McKinsey - practicing what they preach

In my previous blog posts I have so far covered how different types of organisations can benefit from social technology using McKinsey’s 10 value levers. Since this week’s blog post is directed at the professional service sector, why not take a look at how McKinsey use social technology themselves? This week I will especially focus on how blogging, twittering and using wikis support the company business.     

Who is McKinsey?

The McKinsey & Company Inc. was initially founded in Chicago in 1926 and is today one of the world’s most prestigious management consulting companies serving some of the world’s largest corporations. Being a well renounced company McKinsey also has high expectations of its employees. A famous saying from the McKinsey office is “If you can make it here – you can make it anywhere”. This of cause also makes the company a top priority for graduates all over the world and has helped build the company image and global profile.

Knowledge sharing at McKinsey

Being a widespread global company the risk of “reinventing the wheel” has during the latest decade reinforced the concept of knowledge sharing at McKinsey and the company has therefore established knowledge management centres and networks globally in order to source specialist knowledge and share the emergent findings through the company network. Even though the specific used platforms are unknown these actions are, however, a good example of how McKinsey benefit from using social technology in intra- and inter organisational collaboration and communication (number 9 of the 10 McKinsey Value levers)

Besides the internal and external company network McKinsey also uses blogging to share knowledge. McKinsey has in fact established a wiki where both current and former employees can publicise their blogs in order to increase knowledge sharing on the latest technology or just improve their work relations. 

In terms of sharing knowledge with the public McKinsey also uses RSS feeds, Pod casts, YouTube, not to mention Facebook and Twitter where respectively more than 73.000 friends and 25.000 followers regularly receives status updates and tweets from the company i.e. regarding new research and publications. One of McKinseys latest initiatives also include a new app for iPad offering several tools to share knowledge and stay connected with users.

Finally McKinsey also upholds a company page on Wikipedia where everything from the company history to clients and company criticism is publicised and regularly updated.

Conclusion

Like the other companies that I have previously discussed in terms of social technology McKinsey also seems to benefit from using social technology. The most striking difference comparing the former evaluated organisations with McKinsey is perhaps the shift from B2C to B2B which defiantly affects the way that the social technology tools are used. Nevertheless I still believe that the above-mentioned proves that a social service organisation like McKinsey can also benefit from the use of social technology.    

References 
McKinsey
The McKinsey & Company Inc.
A famous saying
the companynetwork
McKinsey Value levers
publicise their blogs in order to increaseknowledge sharing
app for iPad
RSS feeds
Pod casts
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube