That’s actually the surprising bit here: in this particular consulting engagement the McKinsey guys appear to have correctly grasped what the client wanted and then implemented a straightforward and(when judged by those metrics) effective solution.
Receiving a straightforward implementation of what you want, without baroque complications or a profoundly broken project management disaster, seems a little out of character. Not because I’d expect them to have more spine about human rights; but because providing straightforward answers like “reduce costs by feeding them less” isn’t how you maintain the mystique of being an esoteric and high powered expert.
They likely reserve the McKiddsies (with their shiny new MBAs and their boatloads of arrogance) to cover the arses of their corporate and NGO clients – that’s where the callowness makes itself evident in their typically organisation-destroying “expert” suggestions.
My guess is that it’s the older McKinsey employees (those few who stayed on rather than leveraging the CV entry for a better corporate job after a few years, as is the norm) who are assigned to apply their greater experience to enabling bad-faith actors in the public sector, both in the U.S. and abroad.
