The author of a book on management consultants compares them to Opus Dei. Thomas Leif calls them secretive societies that wield “power without responsibility.”
A journalist for public television in Germany, Leif lays out a blistering case against management consultants in a book that reaches stores May 15, Advised and Deceived.
In his book, Leif describes them as shadowy background operators who use jargon to fudge meaning and feed struggling corporate managers with little more than recycled information. On writing the book, he told Bloomberg:
I’ve been working on the book for three years, and it’s not easy to get access to partners for interviews. As you know, this industry is closed, a kind of Opus Dei. Intelligent, very skilled in cultivating a strategic public image, but not very open.
The subtitle of the book is McKinsey & Co. — the Big Bluff by Management Consultants. It discusses other consultancies,
but McKinsey is a symbol of efficiency as an end in itself and of radical reforms — job-cut recommendations made rather casually and one-dimensionally, only considering the economic impact and not the social impact.
His written request to interview the head of McKinsey in Germany got a written rejection.
I was directed to the company’s home page for information. That is ridiculous. There is an extreme PR machine. Economic newspapers report what the company wants to be made public. At the same time, McKinsey blocks information and there is the utmost secrecy about what they do. It’s part of the McKinsey myth. That’s why I compare it with Opus Dei — a kind of secretive society.
Filed under: Opus Dei
