Scaling McKinsey: Inventing Management Consulting

James McKinsey’s untimely death in 1937, at the age of 48, left his consultancy firm in peril. 

Founded in 1925, McKinsey & Company had spent just over a decade bridging the gap between traditional accounting and operational strategy by introducing a brand new service it coined “management engineering.” Rather than auditing a company’s books and offering budgetary advice, the firm was delivering data-driven, organisation-wide analysis to inform decision-making at the highest levels. 

In the early 1900s, the vast majority of consultants were narrowly focused: accountants did book-keeping; lawyers handled contracts and other legal matters. McKinsey’s approach to developing broad, long-term boardroom strategy was revolutionary for its time. Yet, with only a few dozen employees operating out of a handful of offices, the enterprise was now without a champion. There was a critical power vacuum on the firm’s “top floor.” 

In stepped James McKinsey’s protégé, Marvin Bower. Bower was a Cincinnati-born, Harvard-trained lawyer with a penchant for drab suits, a devotion to consistency, and an unwavering belief that the needs of the client come before everything and everyone else. 

How did this Ohio kid find himself the architect of the global consultancy empire we know today?

Bower’s route was circuitous: he worked as a grinding-machine operator and delivered ice before failing to land his dream job at a Cleveland law firm. Disillusioned with the legal field, he joined McKinsey & Company in 1933. 

He would stay for nearly six decades. Through his influence at the firm, Bower shaped the policies of many of the world’s leading corporations, governments, and financial institutions. He did so — not by selling advice — but by engineering a repeatable system of elite identity, focusing on strategic positioning and leveraging alignment with shifts in corporate demand, leaving an indelible mark on the world that endures to this day. 

Redefining the Consultant 

Despite James McKinsey’s notable progress in legitimising organisational consultancy as a practice, when Marvin Bower took over, many corporate titans still viewed business consultants as “hucksters” lacking any real credentials, skills, or value. 

To overcome this perception, Bower became obsessed with ensuring that he and his colleagues would always be looked upon as respected professionals. His goal was that the business consultant would be regarded the same way folks thought about ‘noble’ careerists like doctors, lawyers, engineers, and ministers. 

To do this, Bower had to reinvent the identity of the modern consultant. So, he set out to professionalize the role by rewriting the protocols, language, and code of conduct for his firm. 

A key first step was repositioning for a different clientele. Bower didn’t want his experts to be “business doctors” fixing broken organisations. He wanted them to be fact-based, analytical “wizards” with the knowledge, discretion, and service mindset to elevate already thriving organisations. As Bower would later tell Fortune Magazine, “those who use us the most, need us the least.”

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