[notahacker]

The cynic in me reads the headline and thinks at least half of the commissions they take from authoritarian dictatorships and dubious corporations will have a neutral or negative impact on those dodgy clients anyway, since the bulk of their work is providing quasi-independent justification for a solution management already favours, for internal use only and at expensive rates.

Take the extreme case from the article: Yanukovych's attempts to portray himself as a moderniser looking for greater ties with the West ended with him being overthrown after mass public protests at his decision to suspend planned agreements with the EU under economic pressure from Russia (with the West largely approving of his overthrow and Russia treating him as largely irrelevant to their own subsequent intervention in Ukraine). If McKinsey contributed significantly to his reform strategy at all, it's very hard to say they actually helped him in the long run.