When McKinsey Comes to Town Summary and key ideas

When McKinsey Comes to Town, by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe.

Management consultants sell a way to make complicated decisions look measurable. McKinsey promised scientific management: analyze an organization, identify inefficiency, and turn priorities into a plan. The firm built a marquee practice serving major companies and government agencies. For recruits, its appeal combined prestige and career opportunity with the promise of improving lives. That mixture matters: a cost-reduction plan could arrive not simply as a client’s preference, but as a disciplined answer from an admired expert.

Marvin Bower shaped a professional model in which McKinsey put client interests first. The firm called its work a practice and its assignments engagements, presenting consulting as a profession. Confidentiality protected clients and their advice from public view, but also made it harder for outsiders to see where McKinsey worked or what it recommended. The client-first principle raises a question the cases explore: how far should service to a client go when its priorities affect workers or safety?

The firm remained a commercial enterprise. Advancement depended partly on relationships and bringing in client work, and a McKinsey engagement could bring substantial fees. At U.S. Steel, the firm’s compensation was partly tied to the company’s financial performance. Those incentives do not by themselves prove that advice was wrong or self-serving. They do help explain why it matters to ask who set the goal, how the work was rewarded, and who carried out the recommendations.

In 2014, U.S. Steel chief executive Mario Longhi brought McKinsey in to help turn around a company facing competition, aging methods, and years without an annual profit. The resulting Carnegie Way emphasized economic profit, cost structure, customers, and innovation. It also treated maintenance costs as an area to rationalize. Once efficiency is measured through cost, maintenance budgets and staffing can become central operating choices, with consequences beyond the spreadsheet.

The early results gave the effort a mixed record. U.S. Steel’s stock rose, and in 2014 it reported its first annual profit in six years. The company then reported a $75 million loss in the first quarter of 2015. Nine thousand employees received notices of possible layoffs; separately, dozens of maintenance workers lost their jobs, and about two hundred were moved to lower-paid roving crews in unfamiliar areas. Union members warned that the changes threatened safety.

Safety concerns became more concrete after maintenance workers died. Following Charles Kremke’s electrocution, Indiana cited U.S. Steel for serious violations involving de-energizing equipment, training, testing, and protective gear. Jonathan Arrizola told his wife, Whitney, that he had recently received an electrical shock at work. Whitney said he was constantly complaining about McKinsey’s worker cuts and that there was always some kind of close call involving someone he worked with. Arrizola died after contacting 480 volts in 2016. A union official said a McKinsey-related reassignment may have moved him from work he knew to an area where he was less proficient. A former maintenance director said McKinsey contributed to repair-budget cuts. McKinsey and U.S. Steel responded that consultants could not approve parts purchases. The account shows both a possible path of influence and limits on the firm’s formal authority; it does not establish that McKinsey’s advice caused either death.

At Disneyland, McKinsey examined park operations after Paul Pressler hired the firm in 1994. Its maintenance recommendations aimed to improve efficiency and profits. They included reducing maintenance jobs and pay for some workers, using outside contractors, moving most staff to overnight shifts, and eventually cutting the daytime response team. The firm also proposed performance measures tied to overhead costs. These recommendations made staffing and maintenance practices part of a broader efficiency plan.

Disney maintenance supervisors argued that daily inspections helped prevent failures. They warned that staffing levels and the distribution of labor were undermining preventive maintenance; one said his warning received no response. Serious accidents followed. In 1998, a moving riverboat tore loose a cleat, killing passenger Luan Dawson and severely injuring his wife. In 2003, a Big Thunder Mountain train failed after unusual noises and mechanical problems, killing Marcelo Torres and injuring ten passengers. State inspectors found maintenance and training deficiencies, including faulty repair procedures and poor use of safety tags.

The families’ lawyers connected the accidents to Disney’s maintenance practices and McKinsey’s recommendations. The Dawson family’s attorney pointed to the removal of ride leads, slow responses to mechanics’ calls, and experienced staff moved to overnight work. The Torres family’s lawsuit also alleged that cost pressures encouraged keeping rides running. Disney settled with the families. McKinsey said its work was unrelated to the incidents, and the firm was not sued or accused of wrongdoing by a government agency in these cases. The sequence and inspection findings warrant scrutiny, but they do not prove that the recommendations caused the accidents.

McKinsey’s stated obligation to dissent offered employees a way to challenge a client’s direction. Former consultant Manish Chopra described resisting a layoffs-focused assignment and proposing revenue growth through pricing instead. His supervisor repeatedly argued that he was not doing the assigned work. Chopra thought his career was doomed, but later said he was surprised it was not. He also said consultants had an obligation to dissent when they believed something was wrong. Other former consultants described pressure on junior staff and possible career costs for refusing work. Dissent was available within the firm’s stated values, though these accounts suggest it did not remove the pressures to satisfy clients and win assignments.

A careful assessment of consulting influence follows the advice into the organization: what was recommended, what the client adopted, which operating practices changed, and what independent findings later recorded. It then weighs company and consultant defenses, other possible causes, and who had authority over implementation. At U.S. Steel and Disneyland, McKinsey’s advice could give client priorities the force of expert management while clients retained formal decision power. That gap leaves responsibility for consequences contested, and it is the book’s central question.