[DrScientist]

> It generally takes a lot of motivation to convince your superior (and finance team) to pay the millions McKinsey would charge per week.

And an insurmountable barrier to then declare it was a waste of money.

ie once these initiatives start - they are inevitably declared successes because too much has been invested ( literally ).

So the consultants always leave with success declared, whether it works out in the long run I suspect the consultants will hardly ever know - just moving on from one declared success to another.

[throwaway202212]

Fully agree with this. That being said, a lot of companies are wising up to this and forcing consultancies to work "fees at risk" - where they are only paid based on some measurable success metric.

There are obviously lots of hacks and shenanigans around defining and negotiating these success metrics with various "levels" [1] of impact being defined and fees being released only when some stage is crossed.

[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/rts/our-insights/keepi...