Robertc1970), a Strategy Professional based in the UK, struck a chord with the Twitter-verse generating 4,900+ retweets and 22,000+ likes!
Rob Campbell is Head of Strategy EMEA at R/GA, a global creative agency that delivers “transformation at speed.” R/GA works with some of the world’s biggest consumer brands like NIKE, Google, Diageo and Samsung. R/GA helps brands and companies grow by enabling them to change. Fast. It’s a necessary response to disruptive technologies, the waning influence of traditional paid media, direct-to-consumer models, and other forces reshaping the business landscape.
Mindhive is very familiar with these forces. It’s why we are redefining the future of consulting. As we’ve previously blogged, we think it’s premature to call the death of management consulting. But traditional consulting does need to change. Fast. McKinsey is the biggest name in the game. If you want to be taken seriously, you hire McKinsey & Company. Founded in 1926, McKinsey can lay claim to the following partial list of accomplishments: its consultants have ushered in waves of structural, financial, and technological change to the largest companies in the world; they remapped the power structure within the White House; and they revolutionised business schools.
In The New York Times bestseller “The Firm – The Story of McKinsey and its Secret Influence on American Business,” star financial journalist Duff McDonald shows just how, in becoming an indispensable part of decision making at the highest levels, McKinsey has done nothing less than set the course of American capitalism.
McDonald is one of the few journalists to have not only parsed the record but also penetrated the culture of McKinsey itself. His access puts him in a unique position to demonstrate when it is worth hiring these gurus – and when they’re full of smoke.
Rob Campbell is a smart and passionate professional with a sharp wit with an elegant turn of phrase: “The lightbulb wasn’t created by people who only see value in optimising a candle,” he told his Twitter followers.
In reply to Rob’s Tweet, Angus Carbarns said: “I think the ‘anything is easy when you don’t have to do it’ applies to a lot of pseudo strategy I see going round. Massive decks full of research and supposed insight, grandiose statements of intent but no actionable route to achieving it and no accountability.”
Stuart Dickson said: “McKinsey never want to be part of execution. That way they are never held accountable for the outcomes (which, in my experience, never comes close to what was promised).” Mindhive reached out to Rob Campbell to get the backstory. Rob told us that the Tweet was prompted by two things happening within a short space of time.
Someone on Twitter had asked “What has been your most awkward presentation?” He had just read a McKinsey report about China post-COVID and found it to superficial based on his own first-hand experience of China.
“All this combined and I tweeted about a presentation I’d given years ago to McKinsey in Shanghai. It was done with a twinkle in my eye – and the audience got the joke. My central point was that the most creative ideas are born from understanding culture rather than just observing it.
“My Tweet obviously hit a nerve because within 48 hours, it had been liked 22,000 times … shared nearly 5,000 times and was appearing on business networks in Mexico and China.
“I should point out I have nothing against McKinsey. I appreciate their intelligence and influence. I also have nothing against consultancies. My current employer has one – albeit one that makes things and has skin in the game – but my career has always been in the creative end of business. I passionately believe that genuine creativity can solve the most difficult business problems in interesting, distinctive, economically valuable and sustainable ways.”
Rob’s observations help to explain how Mindhive is redefining the future of consulting.
“The most creative person in the room is the room itself,” says our CEO Bruce Muirhead.
“The Mindhive platform lets companies harness the creativity of their own people - plus the crowd - so they can solve their own problems at speed and at scale."
“Mindhive is the perfect solution for SMEs who can’t afford to hire McKinsey,” says Bruce.
Mindhive has recently supported Kate Carnell and the office of the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman to find out what SMEs really need from government.
We’ll be sharing more on that exciting challenge shortly.
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