Bob Sternfels is reshaping McKinsey as it heads into second century

Distinctiveness, not growth, to be key marker for the firm in journey ahead, says global head

- Ravi Velloor

The first time I met Bob Sternfels, shortly after he'd been elected global managing partner (GMP) of McKinsey, we talked about widening the talent intake from the traditional ponds from which you'd expect consultants to emerge - the great MBA factories of the world such as Stanford Graduate School of Business, Wharton, Harvard Business School and so forth.

Most recently, when we talked, the Stanford alumnus had travelled further along the road.

MBA intakes, he told me, were perhaps no more than 17 per cent of the last intake at McKinsey.

The others were drawn from a variety of other disciplines.

More significantly, in its last election cycle, the global management consulting firm elected a partner who did not even have a college degreesomeone who had joined the US military as an enlisted person and, several years later, joined the consultancy.

"We get a million applications worldwide, and most years make between 7,000 and 10,000 offers," says Mr Sternfels. "What didn't sit well for me when I came in as GMP was that all these were coming from about 500 sources. It didn't tie with what our own organisational research was saying about where the best talent resides.

"So, we are on a massive recalibration of moving from credentials to the true potential of a person." The person who made partner without a college degree, he adds, achieved this within seven years of joining the firm. That's a roughly normal career track at McKinsey. "This person had the ability to work in a variety of skills-based environments. These are some of the new markers we are looking for."

The son of a US Navy aviator who spent his toddler years at Subic Bay in the Philippines during the Vietnam War era, Mr Sternfels knows something about resilience. Earlier this year, challenged for the GMP position, he came through a cycle of elections that went to three rounds before he could retain his position for a second three-year term.