1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Support for CFO Thought Leader comes from Intuit QuickBooks Bill Pay. Say goodbye to manual bill entry. And NetSuite, the number one AI cloud ERP. Hi, it's Aaron Ault, the CFO at Cardinal Health, and you're listening to the CFO Thought Leader podcast. This is episode 1181. And again, the role modeling that you bring by pushing to understand.

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

what drives things ends up influencing people on your team to understand more. Of course, in an 80-20 way, you don't want people to spend a huge amount of time on what doesn't matter. But I think...

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

At least my biggest learning from those experiences has been the need to, I use this sort of language with my team, you can never delegate understanding. You can get someone else to do a lot of the hard work, but you still need to understand. You are the responsible person that the right thing happens and you need to understand it. And I think the other side of it, which we talked about already earlier, if you want to influence other people,

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

You also need to convey for them not just numbers, but also the why behind it, the logic, the benefits for them from any change that you're going to make as a finance leader. Hi, it's Jack. On today's show, we speak with Yuval Atsman, senior partner and CFO of McKinsey & Company. Most companies are trying to adapt to disruption.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Far fewer are doing it while advising the rest of the business world how to adapt as well. Our guest leads finance inside arguably the world's most influential strategy firm, an organization built on advising others, now navigating its own reinvention. Think about that for a moment.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

When the business of expertise is being reshaped by AI and shifting client expectations and economic pressures, what does finance leadership look like from the inside?

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

We explore how capital gets allocated when talent is the product and why old pricing models are being challenged and why the future CFO may need to be equal parts strategist, operator, and translator of change. Our talk with Yuval Otsman begins after this.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Hello, Yuval Otsman is with us. He's of McKinsey & Company. He brings a rare blend of operator and advisor experience, guiding global tech, media, and consumer companies through growth transformations. Along the way, he spent six years in Shanghai during a period of rapid economic change, and now stepping into the CFO role, can you believe it, at McKinsey & Company.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

the world's most influential strategy firm, allocate capital, navigate AI, and build resilience in uncertain times. Yuval, welcome. Hey, Jack. Great to be here. So we always begin by asking our guests, Yuval, to look back and tell us a little bit about themselves, their career origins. Was it always going to be business? Was it going to be law?

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Tell us about yourself. Where did things begin for you? So I grew up in Israel, and the culture in Israel is not unique to other places, but you have many career choices. You can be a lawyer or a doctor. Or an engineer is more recently at some point, but both my parents were engineers, but those were the three choices that I had. I didn't want to be an engineer or a doctor, so I studied law.

5:28

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

And once I understood that I don't want to be a lawyer, I ended up trying other things, which led me to McKinsey at a relatively young age. So I joined McKinsey at the sort of entry level as a business analyst about 25 years ago, straight out of law school. I worked for a year.

5:47

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

as a law intern. I also worked as a sommelier during my time as a student, and I was in the military. So I had kind of a little bit of a strange mix of things before, but since then, I have been mostly on this business track. We're speaking to you from London today. You've lived in different parts of the world. Can you just give us a sense as that career grew, where did you travel? Where were you based? So I think, not that I'm counting, but I've probably served clients in

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

well over 20 countries. And I'm proud of particularly the cultural diversity that I got to experience as part of that. So even in my first couple of years,

6:27

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Before I went to business school, I did work in France, in Italy, in Israel as a home office, but then also in Australia and New Zealand, which was very different, but with much nicer clients. So it was refreshing to some degree, but also, you know, the other side of the world. In fact, one of the people that I worked most closely with in New Zealand was...

6:51

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

involved back then in negotiating the first free trade agreement between New Zealand and the U.S. It was the first time the U.S. have done that. And when he, at some point, he got involved in the WTO discussions with China and became the China leader for McKinsey. And this was one of the reasons when I came back from business school, that relationship has led me to spend six years in Shanghai.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

through that time. But even when I was in Shanghai, I did work in Japan, in Korea, in Singapore, in Philippines, in Thailand. And then when I left China, which was in 2012, I spent more time working across both Europe and the U.S. I kept some of the relationship with Asian clients, Chinese, Japanese, doing expansion across the world, and that remains part of my client base, especially in tech.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

from India, from Japan, from China. And I've also done work across the range of European and in the US. And the culture has been so different, but I think learning how to work with people from very different backgrounds. I did at some point, for example, coaching for a Chinese company that acquired a business in Israel. And they asked me, I spent two hours just telling them how to give,

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

instructions to israelis to have any chance of influencing the business um but you know over the years i've kind of been engaged in a lot of kind of unique um opportunities to sort of bridge between different cultures of course ironically

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

The place that I feel the hardest to work back in has been Israel over the years because it's often when you have sort of melded so many different ways of working, it's kind of going back to your home base or the kind of home origin is one of the strangest things culturally.

8:48

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

That's really interesting how leadership style varies from culture to culture. Is there one, you know, a leadership style that you've evolved to over time? Do you get a read on the culture first, I would imagine? I do. And, you know, you can never really understand the culture fully. I mean, we tend to be overconfident about.

9:11

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

that after a bit of time we pick it up. I mean, one of my most embarrassing experiences when I moved to Shanghai was after about three weeks of eating only Chinese food with the team, I asked the team if we can maybe try something different.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

And I had everyone offended on the team explaining to me that they've actually on purpose chose 15 different Chinese cuisines for me over the previous three weeks. And here I am not appreciating any of that and kind of looking for something different. But the flip side is I invited them at some point to a French restaurant with a European client.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

And all of them were late because they stopped eating something on the way because they were sure that the portions are going to be so small in a French restaurant that they're not going to find enough food during dinner. And they were nervous about that.

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

And so you can never underestimate cultural expectations and cultural differences. But at least for me, what I've learned over time is that spending more time, you know, there's some universal, let's call it stylistic shifts that work better almost everywhere. So listening a bit more and waiting for when you intervene with your opinion.

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Again, this is quite typical of Israeli culture. You want to make your view known as quickly as possible. It feels as efficient as possible. I think in many cultures that feels very aggressive, especially as you become more senior. It doesn't leave a lot of room for other people to voice themselves. I think that's a shift that I've made far from perfect, but I've made over time and I found it to work in many places.

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

The thing that I've done is spend more time in general to get to know people away from work. I feel that when the cultural differences...

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

are big. It's when people get to know more about you, when you open up and tell them about your background, your family, your hobbies, all of a sudden you realize that no matter Chinese, Japanese versus Israeli or American or Dutch, you still have some common interests and some common grounds and that tends to build trust even within cultural barriers.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Now, Dean, when you look back over the span of your career, most of which, of course, spent at McKinsey, when we look at the milestones, becoming partner at McKinsey, you're a senior partner today, of course. That was a very important milestone. Can you share with us, where did that happen? Was it meaningful? Is it meaningful to you today when you think back and reflect on becoming a partner at McKinsey & Company? So it happened when I was still in Shanghai, and I think it was very meaningful. I mean, I didn't...

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

know if I can make it in Shanghai. At that point, I was already one of very few non-Chinese in the office, and I was an associate new into the office in 2006.

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

By the time I was evaluated for partners, this was about a year after the global financial crisis. It was a moment of big change in China. I mean, in hindsight, quite positively, but there was a lot of uncertainty during the 2009-2010 period. A lot of my clients back there were international, not Chinese.

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

What was great in hindsight, it was a very pivotal moment for companies that at that point were very...

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

negative about europe and actually quite negative about the us so if you sort of go back to 2010 most predictions about the bricks if you remember that definition of the obviously china was one of them there was brazil there was russia there was india south africa even was kind of part of that group it felt like they will grow much faster than north america now in hindsight that did not happen except for china and india to some degree

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

But at that point, there was a sense of a massively shifting economic order in the world. And China was kind of at the front of that with many international companies actually doubling down at a time of financial crisis into expansion in China. And I got to work with some of the best...

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

you know international companies expanding in china that we barely served outside of china and i got to do stuff with them which was really exciting so i started to feel maybe i can make it work and you know decided to stay longer uh in china when that happened and i think as a result of that i was proud you know in general i think was a very big deal then it's still a big deal to become a partner for our firm but also i was very proud in the way that i've

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

accomplished that at a time when I was really at the front of a very unique moment for our practice in China and for our global client base trying to expand in China. Well, help us understand a little bit about the partnership culture that exists there and really is sort of a...

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

It's DNA, I suppose. You revealed to us that client-facing focus, which is so important, being with the client, but at the same time, sort of the partnership dynamic, how partners collaborate. Explain it better to us so those of us who reside in other organizations understand better. I think the couple of things that makes our partnership

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

at this stage, truly unique. I think there are organizations that were like that over the years, but maybe are not like that anymore. And there's obviously some of our competitors that share some of our attributes, but not all of them.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

we have a very high degree of autonomy for partners. And if you ask our partners what is really special, is every single partner can commit the firm directly to clients, can supervise their guardrails, obviously, to your financial envelope. But in theory, if you agree with a client on a fee level and you borrow resources or staff resources based on their internal pricing,

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

You can do what you want. No one is going to tell you. And we also have a culture which is generally focused on client impact.

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project or engagement, as we call it, profitability. So you have a high level of autonomy to just go and deliver that client impact. You are reviewed not by anyone in your own cell, but by a global committee with an evaluator from a purposefully different geography that will talk to all your collaborators in that market and others, again, just to reinforce that freedom and autonomy. So most people say, what I love about McKinsey is having no boss.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Also, if you don't get along with a partner, senior partners you've collaborated with in one place, you switch and do other things. You can keep creating different...

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

opportunities for you. And part of that autonomy also means that you develop faster as a leader because you take on more earlier in your career in terms of your responsibilities with clients and inside the firm in specific practices or sub-practices that you lead. So I think that culture of autonomy is very big. The other thing is we have always had, since we started to expand out of the US to other markets, we've always kept

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

a global profit pool. So every partner of the firm is evaluated globally. It is compensated based on a global profit pool. It is incentivized and evaluated on how well they're collaborating. Again, when I was in China in 2011, 2012,

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

I would have to wake up pretty early in the morning to support West Coast clients and pretty late at night to support East Coast clients. But all those companies wanted to learn more about China. And I didn't ask, what is it for me? There was just an expectation and a culture that we help each other in that way. And it benefits all of us because we're part of one global partnership. And the way we're going to be reviewed is based on how we contribute to the global partnership. So I think that all made it.

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

quite special combined with our professional values of uh you know being there for our clients and our people um as a as a flywheel that as long as you bring exciting people to clients clients want to do more work with the firm and the firm can do more exciting things and attract you know ever better people that want to do that type of work you're you're a senior partner of course and after 17 years 18 years 19 years you decide

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

This next chapter, you'll be the CFO. I mean, why was this the right next chapter for you? Why the CFO role? So, you know, within McKinsey, you have partners and senior partners that are motivated by just their client work. They just want to do maximum client work and, you know, to some degree, let other partners and senior partners lead the firm.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

You know, our culture is that that's okay as long as we have a good balance. We need some people. We want the people that are in roles, be it CFO or head of a country or head of a practice. We want those people to obviously be motivated by practice building and operate as a servant leader in an hierarchical way. And we would celebrate our best client leaders staying client leaders. I personally was always...

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

motivated on firm building. And in particular, I was motivated on topics of strategy. I was a longtime leader of our strategy practice, our growth. I did a lot of thinking and publishing even on topics of capital allocation, resource allocation. And we used to say, put your money kind of where your mouth is as something that needs to underscore strategic choices into the budget.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

And I started to get more involved in doing that. So I led various strategy efforts for the firm internally over the years, which has also built my network and my credentials in this. And I've led a few other finance-related initiatives as a result of that. So by the time that the last leadership rotation was happening two years ago, I was one of the people most known across the firm.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

for having the thought leadership and the track record of doing some of those things first.

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Obviously, that is still very different than stepping fully into the operational role. And also, I was the first non-US-based CFO for the firm.

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

which I think was also, as always, just a little bit of luck that as the roles were being allocated, there was a good balance between Europe and US that left just about a seat for me because every global managing partner wants to have some global representation within its leadership team. So there was still a place left for a European person to come into this role.

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

I was excited because I felt that a lot of what I've learned could be very relevant at a time, you touched on this in the opening, at a time which is maybe the biggest change we've seen in our career on multiple dimension, being able to help our firm to adapt to those changes in both a short and long-term way that is motivating for people today, but also sets up for the future. I felt that would be just an enormous, exciting challenge.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

and was glad to have the opportunity to do so. Well, that's nice insight for us. I just want to remark on this. I think McKinsey & Company is the firm that's frequently where we hear about herding cats. How do you manage? How do you lead this type of firm? And with that in mind, the notion of becoming the finance leader who has to lead cats, and of course those cats are those partners, sort of those free...

21:37

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

wielding partners that you talked about enjoying that freedom, freedom to make decisions, freedom to spend, it sounds like. It would seem to me that this has got to be a challenging role in that respect. Am I connecting the dots poorly or how do you look at, as you look at to manage the finances of a global partnership? You know, what I would say is, as it's the case in many things, sometimes the best things are the worst things so that, you know, hard things are the easiest thing. I mean, so the hardest thing, I think, in a place like McKinsey,

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S… Speaker 3 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

isn't actually

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

getting people to do what you hope they would do is actually to get all of them telling you what they think you should do which is to say you know imagine that you have 3 000 partners all of which serve clients many of which serve cfos elsewhere and have a strong opinion of what's the thing that mckinsey should be doing and i should be doing and i should be enabling and especially when you start the role before you have established your credibility handling

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

that wonderful and nearly infinite level of advice has been an interesting adjustment for me. The flip side, though, is you've got people that are highly professional, well-meaning, collaborative, and when they buy into the direction and they understand why certain things are being asked and when data is presented in a logical way,

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

It's actually quite easy to mobilize change of financial direction for us as a firm. So one of the first things that I've done when I started the role is I've worked with, some of it was in kind of our global partner meeting and some of it was...

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

specifically with different leaders in their respective areas, I just engaged them to look at certain trends. Again, we don't love to talk about profitability, but still our pricing effectiveness, our areas of growth and areas of stagnation, and just engaged with what could we do in particular to deal with dispersion. So one of the things that was a very powerful insight for me, but also for many of our leaders is,

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

We, like many organizations, had a little bit of a COVID hangover. COVID was a period of unprecedented growth for the professional services industry, part of which was the realization for many organizations that they need to rapidly accelerate digital adoption, and part of which was that they were working from home with no other expenses, so they had more budget for consultants. Of course, when they went back to normal, some of that contracted back.

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

And we had to adjust our own demand profile and we found ourselves in certain pockets with overcapacity and with pressures, therefore, on our economics. So how do we navigate some of that without the wrong conclusions? I think just being in an environment that is so data-driven and so logical.

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S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

has actually been quite good. That doesn't mean that everything that I wish would happen happens, but largely we have a very, very good reception of things that if people feel they get the transparency, they feel they can understand.

25:00

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

the desired actions by and large. Well, that's very interesting. Most, all of us probably think we have a take on McKinsey and company. What sets this company apart today? What sets this firm, this strategy house apart today? I think I touched on a couple of the things that I would say have been, especially in McKinsey for a long time, but I think one of the challenges that we face, like many organizations that actually have been leaders, or at least, you know,

25:32

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

one of the leaders in their industry for a long time, is that you don't want to lose the things that made you special because it's very difficult to reinvent your DNA. But you also really need to realize that the world has changed around you and some stuff is going to be different. So I think for us, this notion of the professional standing that puts client interest ahead of ourselves and has the level of respect

25:59

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

objectivity and kind of thorough work that clients trust for big decisions or for big change programs, I think remains kind of at the core that we need to, we call this distinctiveness, which is clients know that they're going to get high quality work from us, dedicated partners and senior partners that lead from the front. I think one of the things which is unique for us is our partners and your partners would spend

26:28

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

close to 80% of their time with teams and with clients doing the work as opposed to, and as we don't have a culture where someone confirms the work and someone else does the work, if you confirm the work, you're accountable with the client end-to-end. So I think those are examples, and we touched on some of the autonomy that our partners have and some of the commitments we have for high-quality hiring and high-quality development. But I think we're also at a point of time where

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Clients expect not PowerPoint, but clients expect, you know, implemented solutions. Some of them are new processes and new ways of working and new capabilities. And some of it are even tech deliverables. And that requires us to invest capital. We were historically a very, very capital light business and a very self-sufficient organization. Now we have to deliver our work.

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

sometimes on our own with some tech investments and sometimes with tech partners or other organizations in the ecosystem that brings together with us something that will give the client an end product that kind of secure the full change and the full impact. And that is a very, very different environment for us. It means we're taking risk at a different level on kind of complexity. And we've done all of that while we've changed our arrangements with

27:51

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

about a third of the work we do now is outcome-based. And we only get paid if we have a CFO on the other side that confirms that the financial impact that was set as a goal or other KPIs that are a proxy of financial impact have been fully vetted and confirmed. And that's been great in terms of...

28:16

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

you know, further emphasizing the fact that we are working towards client impact, not towards our own commercials. But it also means that our teams need to think about the work sometimes in a different way. And, you know, it puts new challenges for us around how do you manage, if you're doing a five-year, for example, effort, how do you know in year one and year two that you're on track when you have to go and promote people and give credit to people? How do you manage incentives?

28:45

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

associated with all of that. So we've been navigating change. We've also navigated the change that we used to have. 99% of our consultants came from similar backgrounds and were expected to have similar skills for success, which is

29:00

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

sort of like you know like me uh in that you you can be a lawyer you can be an engineer but at the end of the day you're kind of solving a range of problems with clients with a little bit of expertise in one area nowadays we have people that are primarily tech experts or financial experts or

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S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

you know much more diverse in terms of their backgrounds and what they need to deliver and it's in fact the fact that we can bring all of them together in those more complex projects that ensures that we remain distinctive or differentiated in

29:35

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

what clients are looking for these days, which is much more complex, as it should be. Because, of course, over 100 years that McKinsey existed, just the needs of clients to justify getting external support keeps going up, and they will continue to go up, which means that we need to stay ahead of that. But staying ahead of that requires also a different mix of capabilities and different mix of incentives.

30:00

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Billable hours model today, a legacy? What's changed? We were early innovator as an industry and actually, you know, people that came after McKinsey as a spinoff or otherwise have followed McKinsey ever since the 40s. We started with the billable hours legal approach and we shifted to, you know, kind of, if you'd like, fixed rates against deliverables. So that's been a change. In fact, it was ironically,

30:30

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

a very hotly debated change. I was presenting, as we were discussing within the firm, some of the different models for economics that we have today versus 10, 20 years ago, and told the story of a very big fight that happened in McKinsey after 15 or 20 years of existence, which was shifting from the billable hours to...

30:52

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

where a lot of the partners back then, all 17 partners or so that were in the firm were fighting a couple of partners that wanted to make that change. But that change did happen. And by the way, in a classic McKinsey way, it started by no agreement. So the first people that did that change, they got approval to do it for the first two that wanted to do it. And then all the other 15 or whatever number grew over time, realized that that's a better thing for the client and the firm. So the firm shifted.

31:21

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Up until the early 2000s, we shifted for the next 60 years to a model where we agree, whether it's 10 weeks or 12 weeks, or we agree on a period of time, which is how we base our pricing. But at the end, we're committed to the deliverables against the project budget, not against the billable hour. But what we found in the last 20 years...

31:47

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

is that we need to make another big transition, which was from that to outcome-based fees, where we would, for example, partner on a growth target or partner on an efficiency target and be paid relative to what we enable. What about during your chapter? Is there any enhancement to the model that you're advocating?

32:15

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

testing so i think i think that the challenge we're facing now with with ai even though we're in the very early days of that is we would have more and more needs of our clients that might be better delivered through um more automation or more product again some of which may be owned by us some which may be done by partners as opposed to

32:44

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

just deploying teams in the same way. So today, still more than 90% of what we do is people-based and then we have circa 10% of what we do, which is deploying our technology and licenses and so on. That might be at some point significantly different mix. And the way we historically have done that is

33:11

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

typically through internal charging so we charge for people time we charge for technology cost as you can imagine in a culture which is so people-based it's very difficult to charge for technology internally and people feel like okay if i need

33:27

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

you know, John or Mary for a month, I either get John or Mary or not. But if I need this product, you either give it to me at whatever price once. So I might as well negotiate with you, you know, that thing. But I think that culture will have to change. Our model will have to change as we're going to have to deliver more of that. And sometimes we would have to know that it's better to do it with a third party solution rather than our own.

33:52

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

So I think navigating that is a change for us in a way that would, again, put us in the best place to do what clients need as opposed to the best thing that McKinsey needs. And that's why we're even more committed to how can we make more of our pricing linked to results. And if those results are delivered with 20% people-based cost or 80% people-based cost,

34:16

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

That's okay. Either way, as long as the client believes and we can show it consistently that we have the best, we're the place that will deliver the most value by getting involved in orchestrating that type of work. Just trying to understand better what the early signals might be for you to determine whether demand is strengthening or slowing.

34:46

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

As I mentioned, I think we have seen a clear slowdown in the industry post-COVID relative to the highs of 21-22, but we have also seen pretty traditional

35:01

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

growth in the industry, you know, not booming, not bad. Over the last, there's been shift of the type of work, there's been some shifts between markets. For example, M&A work has slowed down for a couple of years in 23-24 and it's kind of picking up a little bit more now that interest rate is going down and the regulatory environment for M&A is a bit better. So you've got particular pockets with their dynamics, but largely

35:28

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

We're seeing an increase in what clients are willing to spend as an aggregate on consulting, continuing to be at a sort of 5% to 7%, 8% a year, again, some variance by markets. But we continue to see that as being relatively healthy. We are not seeing yet AI as something that companies can rely on to do things on their own. There are pockets of work.

35:58

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

that are slowing down. But even if you look at strategy, we actually have had more growth in strategy engagement over the last four or five years than any other topic. And part of it is because an average strategy program has gotten more complex and takes longer for clients to work on. And that might be compensating for the fact that there may be less projects or kind of less client needs overall.

36:25

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

We're also seeing that AI, this is quite recent, but if I look at the last six months, I do feel the usefulness of some of the tools has been evolving at rapid speed, which means organizations are now starting to believe. There was a lot of doubts, but there's more and more clients that believe that the technology is there.

36:50

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

how do you get their people to actually use it how do you translate that into especially if you're more you know complex multinational um with risks to manage if i just took the finance function it's obvious that you can do a lot of things better but actually going from a to b and changing that is a complex process and we're benefiting from

37:17

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

more demand that at the moment we can fully support in terms of some of the combined tech and AI expertise. All the industry, I think, is going to probably see this dynamic for a period of time as we have more and more consultants shift from being traditional generalist consultants to being more and more tech and AI trained. Because I think we're just going to see more and more of that work. And the other thing which is interesting with AI is

37:46

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

the granularity of initiative planning and initiative management is now at the level where you can project manage and deploy resources for change. And some of it might be scary. Do you let the AI now tell you what to do at a hundred different initiatives? But some of it is quite exciting in terms of being able to move faster to financial results, which at the end is what we get paid for.

38:15

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Well, we have a couple of AI-related questions for you, but before we move to that, I wanted to ask, again, trying to understand the partnership culture, how unique it is and the role the CFO has.

38:30

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

I'm curious how a major investment decision actually gets made within the firm. And so you're going to make a very sizable investment and perhaps it's tied to one practice area. I don't know. Again, there's a lot of consensus building. I think that has to happen within. Yeah. So for example, the tradition we would have is if we anticipate.

38:56

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

that we need to shift the way we do alliances or M&A or investment in tech. We would do a real firm level program that would have representation from all the regional leaders and people that they would designate that would have representation of major industries. So we did a year and a half ago.

39:27

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

We had about a six-month process where we did a lot of meetings to sort of, first of all, confirm certain synthesis of where we see the world is going and where we think we're strong and where we have potential gaps and what are the options that we want to address. And we had groups that debated that, including bringing it up to our leadership meeting and our shareholder council, which is our equivalent of a board. So we spent a lot of time

39:55

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

socializing insights and socializing options and

40:00

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

to the point that by the time that we make the decisions on direction and choices, you've had hundreds of, not everyone, but hundreds of senior partners and partners that have at least inputted into the process. We sometimes would, we meet as partnership at least every two years and as senior partnership at least every two years. So we have kind of every year we have a meeting of one or the other and we tend to use those meetings.

40:28

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

to socialize that. We have also quarterly Zooms that we would also use for some of those things. So we spend a lot of effort. I sent, you know, together with our people leader, we send quarterly memo updating and sharing some stuff. So we spend as much time as we can communicating and socializing that when decisions, because it makes very little difference to the point I made earlier on on influencing partners.

40:58

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

If we decide to do it, but our partners are not behind it, because then they will not bring it to clients, then they will not support teams in doing that. So how we influence and communicate really, really matters. The other thing we do, probably more than any organization I can think of, we have our...

41:21

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

offices which typically it's a country but sometimes it's a multi-country complex like we have an office of the five nordics country uh they would meet every month with their partners and share priorities we would have the um we have 10 in this is 10 major sectors like advanced industries or telecom media and tech or

41:45

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

consumer and retail, they would meet every month across the leader. So there's a lot of efforts to cascade and socialize and debate some of those things. It doesn't mean we always get to what everyone thinks is right. But I think people respect. And part of the way they respect it, we sort of joke that you're going to have a third when you decide on a new direction or investment. You're going to get a third that are going to go all in.

42:09

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

You're going to get a third that is going to be a little bit skeptical and wait to be kind of late adopters. And you're going to get a third that would kind of support it because we decided it. And as long as you kind of move two thirds of the firm, you move it significantly. Well, it's got to be an interesting challenge. Again, touch on AI with you. Where is AI already perhaps creating value for McKinsey & Company? So, I mean, for sure.

42:38

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

And I won't go into that too much, but the number one priority for us and where it creates the most value is really in just new ways of delivering the work that we've been doing for many, many years, but we can now do with another set of...

42:57

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

impact enablers so for example how can you get even sharper on your procurement your category management your negotiation preparation how can you get better at guiding your sales people on kind of a sales acceleration program better account you know planning better scripting better training

43:18

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

How can you do better customer service with AI in the call centers or in your branches? So there's a range of those, marketing ROI. There's a range of things where this has been pretty continuous. We've seen waves of, we used to call it big data and analytics and other things, and now it's AI. There's been constant and digital optimization. So I think that is a continuous thing that we are,

43:50

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

always trying to continue to bring into our core offerings. But I think probably you're interested more in is also where are we seeing in our own operation, AI changing what we do. So one of the, first of all, the way that our teams work, I mean, we're sort of at the stage where I think of it when I was a young consultant, Excel and PowerPoint were relatively new.

44:14

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

people would still talk about the fact that just a few years ago, they would have to hand-drone the charts and put it in a very different way. And that obviously was a big, big productivity and answers. And smartphones came a few years later for me, and those were a big productivity and answer. And in the same way, we are unlocking that now with AI tools. They allow us to...

44:39

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Instead of bringing a PowerPoint, they allow us to bring dynamic dashboards and tools for clients to interact on insights and simulate them in a very different way, which is quite exciting. That allows multi-stakeholder collaboration in real time. So I think those are examples of how we're changing our own.

45:00

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

And then I would say for our back operations, we have been starting, I would say there's a lot more I'm sure would happen, but we've been starting to also benefit from our finance forecasting and monthly closure and our accounts payable and our way that we set up project budget and do pricing. All those things are now AI-assisted.

45:26

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

In many cases, we are very much a human in the loop for nearly all of it, maybe except a few auto-invoicing and a few more transactional things. But it is freeing up time for more value-adding activities, and it's helping us make... So we were able to improve since I became CFO our cash cycle quite meaningfully. And one of the ways that we've done that is just...

45:53

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

accelerating every step in the process thanks to digital and AI tools. And it's interesting. I believe you're still client-facing. You have a finance function, though. Is the team members, they're dedicated to finance. Is that correct? That is true. So I'm the only person allowed to sort of be not a full-time finance person in my team. We do have...

46:23

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Some of our senior people sometimes obviously would be moonlighting as experts on certain client work and sharing their examples and inspiring some clients. But I'm still responsible for several client relationships that we have and spend meaningful time, you know, part of my time on that. But I still shifted the majority of what I do to the internal role.

46:47

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

And I think it's, you know, as we've covered in this entire conversation, there's so much happening. And kind of my view has been that I'm lucky that in every one of my clients' relationships, there's multiple partners and senior partners that if I am, you know, I don't always need to be the person, you know, my relationship and my history and my unique things that I can add to that dynamic. But in the CFO role, one of the...

47:14

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

thing that I don't think I was prepared for until doing the role was just the velocity of decision making.

47:21

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

You need to make a lot of decisions. And often, you're the last person standing, making the decision to protect the organization, to shape by example. And if you make decisions that are always an exception, people know that that's the new rule. If you are not asking the right questions or not checking on certain things, again, people might cascade to other people not checking it. So the sort of velocity and the quality and the behavior.

47:48

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

that you need to showcase when you're engaged on those decisions is very time-consuming, but it really, really matters. So I know that I don't need to play that role in every client relationship, but I really have to play that in my CFO role every day. You mentioned how the finance team, how their work is likely to, you know, is somewhat changing. They have more time to evaluate and study, perhaps. How do you think the finance...

48:18

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

organization is going to change at McKinsey & Company due to AI? How are those people likely to be spending their time? Will you structure it differently? Will you assign people to different tasks because this isn't necessary anymore? If I look at the most important role within our finance,

48:39

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

enabling the businesses, obviously things that need to happen in the background like tax compliance and controllership and that we pay all our suppliers on time and pay our salaries and I don't underestimate that that requires continuous operational excellence but if I go to the strategic aspects of what our finance do which is really helping us identify

49:04

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

in real time as much as possible? Where can we redeploy resources for client needs? Do we have gaps that we need to invest in in organic or non-organic ways? Where do we have opportunities to price better our work or manage our commercial arrangements in a better way? I do believe that

49:29

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

We are nowhere near the potential of finance to be an even better partner for our partners, kind of in giving them the insights, in helping them, in leveraging technology along this process. I think we are very proud of the improvement we've made even in the last 18 months. I mean, the thing I forgot to mention or didn't mention was I started pretty quickly after we were at the...

49:57

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

changeover from Oracle to SAP.

50:00

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

which also meant that everything was scrambled in our databases for a couple of years. So there was a bit of stability needed to get everything in the right place, but also I was benefiting from a much increased functionality that SAP for us now enables combined with the new tools that we're putting in place. So we've been getting continuous releases of new

50:28

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

tools for what we call our account teams, we call it the client service teams. So we've been giving more and more things for the partners that are in a front line to know, are they managing their budget in a healthy way? To give you a simple example, might they run out of budget based on the current spend level? What is the risk level of the type of work that they're doing based on past results of similar type of work?

50:57

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

So, you know, we have more and more of those things coming online. And I think more and more of the finance work will be given that kind of strategic support. By the way, fewer people probably that are more experienced and more senior apprenticing some generation of younger people, but probably that work would also require more pattern recognition than in the past. Just one last question. What about AI is still unclear to you?

51:29

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

I think the biggest question for me, for us and for the world, is what would AI require in terms of new jobs? I don't have a clear answer for the next five to ten years. I kind of tend to believe that we will get to a point where there is not enough jobs created relative to jobs automated by AI.

51:59

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

I'm not sure that we're anywhere near to that point. I still see new things created. I still feel that young people coming into the workforce, it's true that the junior skills are the ones being automated faster, but also there's new things that previously were not maybe as invested and cultivated that can be now. Certainly in an environment like McKinsey, the ability to

52:27

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

do capability building. Young people are sometimes better mentors for how to use AI than more experienced people. So there's this variety of, I think there's going to be a huge amount of demand across.

52:42

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

not just in the business world, but also on the age population and other people to just be taught how to benefit from new technology. And that's going to create a lot of jobs. We already know that there's going to be a lot of needs. There's going to be a lot more electricians needed than right now we have trained. So I think that's kind of the macro level, but also the micro level for the firm. Right now, we're increasing our...

53:09

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

entry-level hiring because we believe that we have some of the best market for hiring that we've seen for a long time. And we know that if we bring amazing people, we will find ways to kind of benefit from that. But I don't know what it means, you know, exactly in five years. So that remains a real, but I tend to be cautious when I hear people suggesting that we're going to run out of jobs quite soon.

53:40

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

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54:01

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

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54:27

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

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54:55

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

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55:00

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

That's netsuite.com slash C-F-O-T-L, as in thought leader. I explained up front, we always ask for a finance strategic moment. And I'll come clean with you. We always just want a good story. We ask finance leaders to think about back in time, whether it was a transaction they were involved with or something. But what comes to mind when we ask for a finance strategic moment?

55:29

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

you know i when you told me you might ask that question i was kind of reflecting on what has been i still would call them number experiences maybe not exactly finance that has not only taught me a lot and helped me a lot in my career but i think are becoming even more relevant now than they used to be and they're going to feel a little bit unrelated but i hope i can bring them

55:53

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

quickly to why they do matter for this conversation. So I'll mention one, I'll mention two experiences that sort of are related. The first one is I was in officer training in the military. And again, if you sort of go back to technology of 30 years ago, at that point, GPS was not a map, but it was a set of coordinate.

56:14

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

And the military had this device that would show you an arrow that kind of tells you where to follow to get to the coordinates that you put in using satellite technology. I was in the last stage of my officer training and I was selected to, which was an honor based on, you know, it was a very competitive environment. It was an honor based on succeeding in other tasks before. I was selected to command the kind of final.

56:42

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

simulated operation. And it started with needing to navigate, there was a bunch of military aspects to it, but it was, the first part was to navigate about a 20 kilometer distance. And generally, we were always trained not to use GPS, but to kind of read the map and just follow the map. But they encouraged us on this particular thing to use the GPS. And I was, I put the coordinates in, I got one number wrong.

57:08

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

and we found ourselves in a totally different place. This is all in the desert. We found ourselves in a totally different place than we were supposed to be. By the time I realized that, look at the map, it didn't end up. Anyway, it ended up in a very failed operation, and I lost my chance to be top of my class as a result of that. Fast forward six, seven years later, I was with McKinsey in the Philippines.

57:37

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

doing work that was privatization of an asset, which was an electricity asset. And of course, if you privatize an asset that has regulated pricing, there was a real question between...

57:53

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

the bidders and the regulators around what would be allowed to do on pricing in the future. So they needed a framework that would last for 30 years and I sat on my modeling and I could not make that framework work out. And I went to, and there was a lot of explanation.

58:11

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

But the explanation did not correspond with the formula that I understood from. And I remember like three nights in a row working until very, very late or early in the morning. And eventually I came with this outrageous suggestion that the formula is recursive. And based on that, you know, they could increase pricing forever and it would be allowed. And it just doesn't make any sense. And I went to the client. I went to other people in McKinsey. Everyone thought I'm crazy.

58:40

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

ended up that I was right. And it postponed to stop the entire process. It wasn't good for McKinsey. We didn't get some of our fees. But it was the reality that it was like a wrong formula. And to bring those two things together, kind of the wrong GPS coordinates and the wrong government formula, I learned from that more than anything else. The need, and I think this is really critical for roles like CFOs or finance leaders.

59:09

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

You have to understand stuff. You can't just follow the numbers, you know, without understanding what they mean and do they make sense. And you have to be able to triangulate from different sources and make your own estimation. I think it's just such a core skill to, and I, you know, it guided me. I think one of the reasons that I was able to enter this role reasonably well was in anything that I don't understand. I challenge, of course, there's certain things that you need to understand.

59:39

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

urgently if you have any doubts about liquidity for the organization you better understand your stress scenarios if you have any you know misunderstandings about how the pnl things in the pnl not adding up but so much of the cfo roles is actually questioning things and going around and again the role modeling that you bring

1:00:00

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

pushing to understand what drives things ends up influencing people on your team to understand more. Of course, in an 80-20 way, you don't want people to spend a huge amount of time on what doesn't matter. But I think at least my biggest learning from those experiences has been the need to...

1:00:24

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

I use this sort of language with my team. You can never delegate understanding. You can get someone else to do a lot of the hard work, but you still need to understand. You are the responsible person that the right thing happens and you need to understand it. And I think the other side of it, which we talked about already earlier, if you want to influence other people, you also need to convey for them not just numbers, but also the why behind it, the logic, the benefits for them from any change that you're going to make as a finance leader.

1:00:54

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Excellent. Well, thank you for that. We're up to our final question. This is where we simply say, looking forward the next 12 months, what are your priorities as CFO of McKinsey & Company? So I think, I mean, my priority is as much as I can, I always think about

1:01:12

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

You know, we're in a good time right now. The market is healthy. We've got a lot of exciting things going on. You've got to navigate the short term and the mid term in the right way. So I'm thinking about in the short term, how do I put enough performance edge to get us to the right outcomes that we aspire to have, be it on cost, be it on growth, be it on investments. But also, I keep challenging myself that

1:01:41

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Are we making the firm stronger for the future generation? Are we making ourselves more resilient? Are we improving liquidity? Are we preparing better for risk scenarios? I think just balancing that stewardship between short-term and long-term. A time that I think is reasonably good, but also quite uncertain. You don't want to under-invest. For example, one of the biggest risks we have as an organization is under-hiring. If we don't hire,

1:02:12

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

enough talent now we would not have a pipeline for partners you know seven eight years from now so and and that sort of balancing act we of course don't want to hire too much and not have enough opportunities to deploy that talent in a good way that will develop and excite them so i think that striking that balance in a way that i think would give us um the right

1:02:37

S… Speaker 2 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Flexibility, I think, is really important. And what I tell other CFOs when I talk about, I think, in an environment of higher uncertainty than I think we have seen in most of our careers, you really have to be quite vigilant on the no-regret moves on some costs and some actions, but also careful not to slow down things that will give you upside optionality as well.

1:03:04

S… Speaker 1 (1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted)

Yuval Otsman, thank you for joining us on CFO Thought Leader. Thank you, Jack. It's been great to talk to you and hopefully interesting to your listeners. We may have forgotten to tell you. Will you forgive us? CFO Thought Leader is now on video. You can watch our episodes at cfothoughtleader.com or check out our YouTube channel. Same great CFO insights. Now with faces.

1181-Atsman-CFOTL-converted

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