Having been through a couple of these McKinsey analyses, this is how it works. They will come in, interview everyone, smile a lot, diagram everything on asinine pages filled with little boxes and then suggest to management, who are all ex-McKinsey people, that 76% of the staff be canned. The size of their fee for this service will be vastly in excess of the aggregate amount of severance paid.

Ugh god, McKinsey--what a bunch of kool aid drinking groupspeak drones. As the old Successory said it best

By the way, these guys were largely responsible for the ethos at Enron, too.

The wail of the banshee will be heard at midnight. Carry salt in your pockets to ward off the evil firing fairies

Bottom line : just get out with your dignity before they take that from you, too. McKinsey's whole job is to reduce costs, which means firing you. Whether or not they can determine the entity would be better off without you (the only scenario in which they can justify their fees, of course) is where Visio and the art of BS come in.

These people are the moral and human equivalent of Mitt Romney. You can take it from there...

Below, the gold standard of how to deal with consultants (the sound's a little out of synch, but bear with it.).

+ Watch video

When they're done "crawling" around the Globe, the upright rats will move to the Times. Mark my words.

@ADismalScience: I had a student here in Madrid who worked there (a 22 year old smart-as-a-whip receptionist, paying for Engish classes out of her own pocket.) She said she was astonished at the number of American consultants who had absolutely no second language skills and didn't even try to communicate in Spanish, even a few words to be polite. Or even had the basic decency/common sense to try to spell their names slowly and clearly on the phone. "How is is that these jerks are highly paid consultants and don't get it? Aren't communication skills basic to being an executive?" Wise and naive child....