About the author
Welcome to The Contrarian!
It's been almost 8 years since I hung up my sneakers at McKinsey. Since graduating from business school in 1980 McKinsey was my only employer. Thirty-four years at one organization, something that fewer and fewer people will experience in today's world of start-ups, lateral moves and redundancies. The advantage I have from 34 years at the same consultancy is that it gave me one of the best windows available on the global business stage, and even on the world itself.
McKinsey took me to over 40 countries and every continent, except Antarctica, visits that exposed me to just how much histories, cultures, customs, values, rules and beliefs vary. There’s nothing like driving down a one-way street in Delhi in a rickshaw and discovering there is a bus heading the wrong way straight at you to realize you’re not at home. I came to respect each of these countries for their differences, not in spite of them.
In addition to working with many of the largest companies in the world, thanks to the McKinsey platform and its superlative reputation, I also met and worked with some of the most interesting and well-known people in the world: On the business side, executives like Jamie Dimon, Sandy Weill, Sheryl Sandberg, James Gorman, and Ed Breen; outside the business setting, Mike Bloomberg, Colin Powell, Jon Huntsman, Madeleine Albright, and Placido Domingo. I list them not to boast, but to share how lucky and privileged I was to meet such leaders and learn from them.
These last eight years post-McKinsey have been as rewarding as the previous 34, with more time for philanthropic consulting with nonprofits, continuing to work with a couple of favorite private sector clients, spending time raising my wonderful daughter, and writing this blog. As of today, June 2022, I've authored almost 50 of them, some on life lessons I learned from years of consulting, and others about current events, which I try to do through the analytic lens I was taught at McKinsey. I hope you have enjoyed some of them and continue to do so going forward. As always. I look forward to hearing your reactions to my writings.
L.K.
