by Martin Kihn
No—by now they own, run, or manage the entire world.
Is this statement a steroidal stab at sensation? Let’s consider…
When Michael Eisner was chosen to lead Disney in the 1980s, he observed, “The Disney board didn’t look at me and say, ‘Now here is a business guru, a Harvard MBA.’ [emphasis added] They were much more interested in whether I could recognize a good script.”28 (Eisner was a theater studies major at Denison.) Unfortunately, most other corporate boards are not so theatrical.
Let’s imagine you live in Chicago—because, well, because it’s a helluva town, right? So you’re in Chicago, in business. Your activities are overseen by the competent counsel of the Chicago Board of Trade, whose chairman worked at McKinsey and whose president is a Harvard MBA.
It’s morning now; you just got up. One of the pleasures of the day is shaving with the ultrasmooth Mach 3 razor made by the company with a virtual monopoly on shaving tackle in the U.S., Gillette. Speaking of corporate boards, Gillette’s happens to be headed by a former professor at HBS who was also a partner at McKinsey. Now you step into the shower and lather up some Ivory soap, cleanse your scalp with the magical Head & Shoulders, towel down and slap on some Old Spice aftershave—all products from the consumer products powerhouse Procter & Gamble, whose president is a Harvard MBA.
It’s a Sunday, thank God, a day you sometimes get off. You celebrate by popping a Vioxx (for arthritis), a Prinivil (for hypertension), and a couple Pepcid ACs—all courtesy of druggernaut Merck, whose CEO is a Harvard MBA. You throw on some Hanes underwear and a pair of Levi’s, whose chairman is ex-McKinsey, and then head into the kitchen for your favorite breakfast: Sara Lee Chocolate-Dipped Original Cheesecake Bites™—dee-licious. Both Hanes and Sara Lee, it turns out, are owned by the same company, whose president and CEO is a Harvard MBA who worked at McKinsey. Oh, and then you remember to turn on the overhead light, courtesy of the most successful company in the world, General Electric, whose CEO is a Harvard MBA.
Into the home office, a sanctuary of GE light and truth. You power up your Dell, whose U.S. head is a Harvard MBA, and notice the sticker reassuring you that inside there is Intel, whose directors include a Harvard MBA and an ex-McKinseyite. You’re not exactly proud of the fact, but like most Americans who access the Internet, you have an account with AOL, which is owned of course by Time Warner, whose fifteen-person strategy group is sometimes referred to as “the McKinsey finishing school.” While online you quickly check up on the status of your auction (some bootleg Elvis Costello LPs) on eBay, whose well-known president, Meg Whitman, is a Harvard MBA. Reassured, you type your name into Google, which is co-run by a Harvard MBA who worked at McKinsey. As usual, a 1980s one-hit wonder New Wave singer with a name similar to yours is all over the Internet—and you are nowhere.
Dismayed, you power down the Dell and decide to do something real: work on your music. So you bang out a couple love ballads on your Baldwin piano, then work out some changes on your Gibson guitar (the CEO of both Baldwin and Gibson is a Harvard MBA). Mellow now, you decide to unwind in front of the TV. So you trot into the den in your Levi’s and flip on Home Shopping Network, whose president is a Harvard MBA, then switch to your favorite station, CNBC, which is co-run by an irritatingly successful woman named Pamela Thomas-Graham, who is not only a Harvard MBA and ex-McKinsey partner but also a published mystery novelist. Not to mention younger than you…
The business news is all about the troubles of Martha Stewart, who has appointed as her company’s CEO a woman she met while climbing Kilimanjaro in Tanzania; the woman is a Harvard MBA who worked at McKinsey. You pick up a magazine from the table and start idly paging through it, looking for the articles. Okay, it’s Playboy, whose president is a Harvard MBA. By coincidence, you’re looking at a full-page ad for Miller Beer at the same time a spot comes on TV for Miller Beer. Both ads were created by advertising behemoth Young & Rubicam, whose CEO is a Harvard MBA and whose branding strategy was heavily influenced by a large-scale study done by Miller’s consultant of choice, McKinsey. All this talk of amber pleasure juice makes you wonder if you have any more of your favorite poison, Heineken, whose CEO is a Harvard MBA.
But enough lazing around consuming media, thinking about beer. You have some errands to run—so you hop out to the garage. Should you take the car made by the world’s number one automaker, General Motors—whose president is a math adept and Harvard MBA—or the more refined Jaguar, made by Ford’s Premium Auto Group, also headed by a Harvard MBA?
You opt for the Jag, throw down the top, and head out onto the open road. Naturally, you turn on the radio, rejecting station after station, both AM and FM, owned by airwave megalith Clear Channel, which controls over half the popular stations in the U.S. and whose CEO is a Harvard MBA.
First stop, Starbucks—whose strategy team is headed by a thirty-five-year-old ex-McKinseyite—and on to Citibank, whose executive committee is led by Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton’s economic policy adviser and a Harvard MBA. Irksomely, you have to stop by and pick up a package at UPS, whose board features both Harvard MBAs and ex-McKinseyites. Then… on to the strip mall, where you pass a Toys “R” Us, whose chairman is a Harvard MBA and whose consultant is McKinsey; past a Circuit City, whose senior vice president is ex-McKinsey; finally wheeling the Jag into a tight spot in front of your second-favorite retailer, the phenomenal Home Depot. As a businessman, you can only marvel at the store’s logistics, and it turns out the Sr. VP of Logistics is a Harvard MBA. Home Depot’s consultant is McKinsey.
Feeling a tad overwhelmed by the Harvard-McKinsey duopoly, you wonder—Is there any escape? Not in the United States, for sure, but what about other countries? On a whim, you decide to tool out to O’Hare. Two hours later, you’re standing in line at the Delta counter when you happen to read in Business Week that the airline’s CEO is a Harvard MBA and former McKinsey partner who recently hired McKinsey to help restructure the airline. Peevishly, you decide instead to fly United, not knowing its consultant of choice is, of course, McKinsey.
United isn’t going your way, so you get back into the Jag and head home. Your feeling at this moment is not unlike that shared by many consultants from non-McKinsey firms—you feel as though the battle has already been lost. Seeking solace, you do what you usually do when life seems gray, or blue: go to Wal-Mart.
Why do you like Wal-Mart so much? The great prices, yes, but also something deeper—something most shoppers don’t know or vaguely care about. Wal-Mart is certainly the most successful retailer on the planet, probably the greatest success story in the history of American-style capitalism. And of the many, many men and women who run this great company not one has a Harvard MBA and not one ever worked at McKinsey. You shop at Wal-Mart as often as you can.
You are a practical woman. You realize the limits of your own personal power don’t extend much beyond the walls of your one-bedroom apartment out in Queens. You have read up to here… you have been a fool perhaps… but now—now you see the way the world works. Say you were to have a child. You don’t like children much; you’re not perhaps so young as you could be. But still—you could bow to pressure or some atavistic urge and bear a child.
Wouldn’t you want her to have all the benefits of employment at McHarvard & Company?
Put another way: Is it reasonable to expect you can change the machinery of mastery, built up over decades of private meetings and secret snacks, and find for your offspring some back door to greatness? Of course not.
So you think… what will it take to get my kid into McHarvard? Into the smoke-filled rooms making large decisions with the big boys?
What will it take to make my kid a McSuccess?
These are reasonable questions, and ones bearing consideration.
To begin, your child has already beaten the odds simply by being born. It is estimated that of all pregnancies that occur in the U.S., only about three in five will result in a healthy birth—the rest being lost to miscarriage, abortion, or stillbirth. So a
ssuming your kid is born—and born healthy—we start on a high note.
And it gets better. We have been reluctant to admit this so far but, well, you are white. There it is. Whitey. A honky. The man. For the present purposes, however, this is an advantage: Your kid is white. Eighty percent of those accepted in McHarvard are white, and you want to give your kid the best shot she can get. Of the 140 million babies born worldwide each year, about 8 percent are Caucasian. So she’s already beating the odds—and she’s only one minute old.
And it gets even better. Although some have raised questions, Queens is technically in the United States, so your baby is an American—a considerable asset. For this scheme to work, she would have to be born in the United States, Canada, or Europe. Although McHarvard claims to be a global conspiracy with offices around the world, it is overwhelmingly U.S.- and Eurocentric, and Canadians have always been able (nefariously) to pass as Minnesotans without too much trouble. So again, for present purposes, we need her to be in this geographic group—and she is. The odds of a baby being born in North America or Europe are about 18 to 1.
Running total so far: just over 1 in 500
Happy birthday, baby!
Unfortunately, she’s going to have to get to work now. The coasting is over. She’s got to start setting her sights on college. You might do the practical thing and send your kid through the public school system you’re subsidizing out in Queens; after all, you believe in public education, and you’re happy to support it in any way you can. In theory. But let’s not delude ourselves—suddenly, we’re talking about greatness in a bassinet, your baby’s future, McHarvard for God’s sake. Public schooling isn’t going to get her there. Statistics aren’t advertised, but informal polling indicates no more than 40 percent of McHarvard’s constituents soldiered their way through the U.S. public school system with their flak jackets and tutors.
So you know where this is going—private kindergarten, private elementary school, private middle and high school—and, finally, a reward for all your hard work as a parent… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
We’ll start in kindergarten. There are some private kindergartens out in Queens, and you look at them and get depressed. They seem like parking lots for abandoned buggies. No—you’re going to need a really good kindergarten, one with heft. A launching pad. In Manhattan, there’s no dearth of such platforms, and they’ll cost you about $15,000 each year. But never mind—odds of getting into private kindergarten in Manhattan: 1 in 6.
At the high school level, options open up somewhat. Where there were only about twenty quality private elementary schools in your city, when you look into high schools you find about forty that will fit your purpose. Never mind the annual bill’s going to run you $25,000 and more—you trot her past all the right admissions committees and stand up to scrutiny, bravely answering skeptical questions about your ability to pay. You’re a good actor, a great liar, and they let you apply. Odds of getting little Hera into a private high school: 5 to 1.
Odds of scoring 1500+ on the SAT: 50 to 1
Odds of being admitted to an Ivy League college: 5 to 1
Odds so far: 3.8 million to 1
Now we enter a dangerous time. The Buddha said, “We are furthest away from our goal when it is almost within our sight.”29 Hera is in many ways a dream come true, but she is not a universe apart. She is twenty-two. Strong forces attack from within and without. Older people often forget what a tragic, vexed decade is the twenties. Things happen with urgency and supernatural strength. We are torn apart by voices. Specifically, people in their twenties are more likely than others to (1) die at the hands of another or in an untimely accident; (2) commit suicide; (3) become schizophrenic; (4) commit a felony; or (5) decide to be an actor.
Hera is not immune to dark forces. She is living on her own, after all, on St. Mark’s Place in the East Village, in a noisy apartment across from Kim’s Video.
Odds of a twenty-year-old’s being murdered: 1 in 50
Odds of dying in an untimely accident: 1 in 25
Odds of committing suicide: 1 in 80
Odds of becoming schizophrenic: 1 in 350
Odds of committing a felony: 1 in 50
And, perhaps most alarming of all… odds of deciding to become an actor: 1 in 100
Combined odds so far: 4.1 million to 1
Now, the first step in any B-school application, of course, is to take the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT), a computer-based, multiple-choice test of basic verbal and math skills. The math it tests is high school level, and the verbal skills it probes are mainly usage and reading comprehension. You’re not too worried for her, but she still needs a good score. Say, over 700 out of 800.
Odds of scoring 700+ on the GMAT: 14 to 1
Harvard Business School (hereafter HBS) is well known for disdaining the GMAT. For years, it was the only top-tier business school not to require its students to take the test. It is now required and, though HBS denies it, quite important. Not as important as the LSAT is to a law school admissions committee, perhaps, but still critical. Hera also needs three strong letters of recommendation, preferably from HBS alumni or vice presidents of the United States. She doesn’t know any alumni or vice presidents, sadly, but you’re hoping her stellar undergraduate performance sees her through.
Odds of an applicant being admitted to HBS: 6 to 1
She’s in! You couldn’t be prouder. She has to graduate, of course, but that’s a simple matter. Most HBS entrants are serious enough to graduate.
Odds of her graduating: 48 out of 50
Now she’s ready—to succeed, or McSucceed. So much work for this moment. The point upon which all your doughnut glaze–glazed eyes have been fixated for lo these many decades. The McKinsey interview. You look in the mirror and scream, and your husband is dead in a tie-selling accident—but it’s been worth it, to see Hera smile! To know she’s practicing the case, polishing her Blahniks, about to enter… but wait. Before she can start her career at McKinsey she has to land an interview with them. They’re known for ignoring all the résumés they’re sent and paging through the HBS “résumé book” looking for interesting candidates. How could Hera not catch their eye? What are the odds of that?
Odds of a top-tier applicant getting on McKinsey’s “closed list”: 3 to 1
Odds of an interviewee getting a job offer from McKinsey: 5 to 1
Now it seems almost cruel to tell Hera that the real hazing has only just begun.
Odds of a McKinsey associate making it past year one: 1.5 to 1
Odds of making it past year two: 3 to 1
Odds of making it to partner: 20 to 1
Cumulative odds of reaching the summit of Mount McHarvard: 488 billion to 1
Anything worthwhile is difficult. Success is never easy, no matter what you do, and just when it’s cradled in your arms it slips through like an angry ferret. Still, you didn’t quite realize how special the denizens of Mount McHarvard really are. They have beat some pretty long odds in their journey of self-perfection.
How long?
We have seen how the transit from fetus to McKinsey partner is a one-in-almost-half-a-trillion event. You’re no statistician; are those incredible odds? Let’s compare…
Odds of various very rare events occurring within our lifetime:
Baby becoming a McKinsey partner 488 billion to 1
You winning an Oscar 3 million to 1
Extraterrestrial invasion before 2097 500,000 to 1
Meteor hitting the earth 10,000 to 1
You ending up in an insane asylum 2,000 to 1
Airline losing your luggage 175 to 1
You having 0 friends 10 to 1
You having a below-average IQ 2 to 1
This entire analysis is, of course, false. It has no statistical validity. It commits the errors known as autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity.30 However, the observation remains: It is very, very difficult to get to the top of this mountain.
History is m
ade by those who beat the odds, and the Rainmaker is certainly making history. He may not have an MBA, or have graduated with honors, or have taken the GMAT, or been an economics major—but he’s not a functionary within the walls of McHarvard. Like all those men with real success, he found a backdoor to someplace special.
You mention the Rainmaker again because he turns up—we are not quite rid of him yet.
He turns up, of all places, at a party hosted by your top-tier firm for its media alumni. Consulting firms are most unlike other organizations in the way they treat departed colleagues. People who quit, people who get fired—everyone is greeted with a warm bear hug and a grin. Consulting may be the only industry in the world where people are actually paid to quit. This is called “repositioning.” The amounts ebb and flow with the seasons, and right now are most definitely ebbing, but consultants at top-tier firms are generally paid some substantial amount of severance to ease their transition into a new position, even if they storm out of the firm in a rage. After giving notice, consultants may finish out their current engagement in a few weeks and then continue to receive full salary for a while—a month, maybe two, depending on tenure—even after they start their new job.
This puts them in the most happy position of being paid twice to work once.
And it extends beyond “repositioning”—far beyond that. Quitters are routinely invited back to speak at firm events, particularly recruiting events. This seems strange to you the first time you encounter it: someone who left a firm being trotted out as a spokesperson for joining that very same firm. If it’s so great, you wonder, why did you leave?
To think thus is to miss the point entirely.
Consulting is dominated by two overwhelming realities. Reality 1 is that it is a locus of transients, bedouins, nomads, people just passin’ though. Nobody stays. Two years and out—that’s the rule of thumb. It’s like a medical residency; a way station, not an end point. (Because business is easier than medicine, it doesn’t take five years to complete.) Ask any and all partners and they’ll tell you the same: “I planned to stay only two years. Every two years I said to myself, ‘This year I’m going to get out.’ ” They hate the travel; they hate the lack of security. But they stay, despite themselves. You can go into a consulting interview and say, “You know, I’m not really sure I want to stay in consulting forever—I think I’ll reevaluate in two years or so”—and that’s the right answer! It’s honest…