SpecialFeature: eee Laue ud Seon eer Ce eed reer PS ster Bn nen eet ae And che Piper advanced and the children followed, ee et ee ee are The door in the mountain-side shut fast.” en ee) In the midst of the turmoil that marked the final days of the renegade consultancy known as Mitchell Madison Group. no news was more bittersweet or starting than the disclosure that MMG had ranked among the top 50 employers on Fortune magazine's annual MBA survey. on et ee eee Oe Ce ue cm cee Re OS ORE LS Rea list titled “Employers MBAs Love.” The four-year-old, cash- oe i en mee the all-so-coveted rankings The news prompted MMG's managing director, Tom Steiner, to issue a memo to the firm’s entire professional staff, It read; “This week brought an unexpected piece Pe meen chet a as Sr en eee a the face of considerable turmoil Pen of the firm — some of who Ces 40 SU ont iconrol meinen Story / Conclusion Forany MMGer who ever sauntered across an MBA campus, Steiner's words brought to mind one person in particular — RO ee RO credited with giving MMG its extra sizzle on campus. Using a presentation that was one part company promo, one part history lesson, Riordan’s pitch struck a chord with students that few Cee eee ace a planted a seed inside their young minds fll fertile with campus, idealism, and led them to embrace the notion that not unlike eee ee mo) Een see ns! Seon Ses Se oO eee Ce ee ee ects +r Thomas Keamey, two people he credited with helping inate the consulting profession, and beside whom Riordan ‘now brashly laid MMG’s own stone. And this stone, Riordan Peet edar The People, the Piper, and the Paranoia ET ete me om one Cm Lathes of the firm’s leadership the opportunistic quality that EY guably helped instigate not one, but two consultancy insurrections Crm Cts aceon Comore iG quality, but MMG’s ENR pp ck Om oe RES In the end, the profession and its people paid the price pe i said, was not occupied by any one individual, but by the ideal of responsible freedom —a principle which promised individuals ee ee ce Pee sate SRC Ro hae sce nny not be for you,” was the signature admonition Riordan would ‘add as he neared the conclusion of each presentation. The seed ee en ene and brightest would leap to Riordan’s enchanted stone. Once eS tm eee ae of youth-oriented culture, where responsibility could be assumed within hours of joining the firm and where work Deere es twas only after a number of months that different recruits recall becoming aware of some of the more peculiar parts of the firm’s character. By their second year, MMG consultants POO oe age eee first surfaced as a nagging nit of cynicism, but later became a bold revelation. In words: “If this is a firm that was founded Pee eS a eu ag cor ere oe Ce NTC a aoe For the hundreds of recent grads who annually entered MMG in pursuit of a higher calling, the reality that was MMG See ee ee Pee ea eee cee Sse eee en an Pe ee ee Re allegations concerning the firm’s in-house shrink or the steady ee aCe ee one een downward from the firm’s executive suite there’s litle doubt that in the end, the Mitchell Madison story's most enduring Pena ne ee The Boys Who Did Sourcing “When we first split off from Keamey, our immediate goal Se eee eno to 600 consultants to be credible,” explains Steiner, who today frequently boasts of MMG’s unparalleled leap into the ranks of onBP cisircatere: The Mitchell Madison Story /Conclusion “type two” consultancies. Having recently witnessed the disintegration of marchFIRST — the firm MMG ultimately became part of after it wed USWeb/CKS, MMG’s managing director routine ly revisits the question of whether the firm could have taken a different path — one that would have positioned it beside consulting’s “type one” triumvirate of McKinsey, BCG, and Bain. “There ate about a half a dozen ‘type two" firms — Arthur D. Little, Booz-Allen, Roland Berger, A.T. Keamey counted among them — and we called these guys the wannabes because of their shared aspiration of becoming a ‘type one firm. The problem is, it takes a long time and a sustained effort to move up, as well as a real commitment by the partnership,” explains Steiner, who estimates that it took Bain ten years to get the talent that MMG did in only five. OF course, when it came to placing bets on consulting products, few firms were as single-minded as MMG. Credited as being one of the primary architects of MMG's sourcing practice, Vikas Kapoor today says that MMG was at first helped by the reluctance of certain strategy firms to pursue client work in the sourcing arena. “McKinsey was initially very reluctant to get into sourcing, and kind of thumbed its nose a it, but they then got into it in a big way. Booz-Allen and Bain also followed us,” says Kapoor ‘who, partners say, became a member of the firm's inner circle — acoteie whose consultants ultimately became the backbone ‘of the firm’s leadership. One former MMG partner who worked within the firm’s European operations today recalls how sourcing was viewed by those working with clients outside the firm’s primary practice. “A lot of people had begun latching onto the sourcing fad, and suddenly all these new competitors began t0 undercut the Pricing. They rode it forall it was worth. We were just hoping that it would lay down a path of growth that would support us todo other things. There were sot ofthe boys who did sourcing and everyone else,” he explains. ‘Todlay, many former MMG partners agree that while sourcing provided MMG with the octane it required to soar into the ranks of “type two" firms, the practice’s domination ofthe firm's client portfolio made it susceptible to a litany of ailments. Besides siphoning resources from other client offerings — and thus undercuting the number of available carer paths for its people — the rapid growth of MMG’s sourcing practice overwhelmed the contol structures ofa firm whose leadership, partners say, frequently circumvented what litle infrastructure existed. The Magic of a Profession ‘Asked to identify what principles MMG's founding partners used to establish their consultancy, former MMG partners MMG’s Recruitment Prowess (number of consutants at MMG from leading US. schools) ‘Undergraduate (and non-business graduates) Brown 16 + 2 Grad School Caltech T+ 1 Grad School Columbia 21 + 1 Grad School + 1 PnD Cornell 26 + 3 Grad School Dartmouth Georgetown 8 Harvard 29 + 2 Grad School MT 33 +2 PhD + 2 Grad Schoo! Northwestern +1 Grad School Graduate Business Schools Andersen Caltech (PhD) Columbia Business School Darden Haas Harvard Business School sais Stanford Business Schoo! Wharton ‘eure DL Geen Book 42 Princeton 30 +2 Phd Smith 13 Stanford 17 + 1 Giad School +1 PHO nity 7 U chicago «8 + Grad School + Uc Berkeley 9 + 4 Grad School U Penn 21 + 1 Grad School + 1 PhO Wesleyan 5 vale 13+1 PHD PhD Stern Kennedy Schoo! IPA Yale School of Management Chicago Business School Kellogg Sloan Harvard Law School Tuck