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Very far off. Big 4 usually enters when MBB has left after doing the high quality strategy work. Now that might not apply in all cases but most cases MBB does small pieces of super high value and high visibility work. Big 4 does the ops to get that vision accomplished
That’s circular logic: you can’t argue that they can charge the most because they’re the best, and that they’re the best as indicated by their “highest hourly rates.” Give an objective reason they offer the best, which justifies their prices.
MBB knows a ton about strategy, and strategy has historically charged the most. They’re currently not heavy hitters, say, if you wanted to do a 3 year cloud implementation, which I argue constitutes “industry knowledge” and requires high quality as well. Just different
With the caveat that this is 100% anecdotal with a n=1, I'm in industry now and have seen the results of both at my firm (and I was B4 for several years a while back).
From my standpoint as the client, there's no real difference in the quality of work. MBB certainly has more cachet with my firm's senior leadership, but for those of us closer to ground level who actually deal with the work MBB/B4 have been hired to do day in and day out, there's no real difference.
One of our execs hired both MBB and B4 to pit against each other on the same re-org/modernization initiative for my org last year and my group was tasked with operationalizing the final change. As such, I was one of the stakeholders that worked closely with both teams.
Frankly, I wasn't very impressed with the quality of work from either team. The MBB team was more polished, but I felt their solution was pretty much trying to fit a generic framework to our org without truly understanding the ins and outs of the org. The B4 team wasn't quite as polished and fancy, but their solution didn't feel as cookie cutter. Neither of them really hit the mark as far as I was concerned. Senior leadership loved both solutions, though, so I was tasked with implementing bits and pieces from both for my org.
We're still in the process of implementing the re-org/modernization, but I'd say I've thrown out >50% of the solution from both teams as impractical and/or not really applicable to the org.
Mbb ftw
Worked in industry on an initiative that had both B4 and MBB (not my firm) teams at different times - MBB on strategy and B4 on implementation.
I echo TM1, you could tell there was a difference in “polish,” but both decks weren’t fully usable. Both teams were equally hated by my then coworkers, so take that as you will lol 🤷🏻♀️
Also hilarious to think about the projections we got now that I know how the numbers are thrown together... by a stressed consultant gluing together assumptions with their tears
If you asked this question 10 years ago, I would say stark contrast. But if you look at how these firms are investing in new capabilities, they’re beginning to converge. I’ve been on projects where we’re doing that “high level and high visibility” strategy work for the C-Suite and we pass it to another team - EY, internal client, or another consulting firm - to execute. Obviously EY would love to continue the relationship (and collect more $) by executing the work, but this wouldn’t be me or my teams.
It’s different type of work, although MBB is slowly starting to move into implementation also. Over time they’ll be 60/40 (Strategy/Implementation), where as a lot of B4 is like (20/80) or something like that
For McK strategy work is our entry to do implementation. Except IT/Ops we mostly implement the strategy under the transformation practice. We also do IT but not as good as others. I would say 30% strategy and 70% transformation
I guess if you’re strictly talking about quality of work (I.e. Deliverable X made by MBB vs. Deliverable X made by Big 4), I don’t think the quality of work would be that different. I mean, I remember one case where we were working with BCG folks and I was not impressed by the content they were putting out, both content and presentation-wise. But that was probably because the guy doing the work was a newbie. Had someone more experienced been doing the work, quality would’ve been higher (although if you put a Big 4 guy doing it who’s been around just as long, s/he’d probably do it just as well).
My point is, we’re all human, and the quality of the work is very dependent on individual effort. Some consulting firms hire employees who are only marginally different (e.g. if someone goes to ACN Strat, they might not have gotten a job at MBB, but it’s not like they are THAT much less skilled).
I think the difference - to C1’s point - is more on the work itself than the quality of the work.
As a former CXO, the biggest benefit of a MBB deck vs Big 4 was with the board. Telling the board, I want to x and y and here’s the McKinsey stamp of approval was worth a lot. I’d also hire MBB for a truly bottoms up assessment of an org design.
MBB is much better at managing CEOs and Board and invest less time with middle management, hence mostly the mid management doesn’t like us. At least McKinsey
Agree with this
The difference is basically branding, not quality, when you compare apples to apples.
I think it comes down to candidate quality ranges and this is easier to objectively measure. An M7 MBA grad who goes to big 4 to do strategy consulting is basically the same as their classmate who went to MBB. But if you compare that MBB recruit to a big 4 outsourcing worker in India who went to a local school then the MBB person is higher quality. But that is an apples to oranges comparison. So high end MBB vs high end big 4 is a match but because big 4 has a wider lineup of offerings and employees, global average MBB employee beats global average big 4 employee.
Lol I worked with both MBB and a B4 teams when I was in industry. Don’t need a proposal. The differences I saw were:
1) Gravitas/polish. Would say this is from MBB teams getting more executive exposure at the entry level.
2) Quality of output in relation to a firm’s strengths. There’s a reason why my company typically hired MBB vs B4 for strategy vs implementation, respectively — firms tend to be better the more time they invest in a topic. You have more internal experts, better processes, and more materials to leverage. That creates differences in output, even when you look at proposal decks.
That’s why I don’t buy your whole “average candidate quality” argument. B4 is very strong in implementation, which is traditionally where you use the most outsourced labor. Never really saw a problem with it.
Me too. And I used to be in a big 4
It’s not that different regardless of what anyone says. I work at Accenture and we compete on projects with MBB all the time. The engagement I’m on now I’m working alongside Oliver Wyman. Same bullshit
Thanks guys for your insights and the super interesting discussion! I’m currently working in Big 4 and had never seen MBB deliverables/work, so I was just curious.