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Some McKinsey consultants, especially younger ones, were bothered that the firm would so willingly help the House of Saud, a family from Riyadh whose patriarch conquered much of the Arabian Peninsula in the 1920s and whose sons have overseen a ruthless theocratic autocracy ever since. They argued t…

According to QuantumBlack’s home page, it helped a soccer team assess the “health of its players and identify the physical metrics that might signal impending injuries.” QuantumBlack’s evaluations were so detailed they included taking saliva samples. “Using objective medical markers and information…

Skilling infused Enron with ideas he had learned at McKinsey, including the importance of periodically culling the herd. Either advance in the firm or leave. McKinsey called it “up or out.” At Enron it was “rank and yank.” McKinsey validated Enron’s strategy, including risk taking, securitizing loa…

The insurance adjuster’s role had been greatly diminished. During her father’s time, setting a value for a claim had been a skill. Under Allstate’s new system, the computer would spit out an estimate. This was Colossus, a program that analyzed hundreds of different injuries entered by adjusters lik…

The surge in Allstate’s share price was accompanied by a dramatic fall in the “pure loss ratio,” the measure of claims payouts divided by premium income, before factoring in operating costs. In 1987, Allstate paid out 70.9 cents in claims for every dollar it took in. By 1997, two full years into th…