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The door in the mountain-side shut fast.”
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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.
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list titled “Employers MBAs Love.” The four-year-old, cash-
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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
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the face of considerable turmoil
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of the firm — some of who
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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 —
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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
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planted a seed inside their young minds fll fertile with campus,
idealism, and led them to embrace the notion that not unlike
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+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
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The People, the Piper, and
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of the firm’s leadership the
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guably helped instigate not one,
but two consultancy insurrections
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quality, but MMG’s
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In the end, the profession and its
people paid the price
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said, was not occupied by any one individual, but by the ideal
of responsible freedom —a principle which promised individuals
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not be for you,” was the signature admonition Riordan would
‘add as he neared the conclusion of each presentation. The seed
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and brightest would leap to Riordan’s enchanted stone. Once
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of youth-oriented culture, where responsibility could be
assumed within hours of joining the firm and where work
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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
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first surfaced as a nagging nit of cynicism, but later became a
bold revelation. In words: “If this is a firm that was founded
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For the hundreds of recent grads who annually entered
MMG in pursuit of a higher calling, the reality that was MMG
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allegations concerning the firm’s in-house shrink or the steady
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downward from the firm’s executive suite there’s litle doubt
that in the end, the Mitchell Madison story's most enduring
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The Boys Who Did Sourcing
“When we first split off from Keamey, our immediate goal
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to 600 consultants to be credible,” explains Steiner, who today
frequently boasts of MMG’s unparalleled leap into the ranks of
onBP 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
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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