McKinsey India: Nurturing Talent

On his best-selling book, Talent Wins: The New Playbook for Putting People First, management guru Ram Charan wonders why talent is not at the core of every company’s strategy, since it is talent and people who drive a business. Analysts who identified BW Businessworld’s 2018 list of the Most Respected Companies, chose just such a company, where people and talent are at the core of business strategy. The sectoral leader in the business of consulting in that list is McKinsey India.

McKinsey India recruits at least a hundred consultants from India’s top business schools and claims that as many as 20 companies of the top 25 in India are clients of the global consultancy firm. Founded in Chicago in 1926, the partnership firm is owned and governed by its partners in 129 cities across 65 countries. The McKinsey global network comprises more than 28,000 people, representing a hundred nationalities and 130 linguistic groups. As a truly global firm, McKinsey professes to not having global headquarters in the traditional sense of the term. Its global Managing Partner is Kevin Sneader.

The consulting firm asserts that “The quality of our people determines how well we serve our clients and we focus tremendous resources on identifying, hiring, and developing them. We have global support networks for women, LGBTQ, Hispanic and Latino, and black consultants.” McKinsey invests more than $600 million of its resources annually in building capability and developing knowledge, to be able to bring the best intellectual resources to their clients. The consulting firm established an in-house think tank, McKinsey Global Institute in 1990 for research on major challenges and trends impacting the world.  

McKinsey India’s Managing Director, Gautam Kumra, has been focusing on realigning and resetting the firm’s business ever since he took charge from Noshir Kaka on January 1, 2017. Under his leadership, McKinsey is investing in building new capabilities in India. It focuses on three new areas, Restructuring and Transformation Services (RTS), McKinsey Analytics Digital Solutions (MADS) and building and renewing ‘growth’ capabilities. Already 20 per cent of the firm’s work is concentrated on these capabilities.

McKinsey believes in giving back to society and has a programme for training and placement of youth, called Generation. ‘Generation’s’ first programme was launched in 2015 in partnership with nonprofits, governments and employers across the world. Today Generation is the largest global training and placement programme for youth. It is being implemented across 170 plus locations in more than 65 cities. Approximately 5,000 graduates are part of this path-breaking initiative, of whom 91 per cent have secured placement and earn a cumulative annual income of $2 million. Most of these graduates have reportedly performed exceptionally and have retained their positions.

The programme has particular significance for India, where a major hurdle in the path of economic growth is the huge disparity in education and skills within the population. A vast swathe of the Indian population lacks the skills  and qualifications necessary for placement in  the 21st Century enterprises that drive economic growth in India today.

McKinsey India strives to upgrade the vast and unutilised human resources in the country through the education and skills offered through the initiative called Generation. The programme provides skills and job placement services for the youth. As a matter of fact,   Generation has proved prolific as a skills development and placement initiative. Today it operates at 20 sites across urban and rural India.