Beating the Global Odds: Successful Decision-making in a Confused and Troubled World

Epilogue

The Next Chapter

Over the past six years of my tenure as chairman and managing partner of A.T. Kearney, I have had the honor of leading the transformation of the firm by opening up an aperture to new sources of growth and value and also by reaffirming the unwavering principles guiding the firm, which were embraced some 86 years ago by our late founder, Tom Kearney. Tom was one of the early pioneers in management consulting, and he and James O. “Mac” McKinsey became business partners in the late 1920s—the former in Chicago and the latter in New York. For a time, there was even a firm called McKinsey, Kearney & Co. But in the years after “Mac” died, Tom’s Chicago office became the independent firm A.T. Kearney. For decades, the firm enjoyed solid growth, with successive generations of partners embracing and carrying forth the authentic values that are quintessentially “A.T. Kearney.”

A.T. Kearney was owned by EDS from 1995 to early 2006. It became a difficult relationship during the later years; A.T. Kearney’s performance suffered and the firm risked losing its sense of identity. We, the partners, rather courageously bought the fragile firm back, nursed it to health, and even managed to pay off our debt in one year’s time. The firm’s partners elected me to my current position a few short months after the buyout.

With our firm’s important (and inspiring) history in mind, I took our partners and employees on a values-based visioning exercise designed to inspire commitment ...