The greatest triumph in 25 years of consulting -- making sure the CEO got a bloody deck
From July 2025
A painfully enthusiastic college student asked me about what I was most proud of in my time at McKinsey & Company. Naturally, I told him about my experience helping Jon Beyman, Jim Rosenthal and Phil Venables set up Sheltered Harbor. Relatively rarely do you get to work on something that people write thriller novels about. “Power in the Blood” by Hiawatha Bray may not be Eric Ambler, but it’s still pretty good!
But that was not my greatest triumph, which happened much earlier in my tenure at the Firm.
Very quickly after joining the Firm I received a battlefield promotion to Engagement Manager on a multi-channel strategy for call center outsourcer. We had weekly check-ins with CEO and head of strategy.
I was very excited for our first check in — I never met a CEO at the previous consulting firm I worked at. Not sure I ever met someone who had met the CEO. It was a phone call with the partners and me in the chicago office, and the clients on the road somewhere.
I brought printouts of the deck into the partner’s office. (For our young readers, before there was a big screen in every office…oh, never mind.) We joined the audioconference. (For our younger readers, before Zoom…oh, never mind.)
I started to describe the analysis. Tim Gokey stopped me and asked the CEO if he had the deck. He did not. I said I had emailed it to him this morning, but this was an era before iPads, wireless internet or even Blackberries. The mid-level clients I worked at my previous employer took their laptops everywhere. CEOs did not.
So I took my printout and went to a fax machine. Twenty minutes later I managed to get the fax through to the CEO, and I returned, shame-facedly, for the last five minutes of the call.
We had another check-in call a week later. At the very start of the call, Tim asked the CEO, “Do you have the deck?”
The CEO chuckled and said, “It’s funny you ask. When I went into my home office and the deck was sitting in my fax machine. Then I look in my person email, and the deck was there. I went to the office. As I walked to my desk, my assistant handed me a copy of the deck. When I sat down, I saw the deck sitting in my personal fax machine. Then I logged into my work email and there I saw the deck. So, yes, I think I can say I have the deck.”
“Ah,” Tim responded, “the multi-channel approach.”
I smiled in satisfaction, very glad that I had personally shelled out $10 per month for an efax account. (For our younger readers, awareness of third-party cybersecurity exposure…oh, never mind.)
In twenty-five years at Firm, i have done many bigger things, but I don’t think I’ve ever done anything as perfectly as making sure the CEO had that dang deck.