A Career Focused on Helping Clients
Marvin Bower was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1903 but grew up in Cleveland, his family having moved there when he was a baby. After graduating from Brown University in Rhode Island he went to law school at Harvard at the behest of his father. Upon graduation he returned to Cleveland looking for a job with law firm Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, but wasn’t hired because his grades weren’t good enough. Not sure what to do, he decided to return to Harvard to attend the business school and graduated with his MBA in 1930.
Returning to Cleveland, MBA in hand, this time Jones, Day hired him. He was assigned to work with committees and bondholders of troubled companies. It was here that Bower made the observation that would define the rest of his professional life: ”No one asked why these companies failed — or how much earning power the new bonds could support,”
That question would lead him to take a job with a Chicago engineering and accounting firm recently founded by James McKinsey. Bower would lead the newly acquired office in New York City and upon McKinsey’s death 4 years later, would split from the company but maintain the name.
Bower’s idea was to build a firm (like law firm, he never wanted McKinsey to be referred to as a “company”) of trained managers and use that expertise to help clients. He preferred consultants professionally trained (usually from Harvard) over managers who often progressed through a company because he thought that managers who spent most of their lives progressing through a company would get tunnel vision and would not be able to look at their situations objectively. McKinsey consultants were supposed to help fix problems, not soothe feelings. This was perfectly demonstrated when Bower told one CEO who was resistant to change: “The problem with this company, Mr Little, is you.”. McKinsey lost the account, but neither Bower nor the other partners cared.
Another of Bower’s maxims was that the client’s needs came before McKinsey’s revenue. He would refuse business from clients who he did not believe they could help or whose management he believed would be resistant to change.
McKinsey grew and thrived under Bower. Starting out giving organizational and logistical advice, the company expanded to encompass strategy consulting for corporate reorganizations and eventually to advising nations and governments on a variety of challenges. Under Bowen McKinsey grew into one of the largest consulting firms in the world, at one time or another working over 100 of the Fortune 500 companies as well as countless firms and governments around the world. Today McKinsey is a multi billion dollar giant that is one of the most sought after consulting firms in the world.
So concerned with the integrity of his firm was Bowen that when he turned 60 he sold all of his shares back to the company at cost, forgoing many millions of dollars he could have gained had he sold the company to outsiders. His goal was to ensure that the interests of the company would remain with those actually working at the company. Future partners, following the precedent Bowen set, kept the stock in house and today after almost 90 years of existence McKinsey is still a private company.
Bower took a step back from management of the company in 1967 at the age of 64, but remained very much engaged, finally retiring in 1993 at the age of 80. So important was his contribution to the consulting industry that he is often referred to as ”the father of the consulting profession.”
Marvin Bowen died in January 2003, just seven months shy of his 100th birthday. Entering the business world with no idea of what he wanted to do, it was his professional curiosity about why no one was asking how to help companies that set the course for his career. He basically built an industry around that question and became respected for setting a tone of professionalism that endures to this day. The world of business changed a great deal between the 1920’s and the 1990’s, becoming in many cases more efficient, more powerful and making the nation more prosperous. No doubt Marvin Bowen would be proud of his contributions to that reality.
Further reading:
https://www.economist.com/news/2009/04/03/marvin-bower
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Bower
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/business/marvin-bower-99-built-mckinsey-co.html