McKinsey's Managing Director Rajat Gupta on leading a knowledge-based global consulting organization

Since its founding 75 years ago, McKinsey & Company's primary mission has been to help clients achieve substantial, lasting improvements in their strategies, organizations, and operations. The consulting firm's more than one thousand clients include 100 of the 150 largest global companies, as well as governments, institutions, and nonprofit organizations. With 84 offices worldwide, McKinsey operates as a global network guided by its "One Firm" concept of a common service standard for all clients. Projects have included designing the original organization of NASA, developing the Universal Product Code, and providing advice on the German, Russian, and South Korean economies. In July 2000, Rajat Gupta began his third three-year term as managing director of McKinsey & Company. In an age of revolving-door senior executives, his career stands as a testimonial to institutional loyalty and the virtues of professional renewal. Born in New Delhi in 1948, he joined McKinsey in New York in 1973 with a degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, and an MBA from Harvard. He likes to say that, since he never really practiced as an engineer, McKinsey is the only place he has ever worked, even as a summer job. After heading McKinsey offices in Scandinavia and Chicago, Mr. Gupta was elected in 1994 as the firm's first non-American-born managing director. In that post, he steers a decentralized private partnership of 7,000 consultants worldwide, including some 900 partners who are leaders in their own right. Among his more notable early accomplishments was putting in place the building blocks for McKinsey's global expansion-resulting in the opening of nearly 50 of the firm's 84 offices worldwide since 1994. More recently he has also rebalanced the firm's client portfolios to bring together its traditional client base of large incumbent corporations and the leading companies of the new Internet economy. Outside of McKinsey, he played 'an instrumental role in establishing the Indian School of Business, scheduled to open its doors in July 2001. Throughout this period of rapid growth and expanded presence for McKinsey, Mr. Gupta has stressed a steady commitment to preserving and enhancing the firm's enduring mission: delivering objective, independent client service, and building a firm that is one of the world's primary destinations for talented individuals to work. Today he sees himself and McKinsey standing at an interesting juncture, as a global network of high-quality resources, with deep industry knowledge and a strong system of values, facing a single big question: what does the new economy mean