Mind Without Fear

by Rajat Gupta

  A vast tent had been set up on the lawn outside Anita’s father’s house, but on the big day it rained so hard the tent collapsed and had to be rebuilt. The only consolation, we reminded ourselves, is that rain is considered a blessing on such important occasions. Having waited for the auspicious day, we also had to marry at an auspicious hour, which for some reason turned out to be almost midnight. So we planned a dinner and reception ahead of the wedding, which went off smoothly. The downpour began again later that night, however, and the wedding itself had to be moved into the house, lasting four hours. But nothing could dampen our spirits. Our new life was about to begin.

  8

  The Firm

  The roots below the earth claim no rewards

  for making the branches fruitful.

  —Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 134

  Fall, 1973

  Maybe McKinsey hadn’t made a mistake after all when they initially turned me down. This was the thought that ran through my mind when I arrived at the New York office on my first day and was introduced to my office mate and fellow new recruit, Karl Wyss. At least ten years my senior, Karl was a tall, imposing, confident veteran of IBM, where he’d worked for a decade before joining the firm. At one point, he’d had more than a thousand people reporting to him. I, on the other hand, had never worked anywhere but the jelly factory, for a total of six weeks. I was just twenty-four years old. It seemed ludicrous to me that now we shared not only an office but the same title of Associate.

  I was the only HBS graduate to join McKinsey’s New York office straight out of school that year. The firm was going through a tough period in its history, as upstart rivals encroached on its market share. The growth it had enjoyed throughout the previous decades had slowed perilously and even slipped into decline. As a result, it was hiring fewer consultants overall, and focusing on experienced hires rather than business school graduates. All the other new recruits, like Karl, had several years of real-world experience under their belts. They were also almost all pedigreed white American men.

  I felt out of my depth immediately, my natural confidence deserting me. There was only one other Indian in the office, Tino Puri, who was several years my senior and took me under his wing. I was keenly aware of my youth, my inexperience, and the color of my skin. Even my brand-new suits, which I’d had specially made in India, weren’t cut quite right, and they were conspicuously lighter in color than the conservative dark gray or pinstripe suits that most partners wore. While McKinsey had abandoned its official “uniform,” including mandatory fedoras, in the early 1960s, the partners all looked like they had stepped out of a Brooks Brothers catalog. Meanwhile, my shirts cost $2 each at Filene’s Basement, but it’s likely no one noticed those since they were eclipsed by my loud batik-printed ties.

  Despite my insecurities, my new colleagues were welcoming and for the most part generous in their mentorship. I got into the habit of taking breaks and walking the hallway that ran the circumference of the firm’s Park Avenue offices, dropping in on various colleagues. Most partners left their doors open, emblematic of the friendly and collegial atmosphere that the firm encouraged. Visiting the various partners’ offices, you could learn a lot about the people from the décor. Upon election, every partner was given a budget to decorate his office. Some were ultra modern, others more traditional. Some had comfortable couches, while others didn’t even have a desk.

  Consulting is a profession that is learned on the job; while I’d gained general problem-solving skills and studied business cases at Harvard, I had little sense of what it took to be a successful “client guy.” After completing my two-week introductory training program, I was expected to choose from among the available projects and jump in. At McKinsey, client projects (or “engagements” as they were known) would be assigned to a team made up of a vertical slice of the firm: a senior partner, who oversees client relations; a junior partner, serving as engagement director; an engagement manager, who was essentially project manager; and one or more associates, entry-level consultants like me who would do the research and analysis and learn the ropes. I wasn’t expected to manage client relationships right away, but I noticed how much more comfortable my peers were interacting with executives. Many of them had years of business experience by the time they came to McKinsey, while I was fresh out of school.

  My first assignment was a cost-reduction project for a company called Food Machinery Corporation (FMC). It was not a particularly exciting task—most of it pedantic analytical work, such as examining the purchase activity of the various plants and assessing how they could combine to get better rates. However, it did help to boost my confidence. I began to think that perhaps I could succeed as a consultant after all. I found the work extremely easy, often finishing my assigned tasks soon after lunch. “What should I do now?” I asked my engagement manager.

  “Go home!” he replied. “So long as you do your work, no one cares when you come and go.” So I happily left the office early to meet Anita and explore the city.

  Besides adjusting to my new job, I was also adjusting to married life and to my new home. Anita had turned down an offer from MIT and instead accepted a place in the engineering program at Columbia, since my job was in New York City—one of the many professional sacrifices she would make over the years in support of my career. We had arrived with two suitcases and no plan as to where we would live. I’d figured we’d just get there and find a place. Luckily, a friend of a family friend had offered us a place to stay while we searched for an apartment up near Columbia, which, it turned out, was a pretty bad neighborhood in those days. After a dispiriting couple of weeks looking at decent apartments that we couldn’t afford, or miserable apartments we could afford but couldn’t bear to live in, Anita managed to get us a little furnished studio close to the campus through Columbia’s student housing program. I think the woman in the housing office must have taken pity on this poor girl in a sari and found a way to give us a decent place.

  We lived simply, often sharing our tiny one-room apartment with visiting friends and family from India. At first, Anita had no financial aid, since she’d only chosen Columbia at the last minute, but in her second semester she was offered a scholarship, which helped. Still, I was paying off my own student loans and sending money home to India, where my siblings and I were building a house on the land our father had left us, so we took care to keep our costs minimal. Luckily, we soon discovered that American portions were huge, so when we ate out we’d share a sandwich. There was a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream shop below our apartment, and we’d order one cone between the two of us. Seeing no point in spending money on lunch every day, I’d often show up at work with a brown bag, to the bemusement of my McKinsey colleagues. No one else in the office would even think of such a thing—lunch was a time for developing relationships and wining and dining clients.

  Every night, Anita would study, and I’d watch television with the volume down low. I was responsible for doing the laundry, which I accomplished to the point that it was clean, but it took some time before I learned to fold. The piles on the kitchen table grew and I thought wistfully of my father’s three simple dhotis: one to wear, one to wash, one spare. Maybe I should try his minimalist approach.

  As the FMC project came to an end, I started thinking about what to do next. Like most young associates, I was eager to cut my teeth on the most interesting assignments with high-profile companies. I met with Bud Miles, the staffing coordinator, who offered me several potential engagements. I spent a few days talking to colleagues about these options, trying to figure out which would be most advantageous to me. Hearing about my inquiries, Mike Murray, a senior partner I had already come to like and respect, called me into his office one day and gave me an invaluable piece of advice. “Don’t worry about choosing the best projects,” he told me. “You can’t know in advance which assignments will turn out to be useful, or which clients you’ll get along with. Sometimes the engagements that sound interesting turn out to be dul
l and routine, while those that sound boring end up offering invaluable challenges and opportunities for development. And more importantly, if you go in with an open mind, you can learn from any assignment you get. So just take what you’re offered.” This proved to be wise counsel and would become a pillar of my approach to business: always have a learning mindset and don’t try to predict what will be best for you, career-wise.

  Another early assignment was with AT&T Corporation, on a team led by senior partner Fred Gluck, who would later be elected managing director of the firm. They came to us with a specific problem: three million lost phones. In those days, their customers rented handsets from AT&T along with paying for the service. But when people moved house, they often took the phones with them, and the company was losing a lot of money on those that went astray. I decided that in order to help, I needed to observe the problem directly, so I accompanied a team from AT&T on house calls, as they attempted to retrieve some of the missing phones. What quickly struck me was how much time was being spent in this often fruitless pursuit. Surely this time was more valuable than the lost handsets?

  I returned to my fellow consultants with this analysis: AT&T needed to create a system to strategically assess when it made sense to try to collect a phone and when it made sense to just let it go. This project taught me one of the fundamental lessons of consulting: the problem the client presents may not be the actual problem. To do my job, I needed to be able to see beyond the apparent problem to the actual problem, and help the client put aside their own assumptions in order to see the deeper issues to which they were often blind. Problem definition became central to how I approached every subsequent assignment.

  This lesson served me well on another early engagement involving a company that made processed meats—ham, salami, bacon, and so on. The problem they presented to us was that they were running out of capacity and wanted to build another plant. Our assignment was to advise them on where they should build it, how big it should be, and other specifics, in order to ensure that they made a good investment. When we took a closer look at the company, however, what became clear was that their existing plants were far from functioning optimally. We analyzed their use of critical resources, like the smokehouse and the cooler, their production schedules, and even the way they positioned the products within the cooler. Just as I had at the jelly factory, I sketched out a more efficient production schedule. With all of this in hand, we proposed changes that we felt would result in such a dramatic increase in output that not only was the new plant unnecessary, they should actually consider closing one of their existing plants.

  When I presented these findings to my engagement director, Paul Krauss, he was excited.

  “That’s brilliant,” he exclaimed. “Rajat, I want you to present this to the CEO right now.”

  I wasn’t expecting that. Associates like me didn’t usually present to client CEOs. Plus, what I’d shown Paul was just a preliminary desk analysis—I hadn’t talked to anyone on the ground to verify my ideas. But he didn’t seem worried about that.

  I followed him to the meeting, terrified. Paul introduced me to the client, and announced: “He’s going to tell you why you actually need to close a plant, not open a new one.”

  The client looked taken aback. “I don’t believe you,” he said bluntly.

  I walked him through my analysis, but he still looked skeptical. He’d been a plant manager himself and knew his business inside out. I could almost see him thinking, why is this kid with the strange tie and the funny accent, who’s never even seen the inside of a smokehouse, telling me how my plants should run?

  “You’re wrong,” he said. “There’s no way those plants can produce the volumes you’re describing. I know that for a fact from my plant manager days in Phoenix. Go talk to my guys on the ground and you’ll see.”

  As we left the meeting, I glanced at Paul. Clearly that hadn’t gone the way he’d planned, and he was probably realizing we should have handled this client more carefully. But when we were outside, he just said to me with a laugh, “Well, Rajat, you’ve got a one-way ticket to those six plants and if you can’t prove you’re right, don’t come back!” Paul had a great sense of humor but I was left wondering whether he was really joking.

  So I flew to each of the plants, talking to the managers and the guys on the production lines. At five of the six, I found that I’d been right; in fact, my estimates of how much more they could produce had been conservative. But at the sixth plant, in Phoenix, there were some constraints I hadn’t considered, and I was forced to modify my analysis. The CEO had been correct about that particular plant. I was still confident in my conclusions, but when I returned to meet with him and present my findings, I began by saying, “You were right.”

  As I explained what I’d learned at his plant, I could see the satisfaction in his face—he was proud of his own hands-on knowledge, and our cavalier approach had offended him. This was an important lesson in client relations—never forget, the client knows their business better than you, so tread lightly and do your homework before proposing radical changes. My engineering background had prepared me to do linear programming and analysis, but I had a lot to learn about the human side of my new career. After I’d acknowledged the CEO’s expertise, he was much more open when I went on to say that my analysis had proven correct for the other plants, and my proposal still stood. They ended up taking my advice and closing a plant.

  Up or Out

  In those early days at McKinsey, my problem-solving skills served me well, but my career trajectory moved more slowly than that of most of my colleagues. Consulting, I soon discovered, was a competitive, status-driven business. You were expected to progress to certain milestones within a particular time frame, or else you weren’t likely to succeed—an attitude captured in the phrase often used to describe McKinsey’s culture: up or out. It was a well-earned reputation: five out of six associates never made it to partner. Throughout my early years at McKinsey, I was convinced that I was destined to add to that statistic. I was often worried that I wasn’t advancing fast enough to keep my job. I got great evaluations on problem-solving and was learning the ropes of project management, but the reticence that had hampered me at Harvard was also an issue in my new role, with my colleagues regularly telling me that I was too quiet in team meetings. More concerning was my natural reserve, which made it hard for me to embrace the important task of introducing and developing clients. My lack of business experience made it more difficult—I simply didn’t have a big network to tap. It took me four years to be given the role of engagement manager—an important step on the McKinsey ladder, and a role that my office-mate Karl Wyss had attained before his first year was out. However, I was good at my work and well liked among my colleagues, and I always felt the evaluation system was fair and unbiased. As the years passed, I grew more confident that I had a future with the firm.

  The milestone that mattered most was being elected partner, and the typical time frame within which associates were expected to achieve it was five to seven years. As I approached the five-year mark, I began to hope that my name would come up at one of the twice-yearly elections, but several cycles passed without any change in my status. I watched people who’d come on board the same year as me make partner before I did. As someone who was accustomed to being, as we say in India, a “topper”—leading my class in exam results—this was challenging for me, but I developed a philosophical attitude. It became an essential defense mechanism—with such a small chance of success, one didn’t dare get too emotionally invested in a future with the firm. All I could do was give myself fully to the tasks in front of me, and then let go of the results. If it was my karma to succeed at McKinsey, it would happen, and if not, then I would do something else.

  I was blessed with several mentors during my early years at the firm, including Mike Murray, Mike Bulkin, Carter Bales, Fred Gluck, and Jon Katzenbach, to name just a few. Each engagement, in addition to experience and learning, offered an
invaluable opportunity to build a relationship with my seniors. In retrospect, however, this multiplicity of mentors may have worked against me, since there was no one person advocating for my advancement, and each may have assumed the other was doing the necessary pushing on my behalf.

  One of my mentors, Mike Murray, was the senior partner who managed the firm’s extensive engagements with GE International. I had accompanied Mike on several trips to work with the client, and so when they offered us a new assignment in the late 1970s, I was one of his natural first choices. There was just one issue: the assignment was in South Africa. The firm had a policy of not working with South African companies during the apartheid era, but Mike felt that maybe this was different. After all, GE was an existing client and not a South African company. Besides, they were the firm’s biggest client, and he was hesitant to say no.

  He called me into his office to tell me about the assignment. The scope wasn’t clear yet, but the first step was for us to fly out there and figure out what made sense with the client. What Mike clearly didn’t realize was that I couldn’t fly to South Africa on my Indian passport. And even if I could, I’d be subject to institutionalized discrimination every step of the way. Resisting apartheid wasn’t just a matter of principle for me—it was personal.

  “Mike, do you realize that if we take this assignment, you and I might be forced to stay in different hotels and travel on different transportation?” I asked him. He looked shocked—I don’t think that had occurred to him when he selected me for the project. A couple of days later, he called me into his office again and told me that the firm had turned down the assignment. He could have just taken a different team, but to his credit, he decided against going at all. That was McKinsey at its best, and I felt very proud to work for a firm that stood up for principle at moments like that.