Impact through Insight

We grad students receive periodic recruiting solicitations from the big consulting companies: Bain, BCG, McKinsey. As an undergrad at the turn of the millenium I received solicitations from this same lineup of firms, and what sticks out most in my mind from that time is the fatuousness of dot-com era business-speak ("out of the box," "envisioneering") and the vacuousness of consulting firms' slogans: the one I remember is "Impact through Insight," which basically tries to reassure clients that they're hiring smart people (that is, after all, part of the peace of mind they're paying for) and to reassure us insecure, anxious smart people that our intelligence can make a difference.

The PhDs on the McKinsey site are all in the sciences. They must think that we "right brained" humanities folks are too dumb to have real insight, too feckless to have impactful impact. This is probably true, and thank goodness. I would not want to fail in the labyrinthine analysis--probably full of mathy formulas I don't get--required to deliver to the Arkansas plastics manufacturer, in whose noble town I'd be living in for weeks on end, the insightful insight that they can save 2% on the sourcing costs by purchasing industrial emoluments from a plant in India rather than Brazil.