Arteta and Edu do jobs on the football side of things. The issue isn't that they are former foobtallers, the issue is that they are bad at their jobs. I don't think appointing some city boys in their roles would improve us.

Plus the same argument applies to corporate types. The idea that they're all competent and know what they're doing is laughable.

goon wrote:

Plus the same argument applies to corporate types. The idea that they're all competent and know what they're doing is laughable.

100% agree with this Tambourine Man, being a city boy himself goon is proof enough.

goon wrote:

Plus the same argument applies to corporate types. The idea that they're all competent and know what they're doing is laughable.

This is … so … fucking … true. A McKinsey consultant is just someone you pay to make the mistakes you don't want to be liable for (no offence to any McKinsey people there may be on here).

That said, recruiting is another thing, but it's a rare great manager who hasn't had a substantial amount of playing experience and at least exposure to a big club environment in their formative years.

Burnwinter wrote:

goon wrote:

Plus the same argument applies to corporate types. The idea that they're all competent and know what they're doing is laughable.

This is … so … fucking … true. A McKinsey consultant is just someone you pay to make the mistakes you don't want to be liable for (no offence to any McKinsey people there may be on here).

can't say I agree with that, McKinsey consultants end up having zero accountability for their mistakes.

Both statements are true, you hire external consultants to be able to blame shit on them even though they stay free of responsibility.

As with any process there needs to be checks and balances put in place = KERs and KPIs.
Further to this there should be relative SMEs in the decision making process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FC_Bayern_Munich#Organization_and_finance
As much as I dislike them as a club and consider them to be no better than the likes of Barca and RM, the org structure at Bayern seems to be better than most.

By contrast we seems to be run much like a hobby farm, where the owners and BoD are more concerned with maintaining the sustainable self funding financial strategy than they are about actually making progress as a football team and/or club. Success is a by product rather than being the objective.

Kind of off topic, but how do McKinsey consultants end up being as shit as you describe them? At least here they only hire the students with the best grades from the schools that are the hardest to get into. Do grades transfer that badly into work life? In my experience they don't. If I wanted to work there I would've needed to study much harder than I did during my school years. The few I know seem like clever people outside of work at least.

Being smart enough to know how something works is worlds apart from making decisions very complex environments where you often have to fall back on instinct.

Grades don't transfer badly into work life, there's just barely any correlation. People can be bad at studying or simply not have the time to study because of work or other obligations then be good at their jobs, or the opposite could also happen. Book smarts rarely if ever beat work experience and ethic.

McKinsey (or any other company in the field like that) consultants aren't better or worse than anyone else by and large. Burns and bandy are just pointing out that they get hired for specific tasks which usually involve decisions considered "unpopular" by the majority of the hiring company's work force. It's a ridiculous covenant that exists to serve the management (because they get to push through shit they want by saying it was McKinsey who did it) and the consultants (because they get handsomely paid while holding zero accountability). Half the time the projects suffer from severe delays too because consultants naturally have no interest in finishing their work quickly.

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

Kind of off topic, but how do McKinsey consultants end up being as shit as you describe them?

Based on my exposure to them and people brought in from the big four, it's often because they're asked to "consult" on matters they know very, very little about.

Here's an example, McKinsey advised the Australian government to keep its powder dry and wait for a better deal on procuring the COVID-19 vaccine doses we now lack. They "saved" the state maybe $0.5bn in order to cost in tens of billions in lockdowns. The people that run Arsenal would be proud.

Why are they doing this? Because senior bureaucrats and Cabinet don't want to learn how or be accountable. And as Jones points out, when these groups fail, they are not accountable either. Everyone profits with few consequences. The setup is broken by design.

It has nothing to do with whether they're smart or competent. When you think about it, of course someone smart and competent would hold a senior position spinning bullshit just barely plausible enough to spare everyone's blushes while the cheques are cashed.

I also have a few glaring examples from my professional life that I won't recount, and one acquaintance who's ex-McKinsey (now works somewhere more boutique but just as bad or worse) who I can personally verify is a neurotic coke fiend thoroughly disconnected from reality.

McKinsey consultants aren't shit. They're usually bright, personable and fulfill the remit asked of them.

Like BW said, the trouble is when they're elevated to take on projects so that leadership teams (governments and corporates alike) can avoid making tough decisions. There's no way for anyone to come in and tell you the right course of action on any subject within 3 months.

The best people usually quit in a few years and do their own thing anyway.

Mirth wrote:

McKinsey consultants aren't shit. They're usually bright, personable and fulfill the remit asked of them.

Like BW said, the trouble is when they're elevated to take on projects so that leadership teams (governments and corporates alike) can avoid making tough decisions. There's no way for anyone to come in and tell you the right course of action on any subject within 3 months.

Often enough they are perfectly able to tell you the right course, they just won't do it because it's detrimental to their own goals. But I agree that they aren't the source of the issue, they're just a tool - one that has handymen everywhere addicted to them without contributing to a solution worth anything most of the time, but still just a tool.