Bøker av Duff McDonald

They helped invent the bar code. They revolutionized business schools and created the corporate practices that now rule our world. They reinvented the idea of American capitalism and aggressively exported it across the globe. McKinsey employees are trusted and distrusted, loved and despised. They are doing behind-the-scenes work for the most powerful people in the world, and their ranks of alumni include the chairman of HSBC and William Hague. Renowned financial journalist Duff McDonald uncovers how these high-priced business savants have ushered in waves of structural, financial, and technological shifts but also become mired in controversy across the years. Discover how the firm both endorsed and celebrated Enron's disastrous corporate structure and how they've been instrumental in the Coalition's controversial NHS reforms. Are they worth their astronomical fees? And what do firms and governments actually get for their money? Based on exclusive interviews with key McKinsey players and written in gripping prose, this is a revealing window onto one of the most secretive and powerful companies in the world.

The story of McKinsey & Co., America’s most influential and controversial business consulting firm, “an up-to-date, full-blown history, told with wit and clarity” (The Wall Street Journal).If you want to be taken seriously, you hire McKinsey & Company. Founded in 1926, McKinsey can lay claim to the following partial list of accomplishments: its consultants have ushered in waves of structural, financial, and technological change to the nation’s best organizations; they remapped the power structure within the White House; they even revo­lutionized business schools. In The New York Times bestseller The Firm, star financial journalist Duff McDonald shows just how, in becoming an indispensable part of decision making at the highest levels, McKinsey has done nothing less than set the course of American capitalism. But he also answers the question that’s on the mind of anyone who has ever heard the word McKinsey: Are they worth it? After all, just as McKinsey can be shown to have helped invent most of the tools of modern management, the company was also involved with a number of striking failures. Its consultants were on the scene when General Motors drove itself into the ground, and they were K-Mart’s advisers when the retailer tumbled into disarray. They played a critical role in building the bomb known as Enron. McDonald is one of the few journalists to have not only parsed the record but also penetrated the culture of McKinsey itself. His access puts him in a unique position to demonstrate when it is worth hiring these gurus—and when they’re full of smoke.

A New York Times bestselling journalist sets out to explore our addiction to the quantification of everything and ends up confronting his own addiction to certainty. In the quiet of quarantine, he decides to choose ease, rather than control?pursuing habits and hobbies that bring joy and ?tickles? to each and every moment?and finds peace of mind, renewed creativity, and deepened relationships are the reward.In 2020, nothing went according to plan. Duff McDonald had intended to write a book about society's obsession with measurements, data, and predictions, showing how it blunts individual happiness and decision-making while fueling corporate capitalism. But in the quiet of quarantine, McDonald found himself reexamining the assumptions beneath his own life choices. He also reconsidered his book, deciding instead to reframe his approach as an exploration of his own battle with what he calls the ?precision paradox??the existential struggle between our desire for ease and our need to exert control.Drawing inspiration from an impressive range of sources?from Borges to the Buddha to Bob (Dylan) to Harry Potter?McDonald documents how he let go of his attachment to precision in favor of delving deeper into what it means to be present?in his work, his relationships, and what he calls the ?science of experience.? He asks, ?What should I have been doing? I should have been focusing on things that I love, not the things that anger or annoy me. I should have been focusing on things that tickle me.? Part self-help, part memoir, Tickled is a story of how to bring joy and love into your life right now. McDonald acknowledges that ?tickle? is a funny, awkward word. In one context, it's as innocent as can be. But it also runs deeper. When something tickles you, you are in the moment, experiencing reality itself?at the vortex of truth, consciousness, and bliss. ?When something tickles, that's your soul speaking to you in the language of love, thanking you for experience,? he says. As he lays out his own personal transformation, McDonald invites readers to begin their own journeys to find out what ?tickles? them, too.This exploration of joy and presence?experiences that tickle?lies at the heart of McDonald's unusual, moving, and profound book.