One went into a spin as he was making a boardroom presentation to a company whose chief executive interrupted to tell him his ideas were insane.
One panicked after being assigned to a merger and acquisition project and realising her business background was so meagre she had no clue what the term “due diligence” meant in the world of M&A. Another penned what he was sure was an excellent memo for a client, only to learn it was so off-beam it needed a comprehensive rewrite.
Who, you might wonder, are these knuckleheads? As it happens, they are all successful partners at McKinsey, one of the world’s oldest and best known consulting firms.
Each joined the famously picky outfit more than 20 years ago and all have contributed to something McKinsey calls “My Rookie Moment”, a series of internal videos with senior leaders that the firm began posting on its website this year to help new hires learn the ropes.
They are meant to be instructive tales on how to overcome painful early career experiences. Some partners talk of how they survived the first brutal internal feedback on their performance. Others reveal how they dealt with a disagreeable client, or an older colleague correcting their work. In short, they sucked it up and learned from it.