Tangible Avenue-read McKinsey legend

There are more and more well-packaged management books, but there are not much to watch and less to be able to read. Because of its flashy and noisy, it replaces creativity and ideas and has become a top-selling trend. As the tide rises and falls, a string of colorful bubbles burst with the wind. McKinsey's legend (published by the Mechanical Industry Publishing House) is a rare book that shows both human thoughts and management opinions. It can be seen and viewed, and is no less than a feast of ideas.

I am also ignorant. Before reading this book, I only knew McKinsey, but I did not know Ma Wen Bauer ). McKinsey created an accounting and management engineering consulting company named after McKinsey, the predecessor of McKinsey which is known to the world today. After Jack Ma and his partners bought McKinsey, out of respect and humility for entrepreneurs, McKinsey's name has been reserved. Ma Wen makes McKinsey a world-class management consulting company. McKinsey's 70 years of extraordinary growth experience and the legend of Ma Wen's life are two sides of a coin: Ma Wen created McKinsey, mcKinsey is also a tangible witness to Ma Wen's thoughts and wisdom. While creating McKinsey, the latter has also created a brand new professional: Management Consulting.

After reading the complete book, the key words in my mind are: vision, ethics, leadership, and professional services.

1. The power of vision

From the history of HP's development, we know how to create a world-class enterprise. from McKinsey legend, we know that Ma Wen not only created a world-class enterprise based on the vision, it also sets standards for a brand new professional-management consulting.

In the 30 or 40 s of the last century, the business in the United States was still a low-performing industry, and management consulting had a bad idea. Ma Wen, having a dual-degree MBA from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, firmly believes in his early years of experience in bankruptcy liquidation that the CEO has the need to listen to independent, public-filled, and valuable professional opinions, therefore, management consulting will become a highly respected and promising professional. Driven by this vision, Ma Wen and his three partners started the ice-breaking journey of management consulting.

Ma Wen's vision is to create a brand new industry. With his 70-year hard work, Ma Wen made his vision an action road map for future generations. Let's take a look at the landscape of Ma Wen's vision road map.

The specific objectives carry the vision and mission.To fulfill his vision, Ma Wen has a very clear and specific goal: to establish a distinctive and respected professional consulting service company, McKinsey.

Turn vision into a value criterion.Turning the vision into a value criterion of the company, "forming a concept, a tradition, and a set of common values", becomes the action guide of the company's employees. "One of the greatest achievements of leadership is to shape such values and drive the company to succeed ". The role of value is to help employees in different regions control, self-discipline, and guide their actions.

Turn vision into action.How can we create a distinctive and respected professional company? Ma Wen pointed out with foresight: "In addition to personnel, a good reputation is the most valuable profit asset of a professional service company ". Today, Ma Wen's opinion is not out of date. Let's look at the experiences of well-known professional service companies after the scandal. The reputation that has been built over decades can be destroyed. This illustrates the extraordinary significance of Ma Wen's strict adherence to values and moral principles.

The most important thing to create a reputation is to provide special and valuable services to customers. Ma Wen spared no effort to achieve this goal. Ma Wen insisted on all consulting projects and McKinsey had to work directly with the customer's CEO. Only in this way can the company focus more on solving the real "major issues ". Ma Wen once rejected a consulting invitation from the CEO of a large company because what he wants to solve is not really a major problem, but he does not want to face it. What's more, Ma Wen dismissed a brilliant senior director because he undertook too many non-major businesses!

Imagine how to generate McKinsey, the second-to-second-class strategic consulting industry, if you do not have the ambition to pursue your vision and do everything?

The vision requires insights, and the realization of the vision requires extraordinary perseverance and extraordinary courage.

2. objectivity, justice and Ethics

In Ma Wen's value system, objective, fair, and strict moral standards are solid kernels. He integrates personal value standards with the company's career standards because it is a professional company that provides consulting services.

Objectivity, justice, and ethics are general principles. Similar content is embodied in the value declaration of almost any service company. However, it is never easy for everyone to do so and to do so for decades.

When soft value standards suffer from hard personal and corporate interests, the balance is easy to lean towards short-term benefits, such as sales performance. Being objective, fair, rather than serving as the best, is the foundation of professional service companies. With his foresight and high moral standards, Ma Wen would rather lose the immediate interests of the company and the individual than leave hidden risks for long-term development.

When he realized that the audit business and the consulting service would cause potential conflicts of interests, Ma Wen was very far-sighted and separated the audit business, so that the business structure would not allow mixed operation of accounting and consulting services. Looking at the example of AMDA in mixed operation, we can see how correct Ma Wen's opinions are.

Ma Wen firmly believes that as a professional service, we must always put the customer's interests first. In the face of the temptation to go public, Ma Wen is not motivated, because the preference of shareholder interests may not always be consistent with the creed of professional companies. In order to ensure that professional services can be provided objectively and fairly in terms of institutional arrangements, he gave up the huge economic benefits that listing can bring to individual shares, instead, he transferred many of his shares to other partners at the face price.

Looking at the endless scandal that has swept the credibility of a group of prestigious companies such as Enron and anda mail, we can see how hard it is to strictly abide by ethics. Ma Wen had a foresight in terms of business structure and corporate system.

Strengthening corporate governance, emphasizing corporate social responsibility, and combining the moral spirit and foresight of company leaders will always be the most reliable line of defense for enterprises.

3. influential leaders

In the course of writing, the author interviewed many colleagues and customers who have worked with Ma Wen with a very rigorous attitude, including leaders of large enterprises, they all have respect and gratitude for Ma Wen. One important reason is that they have benefited from Ma Wen's leadership approach, which affects their leadership approach and the company they lead.

Ma Wen's leadership started from establishing strict standards and difficult values. Ma Wen regards the provision of quality services to customers as the most fundamental and important criteria for measuring success. By providing high-level and professional services to customers, he was the first to charge by value in the Management and Consulting Industry. This also creates conditions for attracting and retaining top-notch management talents.

As a professional service company, talent is the only capital. Ma Wen pointed out: "leaders have three responsibilities: self-confidence and self-esteem, so that they can feel good about themselves; maintain the spirit and morale of employees; help employees understand their responsibilities, let them grow and develop as individuals ". As an admirable leader, Ma Wen has excellent qualities of integrity, adherence to core values, and modesty and respect. He has strong communication skills and persuasiveness, in terms of business, we have the extraordinary ability to "turn vision into action" based on facts. Therefore, he has influenced countless colleagues and customers who work with him. As long as McKinsey and Ge are listed as the two CEOs in the United States, they know how successful Ma Wen's leadership is and how much influence Ma Wen has.

4. Professional work methods

McKinsey's success is the success of professional work; Management Consulting becomes an industry, and is the victory of Ma Wen's professional service vision. Of course, it is a huge challenge to manage the consulting business to let senior CEOs listen to the advice of Young consultants. Fortunately, Ma Wen and his partners, including those continuously recruited from Harvard Business School, have created systematic strategic consulting methods.

Discovering really important issues based on facts is the foundation of McKinsey's consulting service. Ma Wen always stressed the importance of facts to young consultants. Both insights and long-term consulting experience contribute to the development of consulting work.

The logical questioning and Analysis Framework is a feature of McKinsey consulting. Within the framework of the system, it can "stare closely at the target" to discover real problems, key influencing factors, and solutions.

Specialization is based on knowledge and experience. The mechanism for sharing knowledge and experience within an organization makes a self-evident contribution to the growth of individuals and organizations. In order to ensure the consistency and high quality of the consulting service, relying solely on the experience of individuals and project groups is far from enough. The learning and sharing mechanism created by Ma Wen solves this problem very well. Today, it has become a standardized language for professional service companies. Ma Wen unconsciously created a model for a learning organization in his decades of career-McKinsey.

McKinsey's internal publications provide a welcome platform for experience exchange, sharing, and discussion of cutting-edge issues. Countless notes and memos sent by Ma Wen are also examples of words and deeds.

Ma Wen's consultation on puhua is the first time he has offered strategic consulting to a professional company. Ma Wen has invested a lot of energy. The report shows his basic creed on professional service companies: such as avoiding potential business conflicts, discovering the true characteristics of a company (with unique advantages of significant value), "people are the most valuable assets of a company", and breaking the hierarchy, every manager can become a master and establish a transparent incentive system, which is highly recognized by puhua. It is a value declaration of a professional company that is still out of date.

Ma Wen's philosophy and practice are the combination of Tao and form. In the competitive environment of the 21st century, knowledge economy is not limited to professional companies, but a common problem faced by various companies. The spread of the Internet and the free flow of information and knowledge pose severe challenges for professional companies like McKinsey and various other types of companies (such as manufacturing. Review Ma Wen's insights on value, leadership, talent, and professional services. I believe today's CEOs can still learn a lot from them.

Author: Huo Xinyi, director of the ancient management ideology Committee of China Enterprise Association